“We like to throw you in the deep end,” Coos Buxtorff (27) was told when she joined a consultancy firm. She had just worked as a freelance consultant for two years and knew the stories of colleagues about high work pressure with ambitious targets and crowded agendas in the consultancy world. That is why she consciously opted for a relatively small agency, about which she developed projects, the well -being of employees.
“If it doesn’t work anymore, you have to ring the bell,” it was said. But that was certainly not complied with, says Buxtorff. “When I looked around, I saw everyone working on six projects at the same time. It was more and more, harder, more efficient, more productive.” And because nobody said anything about it, Buxtorff thought: the standard overtime, the overwhelming amount of work, that’s just Part of the Deal.
These unwritten expectations ensured that Buxtorff went in the requested work pace. “It felt like a fast train. And when you get in there, you have to go directly to that speed.” At the end of every working day she was ‘completely broken’, and she also had no energy for anything in the weekends. “I needed all the time to charge my battery.”
In the first nine months of last year, psychological disorders in people up to forty years were the most common cause of long -term outages at work. This was apparent from an inventory of diagnoses for people on WIA benefit for disability, by the UWV benefits agency this spring. It is estimated that 58 percent of young people with disability benefits fail because of psychological health problems.
Waiting lists
Failure by mental complaints is an important cause of the rising waiting lists for an incapacity for work, on which the Ministry of Social Affairs reported last week. Those waiting lists will rise from 27,000 now to 200,000 in 2030. To gain more insight into the reasons for failure due to psychological complaints, research agency TNO for the UWV started an investigation. The results are expected later this year.
Young people mainly suffer from the way the Dutch labor market is set up, with many temporary, flexible contracts, says researcher Lin Rouvroye. She obtained his PhD at the Dutch Interdisciplinary Demographic Institute (NIDI-KNAW) with a study into the relationship between flexible contracts and life-course changes among young people. She does not surprise her that young people are more often at work due to mental complaints. “Thanks to existing scientific literature, we know that job insecurity, for example through temporary contracts, is a real threat to the mental health of employees.”
Young people with a permanent contract experience more peace and stability, and therefore more mental space to make plans for the future
Young people have a flexible contract relatively often, says Rouvroye. Her research showed that young adults aged 18 to 35 with a flexible contract are more concerned about their future than young people with a permanent contract. They not only have more stress about their work and finances, but also about private matters such as finding a suitable partner and founding a family. “Young people with a permanent contract experience more peace and stability,” she says. “And with it also more mental space and action perspective to make plans for the future, such as having children.”
For Buxtorff it took four months before she rang the bell. During a week of vacation, she was unable to relax. “After three days I thought: what am I still so stressed? I didn’t have to do work, but I just didn’t get out of the upright.” And she received physical complaints. “I was in constant pain everywhere, my breath was stuck. I had a headache and was super-stimulated.” After her vacation, she indicated that work as she had done the four months before before she was no longer going.
She entered a reintegration process: first four hours, then six hours, until finally twenty hours. “I was in a trial period and in uncertainty whether I would get a new contract. My employer wanted to give that, but in the end I resigned. I realized that I would not become healthier by staying there.” She did not receive unemployment benefits, but did get her peace of mind back.
Housing market
The tight housing market also causes stress among young workers, says Rouvroye. With a temporary contract it is already very difficult to buy a home, but even in many cases renting is difficult and sometimes impossible. “Many parties on the private housing market set as a requirement that you must have an employment contract of at least one year. And on multiple housing sites, temporary workers will be excluded anyway.”
FNV Young & United sees throughout the country and in various sectors that young people are partly at work because of this. “It is often an accumulation of things,” says chairman Neele Boelens. “Young people feel a lot of pressure to earn more. And especially not to lose their job, for example because they can no longer buy or rent a house. That pressure runs so high sometimes that they work into a burnout.”
No employer interviewed recognized the relationship between stress and uncertain employment contracts
Employers often overlook the risks of job insecurity for the mental health of young people, says Rouvroye. For a study-which still needs to be published-she did more than 25 depth interviews with employers. “None of the interviewees recognized the direct relationship between flexible employment contracts and the development of burnout complaints.”
Rouvroye asked, among other things, what employers do when they see that someone is struggling with work pressure and mental complaints. “None of them said anything about taking away the fear of losing their jobs by offering a permanent contract, even if they already knew they wanted to keep the employee.”
Employer Theodoor Ludwig does not see temporary contracts as an extra stress factor for young people. At his law firm Ludwig & van Dam, new employees first receive a temporary contract for three years at the start of their career before they get permanent employment. To his knowledge, this is not an additional stress factor for these employees. “The starting point is that everyone just gets a permanent contract after three years,” he says. “We also guide young employees in such a way that they can stay, and if it is not possible, we will let you know well in time.”
Ludwig tries to lower the workload for his employees in other ways. Work in the legal profession is heavy enough, he knows. “You can’t change that the content of the work is heavy, but the method is.”
That is why he says to employees: do not work too hard and ensure that it fits with the rest of your life. Do you have to work from home some days because of young children? Doing. Do you not want to take another case this month because, for whatever reason, it is too busy? Great. “In business, this attitude as an employer also yields more. If employees get the space to decide for themselves how they set up their working life, they perform better.”
Corona Pandemie
Employers also try to offer young employees more guidance by assigning them a coach or mentor, for example, the AWVN employers’ association sees. Two years ago the association asked its members what they did in the workplace for mental health. “Young people turned out to be the most vulnerable group,” says a spokesperson. They were most bothered by a high workload.
It is often underestimated that working is also something you have to fool
Many young employees have fallen behind because they started working during the Coronapandemie, according to AWVN. In that period they could not be properly trained because there was no one in the office. “It is often underestimated that working is also something you have to fool,” says the spokesperson. Developing healthy routines, functioning in a team, communicating with colleagues – those are not things you learn at school. “The young people who have not been properly incorporated in this area have started swimming a bit later. That makes them more vulnerable to a high workload. They now have to learn from a coach, for example, not to just throw themselves for the lions and to guard their own boundaries.”
Occupational health and safety services ArboNed and HumanCapitalCare are increasingly calling in business psychologists to prevent failure, sees Iris Homeijer, company doctor and director of medical matters at HumancapitalCare. In addition to guidance when things go wrong, prevention is essential. “Companies see that you have to be ahead of complaints.”
That certainly applies in small and medium-sized businesses, where absenteeism quickly leads to holes in the occupation, says Homeijer. The work culture is important to prevent problems: employees must feel free to say that they are not so well in it. If there is a listening ear, you prevent complaints from exacerbating and someone fails, according to the company doctor.
Listening
Anna (33) could have used such a listening ear at the start of her career. She does not want to be in the newspaper with her last name because she is talking about a sensitive subject. She worked as a project assistant at a training office and had to deal with a manager who offered her the opposite of a listening ear. “My boss was very unpredictable and could get very angry out of nowhere,” she says. To complete her psychology study, she stopped working, but shortly thereafter she ended up in a severe burnout who kept her home glued to her for two years and where she still experiences the consequences. “I still get tired very quickly. If I do new things, or if someone does not give me clear answers, I am just exhausted.”
She ended up through daytime activities at a care farm in youth care and then at an agency that guides job seekers with a distance to the labor market to work. Almost ten years after her burnout, Anna learned a lot about herself, setting work and boundaries. With her neurodivergente brain, she needs extra clarity. “I used to dare not ask so well, but I do that by now.”
Anna taught her to take her rest as soon as she noticed that it was necessary. She learned that in her work in youth care, with a clearly communicating and understanding boss. Also in her current work is more understanding for her situation. In addition to a working week of an average of six hours, she receives social assistance benefits through the Participation Act, but she wants to expand her working week until 20 hours. “After very busy days, I really have to build in one or two rest days. In the past it was always just continuing, continuing, continuing.”
Coos Buxtorff also had to slow down. She said goodbye to the consulting. A few months after her resignation, she started working again in a juice bar. Then she followed a training as a yoga teacher in Indonesia. Buxtorff got back self -confidence and saw that she could function in a working environment, as long as she kept an eye on her own limits. “Okay, wow, so I can just work without being completely empty,” she realized then.
By jumping off the express train and doing something that really makes her happy, she got energy again. “I initially did yoga for myself, to take good care of my body. When I found out that I could also pass that to other people, it felt great.”