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According to the study, employees in agriculture, forestry, animal husbandry and horticulture in particular are considered "workaholics".
Photo: Ute Grabowsky / Photothek / Getty Images
Long working days, obsessively checking e-mails, a guilty conscience at the end of the day: one in ten employees is addicted to work, as a recent study shows.
Researchers from the Technical University of Braunschweig and the Federal Institute for Vocational Training (BIBB) evaluated representative data from 8010 employees from 2017 and 2018.
The study was funded by the union-affiliated Hans Böckler Foundation.
The scientists show that executives in particular tend to work excessively above average: while around 12.4 percent are affected, those in employment less high up the career ladder only come to 8.7 percent.
"Among executives, compulsive work is also more pronounced the higher the management level is," according to the study authors.
For example, if the boss is expected to be the first to arrive and the last to leave, this could create "incentives for workaholic behavior."
Driven behavior, withdrawal symptoms
The scientists identify workaholism primarily on the basis of two conditions:
Employed people work excessively, i.e. they work long hours, work quickly and do different tasks at the same time.
They behave in a "driven" manner: they work hard even when it's not fun, they only take time off with a bad conscience, and they can't switch off and relax after work.
When workaholic employees are not working, they experience certain “withdrawal symptoms”.
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However, most of those surveyed are able to put their work cell phones aside when they finish work: 33 percent of employees stated that they work excessively – but not compulsively.
54.9 percent of the employed are mostly "calm" at work.
And a small group doesn't work much, but compulsively.
Computer scientists and natural scientists are least affected
The study also shows that addictive work is common across many different industries.
However, employees in agriculture, forestry, animal husbandry and horticulture are particularly affected - 19 percent tend to work addictively there.
At six percent, employees in the fields of computer science, natural sciences and geography are least affected.
In other economic sectors examined, including transport/logistics, production/manufacturing, commercial services/trade/sales/tourism or health/social affairs/education, the values are between eight and eleven percent.
Other findings of the study:
Among the self-employed, the workaholic rate is 13.9 percent.
The authors of the study suspect that this could explain, among other things, the high proportion in agricultural occupations.
Because: In this industry, many people are self-employed.
There are also differences between the age groups: at 12.6 percent
, 15 to 24-year-olds are more likely to be workaholic than 55 to 64-year-olds
at 7.9 percent.
Workaholism is less common in large firms than in small firms.
According to the researchers, this could be due to stricter regulation: employees in large companies can have difficulties with the HR department if the working time account overflows.
Addictive work is
more common in companies without codetermination than in companies where employees have more say.
According to the authors of the study, works councils could help to set boundaries and protect employees from self-exploitation.
The proportion of around ten percent of workaholics in Germany is similarly high in an international comparison.
Researchers in the USA also came up with ten percent, in Norway with a good eight percent.