In May 2019, before COVID-19 began sweeping through the world, the World Health Organization declared burnout “an occupational phenomenon.” In fact, concern about work and well-being goes back centuries and was always linked to culture: It was Aristotle, after all, who worried about what it would take to create a sense of flourishing or eudaimonia.
Now that chief executives around the globe are trying to maintain or reinvent both corporate culture and future strategy in the wake of a pandemic that rewrote the rules of work, it’s popular culture that leaders should consider to win the hearts and minds of their workers — specifically pop music.