Trends and Topics in Print Media

Every Monday morning, a team of Access media mavens gathers to read the latest trends and topics covered in print media (yes, we still read print media!). The team shares these insights agency wide to ensure we’re all informed and equipped for the week ahead. Every week, we’ll share learnings from the consumer, business and tech spaces here on the Access Point.

This week, we learned that burnout is a real problem, and Walmart is turning grocery delivery into a streaming service:

• What Do We Really Know About the Workplace Woe We’re Constantly Warned Against?

According to an op-ed in The New York Times last week, the World Health Organization “upgraded burnout from a ‘state’ of exhaustion to ‘a syndrome’ resulting from ‘chronic workplace stress.’” So… are we all burnt out? Based on a 2017 survey by Kronos, we are! The survey found that 95% of HR executives claim that burnout is hurting workplace retention. Richard Friedman argues that calling irritability and exhaustion “burnout” is normalizing everyday distress: “If almost everyone suffers from burnout, then no one does, and the concept loses all credibility.” He claims that “however well intended, we have created an unrealistic and misleading expectation that students and workers are supposed to be happy and stress-free at all times, and if they aren’t, it is a problem that needs to be fixed.” With the recent editorial focus we’ve seen on workplace wellness and flexibility to combat issues like burnout, we appreciate this critical view and recommend giving it a read (Richard Friedman, The New York Times).

• The Age of Delivery

Last week, we highlighted FedEx’s decision to offer Sunday delivery. Guess who else is jumping on the increased delivery bandwagon? Walmart. According to The Wall Street Journal, starting this fall, Walmart store employees in three American cities will begin delivering online groceries directly to customers’ refrigerators. What if you’re not home, you ask? The deliverers will wear body cameras and enter residences via smart-locks, allowing customers to live-stream their grocery delivery… goodbye, Big Little Lies—add this to our queue instead (Sarah Nassauer, The Wall Street Journal).