The increasing social perception of work addiction over the past ten years has been a positive development for psychology. Work addiction may no longer be taboo, but to fully understand it, we must begin to look beyond the question of psychological impact and consider how work addiction affects entrepreneurial everyday life.

Workaholism, as a serious problem for companies, remains largely hidden. Companies often neglect the role that working conditions and executive behaviour might contribute to the development of work addiction.

Until recently, work addiction research has maintained an emphasis on psychological aspects. In our empirical study, the first of its kind in German-speaking countries, we asked workaholics about their addiction and their effects on companies. We thus chose not to view workaholism from psychological or a health perspective, but from a business and economics perspective.

Businesses need to accept that there are workaholics in their company. Without action, there is a high probability that they already carry significant economic and human resources risks. The study has shown for example, that academically educated employees tend to have a higher risk of becoming work addicted, but they didn’t stand out by increased absences. This makes it difficult to identify them. As a result, businesses must focus more on typical work-addicted behaviours instead of absences quotes. This is a new challenge for managers and human resources departments.

Executives also need to be aware that they play a key role in creating or promoting workaholism. They shape the operational framework of their enterprise significantly and influence their employees directly through their leadership.

People underestimate the damage work addiction can cause because only the final stages are visible. Even in the initial stages of addiction, the effects begin to show in the form of delays in work, unfinished tasks or increased time delays. Mistakes and wrong decisions begin to accumulate. As a result, significant economic damages can occur over months or even years, until the addiction cannot be denied anymore, and an employee experiences a ‘total failure’ such as burn-out.

Ultimately, not only the workaholics themselves, but also companies have to pay a high price. Our research shows that denying workaholism as the cause of operational problems is a gross negligence. The existence of companies can be jeopardized and therefore it requires active management actions. The economic interests of companies and help for sick persons are no longer mutually exclusive. The entrepreneurial intent must be to recognize the issue of workaholism as a disease, to avert operational damage from the company and to address the problems of workaholism actively.