Gallup has found roughly 40% of employees worldwide experience "a lot of stress" on a given day, a figure that has barely moved despite the wellness spending boom and remains above pre-pandemic levels. Among leaders specifically, that figure climbs to 46% – a rate higher than that of the people they manage.

At the same time, the global wellness industry was estimated to be worth US$6.8 trillion in 2024, having doubled in size since 2013 and now outgrowing the pharmaceutical sector by a factor of nearly four. Fitness tracking technology alone reached US$86 billion last year, more than double its size five years earlier.

These numbers sit oddly together. An industry built to make people well keeps growing, while the people it serves keep reporting the same levels of strain. New research published in Organisation Studies offers an explanation: wellness programs, gamified fitness apps and workplace culture are not simply failing to fix burnout and overwork. In some cases, the research paper argues, organisations are actively engineering the conditions that produce them.

The research, Addiction and Organisation Studies, was authored by John Amis, Visiting Professorial Fellow at UNSW Business School and Professor at the University of Edinburgh, together with Dr Matteo Ronzani of Alliance Manchester Business School, Dr Marian Gatzweiler of the University of Edinburgh Business School, and Professor André Spicer of Bayes Business School, City St George's, University of London.

“Addiction has mostly been studied as a medical or public health issue, with organisational studies saying comparatively little about how organisations themselves design and sustain it. This paper set out to change that,” said Prof. Amis. The central claim of the research: organisations do not just sell addictive products; rather, they build the people who use them.

“The full paper ranges much further than the workplace, examining how addiction is engineered across gambling, digital platforms, artificial intelligence and even illicit markets, and what this means for regulation and public policy,” said Prof. Amis, who goes into further detail below about the managerial angle lens: what these dynamics look like inside organisations, and what leaders can do about it.

The workaholic: how organisations engineer overwork

The authors call this process subjectification, the idea that organisations shape not just behaviour but identity. Two examples illustrate how this plays out in ordinary workplaces and consumer habits. The first subject the paper examines is the workaholic, a category the authors handle carefully.

Work addiction sits in a different position to substance or gambling addiction: overwork is widely rewarded rather than treated as a problem, and the American Psychiatric Association's DSM-5 does not recognise it as a clinical disorder. As Mark Griffiths and colleagues put it in research cited in the paper, work addiction is distinctive because it is tied to "possibly the most important social role of an adult, i.e., of a worker, and work is widely perceived as productive and positive activity."

Learn more: Why social media platforms thrive (despite making users worse off)

The paper traces several ways organisations construct this figure. Structural conditions such as job insecurity, unclear role boundaries and reward systems that favour long hours establish rhythms employees absorb over time. In professional service firms, this produces what researchers Ioana Lupu and Sue Liu call an entrainment cycle: constant responsiveness and escalating expectations that employees internalise until being "out of sync" with the pace of work feels physically wrong.

Similar dynamics appear in gig work. Uber drivers, offered flexibility alongside uncertain pay, often end up overworking because algorithmic systems reward responsiveness and create a persistent sense of potential earnings just out of reach.

Physical environment plays a role, too. Office lighting, décor and on-site perks such as food and gyms can make long hours at work feel appealing rather than burdensome, blurring the line between work and personal life. In highly competitive sectors such as investment banking, managerial oversight gives way to internalised self-discipline, and overwork starts to look like a personal choice rather than an organisational demand. Some high performers respond by managing their own bodies, using stimulants, sedatives or intensive workout regimens to sustain output, a pattern the paper's sources describe as “body entrepreneurship”.

"Employees can find themselves logging activity late at night not because it makes them healthier, but because falling short feels like failure"

JOHN AMIS

Cultural expectations reinforce these dynamics. In Japan, workaholic behaviour has historically been treated as essential for career progress, extending into after-hours obligations such as company drinking events. Technology creates an additional layer of complexity: always-on messaging tools produce what researchers call “technostress” – an effect which intensifies in remote and gig work, where job insecurity keeps workers tethered to digital platforms for both income and validation.

The optimised addict: when self-improvement becomes compulsory

The second example is what the paper terms the "optimised addict". This figure is a product of what the authors, drawing on Carl Cederström and André Spicer's earlier book, The Wellness Syndrome, describe as a culture that has turned wellbeing into an obligation rather than a feeling.

There are three drivers behind this, according to the researchers. First, organisations embed wellness into moral expectations. Nudges, biometric tracking and continuous feedback frame self-optimisation as a duty: workers who do not pursue it are cast as irresponsible.

Learn more: How Uber drivers revolt against algorithmic management

Second, the optimised addict is monetisable. Fitness devices, health platforms and employer-linked wellness schemes generate engagement data that feeds into product development, employee evaluation and algorithmic targeting, often with corporate partners on the other end.

Third, subjectification runs through what the paper (borrowing from Foucault) calls technologies of the self: dashboards, nudges and quantified goals that make constant self-improvement feel voluntary, even as they model an ideal of the resilient, ever-improving worker.

Citing recent work by Kashif Bhatti and Thomas Roulet, the authors note the optimised addict is often celebrated for visible self-discipline while quietly experiencing anxiety, burnout and dissatisfaction. These negative states function much like withdrawal, prompting a return to the same optimisation loop that produced them in the first place.

“In practice, this can look like an employee enrolled in a corporate wellness scheme that links their fitness tracker to workplace rewards, leaderboards or insurance premiums,” said Prof. Amis. “Steps and activity levels feed into a leaderboard that ranks them against colleagues, while sleep and heart-rate scores build a personal dashboard they're nudged to keep improving.”

The same data is often shared with insurers or wellness vendors to help set premiums or renew corporate contracts, Prof. Amis added: “Missing a daily target triggers a nudge or a dip in a rewards balance; hitting it brings praise, validation, and small perks. Over time, meeting the target stops feeling like wellbeing and starts feeling like an obligation, and employees can find themselves logging activity late at night not because it makes them healthier, but because falling short feels like failure.”

Where do these subjects fit in a bigger pattern?

The research contends that organisations also play a major role in what people become attached to, from gamified apps to slot machines engineered around time-on-device. A widely cited case is Natasha Schüll's study of Las Vegas gambling machines, which found players were not chasing a big win but a dissociative calm she called the "machine zone."

The authors argue this same design logic, feedback loops that reward escalating engagement, now runs through fitness apps, workplace platforms and social media alike. The optimised addict and the workaholic are the result of that logic when it is aimed at people rather than products.

"Missing a daily target triggers a nudge or a dip in a rewards balance; hitting it brings praise, validation, and small perks"

JOHN AMIS

The paper’s authors expect this dynamic to intensify as generative AI becomes part of everyday work and life. Research they cite shows people can feel more “heard” by these systems than by other humans, since they respond without interruption or judgement, and that capacity is becoming a product feature, with emotional dependence doubling as a retention strategy. “This raises a pointed question for leaders: what happens when a tool simulates therapeutic support, without the accountability or confidentiality that comes with it, while also being used to monitor employee wellbeing?” Prof. Amis asked.

What this means for business leaders

The research reframes engagement metrics that many organisations treat as unambiguously positive. Wellness app sign-ups, wearable adoption rates and hours logged at the desk can double as markers of dependence rather than health, particularly when program design rewards escalation over genuine wellbeing. Leaders reviewing wellness initiatives might ask whether a program measures and rewards real improvement, or simply rewards continued engagement with the program itself.

The same applies to overwork. Firms that reward constant availability, whether through informal culture or formal metrics like responsiveness scores, may be reinforcing exactly the patterns the paper describes as work addiction, regardless of intent.

The authors suggest de-stigmatising these patterns starts with recognising how deliberately they can be built into structures, tools and incentives, rather than treating them purely as individual failures of willpower or time management. Reviewing wellness programs, workload expectations, and always-on communication norms with this framework in mind is a practical first step toward reducing the harms this research identifies.

“The recommendations below offer leaders a practical way to begin auditing their own systems, from wellness metrics and reward structures to communication norms and workplace technology, against this framework,” Prof. Amis concluded.

8 recommendations for business professionals

1. Measure outcomes rather than participation: Track whether workload, recovery, stress and work boundaries improve instead of treating app registrations or usage rates as proof of success.
2. Review reward and promotion systems: Identify whether career progression, recognition or performance ratings favour long hours, rapid replies or constant availability.
3. Set communication boundaries: Define when employees are expected to respond and ensure managers follow the same standards outside working hours.
4. Assess wellness data practices: Review what employee data is collected, why it is required, who can access it and whether participation affects employment decisions.
5. Separate wellbeing from compliance: Ensure employees can decline wellness activities without being treated as uncommitted, irresponsible or resistant to organisational culture.
6. Examine workloads before offering interventions: Address staffing, deadlines, role clarity and job insecurity before relying on mindfulness sessions, apps or resilience training.
7. Audit workplace technology: Review whether notifications, rankings, dashboards and responsiveness measures encourage repeated use or extend work into personal time.
8. Include employees in program reviews: Use interviews, surveys and worker representatives to examine how wellness and performance systems operate in practice.