Film 04 · 18 min
Load and Recovery
Load is not the problem. Load without recovery is. The film follows the physiology through a real working quarter and then follows the org chart that produced it.
Who appears
Dr Liane Hofmann
Head of Research, Awaris
Deki Zangmo
Head of Human Resources, Bhutan Power Corporation
The thinking behind it
Recovery is measurable. Overnight heart rate variability, sleep architecture and morning cortisol give a picture that self-report does not, and the picture usually contradicts what people say about how they are coping.
The film is careful about individual data. Physiological monitoring inside an employment relationship is a surveillance risk, and the film says so on camera.
The systems argument follows: when a whole department shows the same pattern, the intervention is not resilience training. It is the shift pattern, the escalation policy, or the person who sends messages at midnight.
This is the film that most directly refuses the wellness reading of the institute's work.
Sources
Maslach & Leiter (2016), World Psychiatry
Burnout as an organisational phenomenon.
Thayer et al. (2012), Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews
Heart rate variability and self-regulation.
WHO ICD-11 classification of burnout
Occupational, not medical.
Transcript
HOFMANN: Everybody in that team had the same overnight pattern. That is not twelve personal failures.
ZANGMO: We changed the escalation rule before we changed anything about the people.