It seemed for the longest time that the overriding mantra of the working populace was a unified chant for more work flexibility; which in turn was hoped would lead to a better work- life balance, that most elusive of holy grails. Now that this flexibility we asked for is within the reach of so many of us, it seems that bright flag has been lowered somewhat, or at least its being waved more cautiously. Now that so many of us have attained some modicum of the work flexibility we yearned for, many of us are asking what exactly did we attain and how much is it really in our favor? It wasn’t just working mothers who were asking for flexibility, it was everyone!
Single professionals with a life outside of the workplace, older professionals wanting to make up for years spent working crazy hours, and working fathers too. Bayt.com’s Fathers in the Workplace survey showed that what over 9% of fathers want most from their employers, all else being equal, was more hours to spend with their family. In fact when we looked at what professionals want MOST from their career, monetary aspects like achieving financial independence and making a huge amount of money were dwarfed by an assortment of other motivators, which included ”the thrill of creativity and innovation” for 14% of respondents, the ”thrill of meeting, managing and interacting with people” for 8% of respondents, and achieving ”enjoyment and satisfaction on a daily basis” for 12% of respondents.
But where are we today and are we indeed achieving enjoyment and satisfaction with our newfound flexibility? A Bayt.com Telecommuting poll indicated that 47% of companies did allow telecommuting, with an additional 15% allowing it dependent on individual employee circumstances. Jobseekers and employers agreed that the secret to successful telecommuting was a combination of “Clear Guidelines agreed upon between employer & employee”, “Trustworthy employees who are capable of working well independently”, “Supportive Management who will oversee and guide the telecommuting system”, and “Proper training program for employer & employee (in new procedures, etc…)”.
The main telecommuting benefit to employers was deemed by them to be a combination of better productivity, more skills retention and cost savings. And the main benefit to professionals was agreed to be a combination of all of better work-life balance, productivity and loyalty.
We asked professionals what their main concern was vis-à-vis telecommuting. 27% said they feared ”underperforming due to no direct mentoring”, 20% feared “inability of my manager to manage from a distance”, 20% feared “Slimming of advancement opportunities due to not being in the office”, 11% were concerned of ”feelings of isolation” and another 10% of ”overworking (when home is office)”.
So where are we today and have the concerns of would-be commuters materialized? I will give the example of a friend of mine, a senior executive, on a flexitime arrangement with a leading advertising agency. Consider the following scenarios:-
1. She wakes up every morning at a very early hour and before anything else, picks up the cellphone by her bed to check on any missed calls, emails or messages. The window of opportunity to respond to all of them given differences in timezones and the fast-paced nature of her industry and the modern workplace in general, is miniscule, so she immediately gets to work on them. W
ith the days of snail mail long behind us for most of our daily business affairs and with modern technologies and globalized workplaces, expectations are that response time is instantaneous and that turnaround on any and all requests is rapid and seamless. Because she has clients outside the region, and thanks to advances in technology in the form of cellphones, email and skype, she is in effect on call 24*7 and doesn’t skip a beat.
2. Her office is her home for many hours of the day however she has not been able to rigidly partition and compartmentalize between work-hours and family time yet and instead she finds she is holed up in her home office with the door closed to avoid distractions and working hard most of the time.
Her family and friends have learned to stay away and engage with her only when approached so she can focus on work. She spends less quality time with them now than she did before and even when with them is mentally and physically switched on to work at all times ready for any calls or messages from the office.
3. In order to compensate for not physically being in the office, and for fear of being out of sight, out of mind and falling out of favor in the inner circle, she is working extra hard, going overboard to prove her skills and putting in more hours than was the agreement. Whereas on a normal workday in the office she might have cruised by with average performance, now she feels she must go the extra mile to earn the special treatment she feels she is getting and to remain in the eye of the company’s key decision-makers and continue to earn the respect and admiration of her peers.
4. Away from the synergies of the workplace she finds it harder to stay abreast of what’s new, so she spends an inordinate amount of time making an effort to get up to speed with new platforms and news and tools and developments and technologies. She knows she cant afford to lag behind. She needs to stay up-to-date; whether it is with the softwares required to formulate the most competitive multimedia client presentation, or track her expenses, or the latest tools needed to book an airline ticket, hotel, restaurant and theatre tickets for her client meetings in Rome.
In fact thanks to modern tools and technologies it seems we are more switched on to work than ever before and with the flexibility to work from anywhere and everywhere seems to come the expectation that we will. With flexibility have come many things, responsibility, opportunity, some control over work environment and conditions, potential room and reason for increased productivity; however not what many were yearning for, which was the absolute unfettered ”freedom” to do more things, new things, things we always wanted to do.
So what is the answer? Perhaps it is a return to more rigid work hours with a clear delineation between work and home? Perhaps it is simply having two separate email accounts and cellphones? Perhaps it is blurring the boundaries between work and home and accepting the overlaps happily as an inevitability? Perhaps it is being much clearer about objectives and motivations with oneself and one’s employer? Perhaps it is lowering expectations slightly and being content with a little less than absolutely everything we want to absolutely perfect?
A recurring image of ultimate work-life balance used to be a powerful professional, usually a woman, standing straight, head high, juggling multiple complex but immensely important tasks. Now that many are there, we realize those items are a little heavier than we envisioned and the pace is much faster than we expected or hoped. My friend laughed when I showed her this piece. She joked that before she learned how to multitask ten things perfectly, she needed to perfect juggling just one. I joked that she would do just fine with her acrobatics, as long as she didn’t ever drop her smartphone.
