Week Two: Stress in the Workplace

I’ve now been at Fast Company for over two weeks and have noticed a few things about the prevailing culture that have surprised me. First, the workplace is way less collaborative than I was expecting. Most employees spend their days at their individual cubicles and other than a few meetings here and there, keep to themselves. Second, people don’t seem terribly close to one another. From my limited experience, it seems as though the relationships begin and end in the office, and don’t extend past the doors. Finally, the stress in the office is almost tangible.

I finally got the courage to ask one of my coworkers a few questions about these surprising observations and quickly learned that the company is undergoing a huge reorganization, and as a result, many employees are being fired. Given that, employees are feeling all the more pressure to perform and simply don’t have the time to socialize or let loose in any regard. For some reason, this got me thinking about Terror Management Theory. When individuals are made more aware of their mortality, they seek out certain characteristics in a leader. While my observations were not leader specific, I began to consider how employees’ might begin to act differently when their mortality is salient as well. I look forward to continuing these observations and hopefully learning a little bit more about culture before and during the reorganization to help flush out my ideas regarding mortality and workplace behavior.