When Jonny Frostick realized he was having a heart attack this month, the first thing that occurred to the HSBC Holdings contractor was: “I needed to meet with my manager tomorrow, this isn’t convenient.”
Then he thought about funding for a project, his will, and finally, his wife.
Frostick, who manages more than 20 employees working on regulatory data projects, chronicled his near-death experience in a
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“Whereas before I would finish sensibly anywhere between five and half six, I’d be finding myself there on a Friday at 8 o’clock at night exhausted, thinking I need to prep up something for Monday and I haven’t got time, and I started then to actually work weekends,” Frostick said in a phone interview from his home in Dorset. “That’s my responsibility. I think that was probably for me where it was those blurring of boundaries.”
“We all wish Jonathan a full and speedy recovery,” said HSBC spokeswoman Heidi Ashley. “The response to this topic shows how much this is on people’s minds and we are encouraging everyone to make their health and wellbeing a top priority.”
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Frostick said he and colleagues spend a disproportionate amount of time on Zoom calls, and work days can stretch to 12 hours. The isolation of remote work also takes a toll, he said.
“We’re not able to have those other conversations off the side of a desk or by the coffee machine, or take a walk and go and have that chat,” he said. “That has been quite profound, not just in my work, but across the professional-services industry.”
Frostick, who has three young children, said he is responsible for the overwork and neglect of his health that culminated in the heart attack. Now he wants to share his wake-up call with others.
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“I owe a responsibility to myself and other people,” Frostick said. “This happened to me, this could happen to you. You need to change that.”
He wants to drive conversation around the post-pandemic work culture and hopes employers will implement a more-flexible approach. In the post, Frostick vowed to make changes, including limiting Zoom calls, restructuring his approach to work and spending more time with family. The post received more than 214,000 likes and generated thousands of messages from people who are rethinking their attitudes.
Still, he doesn’t blame HSBC for his health problems and is bullish about future prospects.
“I don’t think this should reflect badly on the place where I work, I think it’s fairly consistent across the industry, and I think that’s why it’s resonated with so many people,” he said. “If an organization didn’t want to employ me because I’d actually taken a moment to reflect, and capture this, then that’s probably not the right place for me to be working.”
