She feels vulnerable about rumoured job losses and is “scared to take any days off for fear of being judged badly . . . I am working weekends late nights to prove my commitment to the company”. This rings true for California-based Anna, who works in product for a tech company. “For people who are more secure in their job status or reputation, these concerns will be lower.” To fill the void of uncertainty, his research finds, people tend to become “hypervigilant”, scrutinising the behaviour of peers and bosses for meaning - making people think even more about whether they are being noticed. Roderick Kramer, professor of organisational behaviour at Stanford Business School, describes the trigger for paranoia as unexpected events - such as a merger or redundancies. These might include fears that your work is not up to scratch, that you are being excluded, or colleagues are gossiping about you. there’s more ambiguity and more threat, there’s less distraction from our routines, contact with other people and other things to talk about,” he says.Īccording to Mind, the mental health charity, many workers experience mild paranoid thoughts from time to time. “When people are paranoid they often read too much into ambiguous information. We don’t have all the usual informal feedback to make sense of what is going on.”Īndré Spicer: ‘We don’t have all the usual informal feedback to make sense of what is going on’ © Anna Gordon/FTĭaniel Freeman, professor of clinical psychology at Oxford university, agrees. “That means when you are not around your co-workers and your organisation due to virtual working, it can give space for paranoia to grow. “Generally paranoia is about things which are not there or which have not happened - yet,” says André Spicer, professor of organisational behaviour at Cass Business School.
The combination of working from home and the threat of redundancy in an economic downturn are potent conditions for paranoia. In the morning, she opens her smartphone and thinks, “Oh Christ, I’m awake. Isolation, distrustful management, emails around the clock and the underlying fear of job cuts add up to paranoia.
0 kommentar(er)
