Marieke Wiersma immediately recognizes the subject: the hypernervous society. She has lunch, downstairs in the World Trade Center in Amsterdam. There are two phones on the table: one for private and one for work. First of all, she says: she is 46 years old and can no longer be fooled. She can link her work-“sales talents” to an employer-well in the evening. And if the private telephone goes during work, then that is her husband or the children-and then she takes up all the time. But she sees young people walking on their toes, “Fast Paced ” want to work and live. Young people who cross their limits. And customers and employers who use it.
Tuesday afternoon on the Zuidas. Perhaps the epicenter of ‘hypernervous society’ such as the Council for Public Health and Society for the Netherlands that described on Monday. The Amsterdam office park has hundreds of companies; From law firms, accountants, communication and consultancy firms, banks and investment advisers, developers and investors to a lot of hospitality to serve all professionals during the day. Everyone is slim, neatly dressed, walks on firmly and has two telephones. One for work and one for private.
The entire society now suffers from performance pressure, warns the Council for Public Health and Society. The council illustrates this with figures: in 2005 20 percent of young women said that they (quite) experience a lot of pressure, in 2021 that was 52 percent. For young men that rose from 18 to 38 percent. Sickness absence due to burn-out rose between 2014 and 2024 according to Health Institute RIVM From 5.7 percent to 8.6 percent. Women are more often bothered by it than men.
It can always be better
In the performance society, the council writes, it can always be better. This notion is related to the ‘meritocratic ideal’, where not your birth, but your efforts determine your position in society. ‘Success’ is, in short, a choice. “In all areas, excelation must be made. Then it does not feel compliance with the high demands, in a society where you as an individual determine your own success, soon as individual failure.”
That idea penetrates to the earliest youth: parents praise children who learn to walk, talk, read ‘quickly’. “Performance in the field of school, work and social relationships are caught in measurable outcomes. For example, better grades are at school, in more courses take final exams and a lot likes And friends on social media are measured and is seen as an own merit, “says the council. Just like as quickly as possible, earning as much money as possible.
A young banker, whose name is known to the editors, is also lunch on the Zuidas, with his mother during his break. He does not suffer from pressure or stress, he laughs friendly. But yes, he also runs fast six days a week. He is 28 years old and manages a bank investment. Two telephones are also on the table with him. Why two? “So that I have peace at the weekend. And not calls by customers who are concerned about their investments.”
An economy focused on care instead of growth and individual gain? It is possible, says this economist
Young employees must be able to deal with many requirements and stimuli, his mother endorses. More than before. “But they also have more options than before. My son has just a few days remote worked in Spain. ” Learning to deal with all those stimuli, demands – that’s what his mother says and that is a matter of upbringing, the children were always coloring, doing card games. His son manages to resist incentives, says his mother. “He also does not absorb his private telephone very often.”
Bustle around the Zuidas in Amsterdam.
Photo Bram Petraeus
Daily discussion
Working parents are also struggling at home with the high demands that the environment places. “I have daily discussions with my oldest daughter who wants a fatbike,” says consultant Marieke Wiersma. “Everyone has one, she says. But school is six minutes by bike on a normal bike, so I think it’s really nonsense.”
And then the pressure of smartphones and social media. Wiersma’s youngest, of ten, would like a smartphone. “Every day I can postpone that is a profit,” says Wiersma. She is very critical about the influence of screens on children. “It is already too late for the current teenagers, but for subsequent generations that really has to be curbed. It is now unimaginable that as a 14-year-old you are not on Snapchat.” She repeats: “Really no-go That you are not on it. Isn’t that unbelievable? The children all communicate with each other. Also via electronic games. I fight every day against the temptations thereof and the addiction. I want them, if the food is on the table, they can immediately put an electronic game or telephone away. “
Young employees must be able to deal with more requirements and stimuli than before
The pressure that children feel to ‘belong’ is great, notes Wiersma. She tries to teach her children that it is not necessary. “You are who you are and that is enough.”
In the meantime, she works in a spicy performance environment. She gets a fixed salary, but also bonuses when she has her KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) fetches. “Those bonuses make the difference. But you know, you do what you can do. And in the worst case you don’t get the bonuses. Money is also money.”
The burnout of one is work for the other. “I come to work through that others have failed temporarily,” says Manita Bijl (35). She’s outside in the sun. She is an assistant of executives, CEOs and CFOs. Always temporary – five months here, two months there. Now she works for an investor and developer in Logistics Real Estate. “I do get energy from a performance -oriented environment,” she says. “If a deal has to be closed, for example. Sometimes you go along with the issues of the day and before you know it, it’s half past five.” But in the evening she rests: she cooks, goes to work out or walk.
She has met herself in the last ten years, says Bijl. “Some clients expect that you will still answer emails during the weekend and in the evening. But I don’t just do that. I can now judge whether something is urgent.”
Right to inaccessibility
At software developer AFAS (six hundred people in Leusden) they do everything they can to limit the workload-and with success, says general manager Bas van der Veldt. His initiative to give all employees a four -day working week since January – four times eight hours – and still to pay for five days, received a lot of publicity. “It works! Since then we have been running 11 percent more sales, with my working hours. We have deleted a lot of nonsense and creativity has been increased,” he says. Perhaps more important: AFAS only has 2 percent absenteeism, while the national average always fluctuates around 5 percent. “Happy employees are a competitive advantage. We get and keep the best people.” AFAS also works in Belgium and will do it in Curaçao and Aruba.
His employees do not have to be available from Friday to Sunday. In fact, if they send each other e-mails on Friday, they will not arrive until Monday morning. Van der Veldt: “I can push an e-mail if it really has to be, but the norm is: not being working for three days.”
Only the support center that helps customers with software problems can be reached on Friday. “But those people rotate and then have again on Wednesday. Their working week is only four days.”
For students, the pressure comes from all sides and drinks and drugs too
According to Van der Veldt, the business model at Zuidas offices enormously increases the pressure on staff: “They often work ‘hourly invoice’, so every hour that you are available is money. With us it is the other way around: you pay one amount for our software and we then try to arrange everything in as few hours as possible.”
Entrepreneur Jordy van Bennekom has made a business model of the incentives to be present online constantly. That started three years ago with ‘offline weekends’ in Drenthe where twelve people are in a house and not touch their phone and iPad for 48 hours. “They get to eat, play games, can be creative, walking, talking. Everything you do if you are not online. Many young people are lonely, precisely because they are a lot online but do not really connect with people in real life. You need that.”
He now organizes seven offline events per month, from three hours. There are people in their twenties and thirties for a ‘digital detox’. “The first hour is always silence, in which you can read, meditate, knit – what you want. Then we will chat and play games. We will show what is possible if you put your phone away.”
A name has been removed from an earlier version of this piece for privacy reasons.
NEW: Give this article as a gift
As an NRC subscriber you can do every month 10 articles Give a gift to someone without an NRC subscription. The recipient can read the article directly, without a payment wall.