Workaholism: When You Can't Stop Working

What is workaholism and how does it differ from hard work? Read about its signs, its link with burnout and the steps employers can take to break the cycle.

When everyone has gone home in the evening, theirs is the only office with the light still on. At weekends the phone never leaves their hand, they check their emails even on holiday, and on days off they feel restless. Their managers call them "our hardest-working team member", while their colleagues grow tired trying to keep up with them. Workaholism is being unable to stop working, being unable to stop thinking about work, and feeling guilty or restless when not working. From the outside it can look like a virtue, but it is a cycle that wears away a person's health, relationships and, in the long run, their job performance. In this article I look at what workaholism is, how it differs from hard work, how organisational culture feeds the cycle, and what employers, HR managers and line managers can do.

What Is Workaholism, and How Does It Differ from Hard Work?

This is not an official psychiatric diagnosis. In psychology it is generally used to describe a person's relationship with work becoming uncontrolled and compulsive. For this reason it is more accurate to think of the word "workaholic" not as a label but as a concept that helps us understand a pattern of behaviour.

What distinguishes working hard from being addicted to work is not so much the number of hours worked as the quality of the person's relationship with their work:

• A person who works hard may put in long hours in busy periods but can rest when the work is done. They enjoy their job and leave room for life outside work.
• A person who cannot disconnect from work remains mentally tied to it even when not working. Rest brings them not relief but anxiety and guilt. Work is experienced less as enjoyment than as an obligation or an escape.

In psychology the concepts of "work engagement" and "compulsive working" are also used to tell these two situations apart. A person who is engaged in their work is energetically connected to it, and that connection nourishes them. A person who works compulsively cannot detach from work, and that connection drains them.

This distinction matters for organisations, because from the outside the two people can look identical: both work long hours and both care about their job. The difference emerges over time. While the engaged employee can sustain their energy for years, the compulsive worker begins to accumulate fatigue, irritability, errors and health complaints. This is why it matters for a manager to go beyond the observation that "they work a lot" and ask "how do they work, and are they able to rest?"

What Are the Signs of Workaholism?

Several of the signs below appearing together over a long period may suggest that a person's relationship with work has become compulsive. None of these signs on its own amounts to a diagnosis:

• Constantly thinking about work when not working, being unable to take your mind off it.
• Feeling restless, tense and guilty during leave, holidays or weekends.
• Working much longer than planned, and failing in attempts to limit it.
• Constantly putting off basic needs such as sleep, meals, exercise and social relationships for the sake of work.
• Frequently hearing complaints from family or loved ones about the time spent working.
• Struggling to delegate; taking everything on yourself with the thought "I do it best".
• Feeling obliged to reply to emails and messages instantly outside working hours.
• Physical symptoms: headaches, stomach problems, muscle tension, constant fatigue.

What separates workaholism from hard work is not how much you work, but whether it is possible to stop.

Why Does Workaholism Develop?

Seeing workaholism only as a personal trait would be an incomplete view. The cycle strengthens when individual tendencies come together with organisational culture and economic conditions.

Individual factors

• Perfectionism: Never finding any piece of work "good enough" and fearing mistakes make it hard to put work down.
• Tying self-worth to achievement: If a person feels valuable only when working and achieving, rest feels like a loss of worth.
• Escape: Work can sometimes be a way of getting away from problems at home, loneliness, or difficult feelings such as grief or anxiety.
• Patterns learned early: Childhood experiences in which love and approval depended on achievement can feed an adult belief that "I must keep working without stopping."

Organisational factors

• Rewarding long hours: In organisations where those who stay late are praised and those who leave early are questioned, the number of hours is perceived as a sign of commitment.
• Unrealistic targets: Targets that cannot be met with the existing staff push employees into long hours. In the OSH Pulse 2022 survey in Europe, 46% of employees reported severe time pressure or work overload (EU-OSHA, 2022).
• Expectation of constant availability: Expecting quick replies to messages in the evening and at weekends brings work into the home. I cover this topic separately in the article on out-of-hours messages.
• Managers as role models: A manager who sends emails at midnight or never takes leave gives the team a message of expectation, even if they never say it.
• Inadequate staffing and cover: In structures where work stops when one employee is absent, a person sees taking leave as almost impossible.

Economic and cultural factors

Job insecurity and the high cost of living strengthen the thought that "if I work more, I'll keep my job." According to Gallup's report published in 2026, 66% of employees in Turkey reported feeling stress during much of the previous day, against a global average of 40% (Gallup, 2026; 2025 data). According to the ILO's 2026 report on the psychosocial work environment, 35% of the world's workers work more than 48 hours a week (ILO, 2026). In a working life where long hours are this common, the cycle often looks like "normal" behaviour. The blurred line in society between "being hardworking" and "devoting yourself to your job", and the messages from family and friends along the lines of "hold on tight, don't lose your job", make it harder for a person to notice their own limits. For this reason workaholism is often noticed not by the person themselves but first by those close to them or by the signals their body gives.

Suppose the production planning manager at a mid-sized automotive supplier has not gone home before nine in the evening for years. When orders are heavy, he is at the factory at weekends too. The general manager holds him up as an example at every meeting. The young planners on his team feel guilty leaving at six, and some, saying "you have to give up your life to get ahead here", start looking for other jobs. The manager himself has been to A&E twice in the past year with stomach complaints, but has told no one. In this picture, workaholism is not one person's problem but the problem of a whole unit: without realising it, the organisation is putting at risk both its most experienced manager and its future managers.

What Workaholism Costs the Individual and the Organisation

Working without stopping can look like high output in the short term, but in the long term the cost is heavy for both the individual and the organisation.

For the individual: Constant work removes the mind and body's chance to recover. This can lead to chronic fatigue, sleep problems, anxiety and tension in relationships. Work stress that continues for a long time and is not managed can lay the ground for burnout. The World Health Organization defines burnout as a syndrome resulting from chronic workplace stress that has not been successfully managed, and classifies it not as a disease but as an "occupational phenomenon" (WHO, 2019). A systematic review of 36 prospective studies found that burnout predicts later outcomes such as coronary heart disease, type 2 diabetes, insomnia, depressive symptoms, absenteeism and presenteeism (Salvagioni et al., 2017). I describe the organisational steps for preventing burnout in detail in the article on preventing employee burnout.

For the organisation:

• Quality and error risk: A tired mind makes more mistakes. A review of shift work reported that accident risk at the 12th hour of a shift was more than double the average of the first 8 hours (Folkard and Tucker, 2003). This finding is especially important for the production floor and for work that demands attention.
• Pressure on the team: A manager or senior employee who cannot disconnect from work unwittingly gives the team the message that the same pace is expected of them. This can spread burnout through the team.
• Knowledge concentrated in one person: An employee who cannot delegate creates single-point dependency in the organisation. When that person leaves or falls ill, work stops.
• Sudden breakdowns: Employees who work at a high pace for a long time and then go on long-term sick leave or suddenly resign are an unexpected loss for organisations.

The Legal Framework

Work addiction is not a legislative concept, but the working conditions that feed it fall within occupational health and safety. Article 5 of the Occupational Health and Safety Law No. 6331 requires employers to develop a coherent prevention policy covering the effects of factors related to the organisation of work and working conditions. Article 8 of the Occupational Health and Safety Risk Assessment Regulation provides for the identification of sources of psychosocial hazards. The Ministry of Labour and Social Security's 2024 Information Guide on Psychosocial Factors also lists "workload and work pace", "work schedules" and "work and non-work life interaction" among the categories of psychosocial hazards (ÇSGB, 2024). On legal limits to working hours and overtime, it is advisable to get up-to-date information from your employment law adviser.

What Can Employers and Managers Do?

1. Measure results, not hours. In performance reviews, base your assessment on the results delivered and the quality of the work, not on time spent in the office or on the shop floor. Avoid praising long hours.
2. Set rules for out-of-hours communication. Define in writing the situations in which people may be contacted in the evenings and at weekends. Encourage scheduled sending for non-urgent messages.
3. Monitor leave use. Identify employees who have not taken their annual leave for a long time and plan their leave with them. Leave is not a privilege but a need for recovery.
4. Set up cover and handover systems. Training at least one back-up person for every critical task reduces the pressure of "if I'm not here, everything stops."
5. Plan targets realistically. Review regularly whether the workload can be done with the existing staff. Constant overtime is a sign of a planning problem.
6. Managers should set the example. A manager taking leave, not sending messages in the evening and valuing rest gives the team a message stronger than words.
7. Notice early signs. Have a non-judgemental, supportive conversation with employees who constantly stay late, put off their leave or are visibly tired. This conversation should be a sign of care, not a criticism.
8. Offer a support channel. A confidential psychological support service that employees who cannot disconnect from work because of perfectionism, anxiety or personal problems can turn to helps get to the root of the issue.

How to Get Started in Your Organisation

1. Needs analysis: Examine overtime records, unused leave days and the intensity of out-of-hours communication. Use an anonymous employee survey to measure workload, expectations of availability, ability to rest and perceived work-life balance. If there are marked differences between units, assess whether the problem relates to that unit's management style or staffing structure.
2. Programme: Based on the findings, plan together training for managers in a healthy working culture and workload management, stress management and boundary-setting workshops for employees, and organisational measures such as an out-of-hours communication policy. Individual training does not replace organisational change, but it complements it.
3. Measurement: After six months, compare overtime and leave-use data and survey results. Monitor indicators of absenteeism, long-term sick leave and staff turnover.

You can find how this process can be structured with a psychologist's support on the corporate services page.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is workaholism an illness?

No, the concept is not an official psychiatric diagnosis. It describes a person's relationship with work becoming compulsive and uncontrolled. However, anxiety, depressive symptoms or sleep problems may accompany this pattern; in such cases an assessment by a mental health professional is helpful.

Why should I hold back a hard-working employee? How does it harm the organisation?

Even if it delivers high output in the short term, an intense pace sustained without recovery raises the risk of errors, health problems and sudden breakdowns in the long term. This behaviour can also tell the team that the same pace is expected of them. The aim is not to hold the person back but to make their work sustainable.

How do you talk to a manager who cannot stop working?

The most suitable approach is for senior management to acknowledge the manager's efforts while clearly voicing a concern about sustainability. Focusing on concrete matters such as leave planning, delegation and the example they set for the team turns the conversation from personal criticism into a constructive plan.

Does remote working increase workaholism?

For some people it can. The disappearance of the physical boundary between home and work can cause work to spread across every hour of the day. Set working hours, a separate workspace and small rituals that end the working day help to maintain this boundary.

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Eda Erkan Alapala

Klinik Psikolog. İstanbul Kent Üniversitesi Klinik Psikoloji Tezli Yüksek Lisans mezunu; bilişsel davranışçı terapi, çocuk merkezli oyun terapisi ve çocuk-ergen psikoterapisi alanlarında eğitimlerini tamamlamıştır.

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