After a brutal four days of world leaders’ speeches, schmoozing and wild parties, exhausted global elites at the World Economic Forum were told of the growing dangers of burnout for society.
Economic turmoil, round-the-clock communication and constant social pressure to succeed have led to a costly increase in stress--related illness and burnout, a panel of experts told a packed session in the Swiss ski resort of Davos.
“In the future, the greatest challenge to the global health system will be stress-related diseases,” said Heinz Schuepbach, director of the school of applied psychology at the University of Northwestern Switzerland.
The phenomenon was rapidly growing more prevalent, he added.
According to a study last week by one of Germany’s top health insurance companies, one in five workers in Europe’s top economy has fallen ill from stress at work.
In the past four years, sales of anti-depression drugs have risen by more than 40 percent in Germany, the study showed.
Since burnout is not an “official” disease, concrete statistics on its spread are hard to come by, said Toni Bruehlamm, chief doctor at the Hohenegg clinic in Switzerland and an expert on the subject.
“But it is definitely becoming more and more frequent. I see this from the number of people I see in my clinic and from what my colleagues tell me,” he said.
The financial crisis, still a major topic at this year’s gathering, has contributed to global stress levels, with employees unwilling to take time off work even when they are ill for fear of being laid off.
“There’s a new phenomenon. We’ve moved from absenteeism to presenteeism. People go to work even though they should stay at home because they are sick,” Schuepbach said.
“We are never satisfied with what we’re doing. We have to do things faster, better,” he added.
“The economy is influencing society too much. Performance, money, all these factors have taken on too much importance. There’s simply too much emphasis on profits and money and it’s simply not healthy,” Bruehlamm said.
Schuepbach blamed modern communications and a 24-hour-a-day working culture for the phenomenon.
“Deadlines have to be met and it doesn’t even matter where you do your work any more. I used to go home at 5pm and if my job wasn’t done, then that was fine. Now you can work around the clock,” he said.
With concern about rising food prices, persistent fears about the environment and lingering worries about the debt crisis casting a pall over the annual pow-wow, organizer Klaus Schwab told of a “global burnout syndrome.”
According to the WHO, the average burnout victim takes 30.4 days off work, costing billions to the economy.
Nestle SA executive Stephanie Pullings Hart said Davos hardly helped to reduce burnout.
“It’s my first Davos and it’s -actually pretty exhausting,” she said. “You start working at 7am and you’re not done until at least 2am ... How the world leaders cope with the stress is beyond me.”
Taiwan Transport and Storage Corp (TTS, 台灣通運倉儲) yesterday unveiled its first electric tractor unit — manufactured by Volvo Trucks — in a ceremony in Taipei, and said the unit would soon be used to transport cement produced by Taiwan Cement Corp (TCC, 台灣水泥). Both TTS and TCC belong to TCC International Holdings Ltd (台泥國際集團). With the electric tractor unit, the Taipei-based cement firm would become the first in Taiwan to use electric vehicles to transport construction materials. TTS chairman Koo Kung-yi (辜公怡), Volvo Trucks vice president of sales and marketing Johan Selven, TCC president Roman Cheng (程耀輝) and Taikoo Motors Group
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
RECORD-BREAKING: TSMC’s net profit last quarter beat market expectations by expanding 8.9% and it was the best first-quarter profit in the chipmaker’s history Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), which counts Nvidia Corp as a key customer, yesterday said that artificial intelligence (AI) server chip revenue is set to more than double this year from last year amid rising demand. The chipmaker expects the growth momentum to continue in the next five years with an annual compound growth rate of 50 percent, TSMC chief executive officer C.C. Wei (魏哲家) told investors yesterday. By 2028, AI chips’ contribution to revenue would climb to about 20 percent from a percentage in the low teens, Wei said. “Almost all the AI innovators are working with TSMC to address the
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”