Tag: Worklife balance

Drawing the line

Many of us are now working at home or splitting our time between home and the ‘old’ office due to COVID restrictions. Those without the option of moving into a safe home office space over the pandemic or have been commuting to and from work trying to stay safe. Under these circumstances, the issue of work-life balance has been more highlighted than it was previously. While we speak of work-life balance, it is really more about work-life boundaries, about how we control the boundaries around work and non-work activities.

 “Boundary control refers to the extent to which you perceive that you are in control of how you manage the boundaries between your work life and personal life.“ (Kossek, 2016, p.262)

Boundary control will vary for each individual as we have our own unique ways of working and engaging around work and what we value; distinctive personalities and behaviours; different life phases; and preferred work styles. Kossek (2016) has identified three work styles – integrators who are happy to mix work and personal activities during the day ensuring that work is done by working later, or on weekends to make up the time and ensure the job gets done; cyclers being those who have jobs that have peak busy periods where work concertinas between busy and quiet (think teachers or FIFO workers); and separators being those who have a clear delineation between work and personal life, setting limits on both and preferring, or being unable, to mix the two.

The digital world in which we live makes it easy to be ‘on’ far more than ever. Enhanced communication technology allows more connectivity and immediacy, creating expectations that people are constantly available (Von Bergen, Bressler. 2019). The merging of work and non-work has implication for personal well-being and relationships, as well as the organisational level.

“Effectively managing work—life boundaries cannot only reduce work—life conflicts, but can also reduce stress, burnout, addictions, mood disorders, and enhance mental and physical health.” (Kossek, 2016, p.259)

“The ‘always-on’ work culture also creates numerous problems for organisations stemming primarily from the fact that it denies workers a sense of individual efficacy and autonomy by putting them on a permanent state of alert. It drains morale and initiative, and scatters employees’ mental resources, making it difficult for them to take ownership of projects and prioritise their efforts. Additionally, research on working long hours is associated with productivity decreases for firms.” (Von Bergen, Bressler, 2019, p.54)    

France was the first European country to recognise the importance of ‘work-life’ boundaries, introducing the ‘right to disconnect’ legislation in 2017. The El Khomari law recognises that “employees are under no obligation to bring work home…and that it was not misconduct if an employee was not reachable on a smartphone outside of work hours.” (Von Bergen, Bressler, 2019, p.57).   In an Australian first, the Victorian Police recently had the ‘right to disconnect’ written into their enterprise bargaining agreement. Police officers are to be contacted outside of their shift hours only in the case of an emergency such as a bushfire or terrorist attack. (Ziffer, 2021)      

Although we are not always one hundred percent in control of our work flow, we are in the main responsible for setting our own work-life boundaries. We are in charge of our own self-care, of knowing our preferred working style, of knowing when we are happiest with our life situation, and when someone has overstepped the line. To determine what those boundaries are requires self-reflection, time out to review our current situation and ponder how things might be different going forward.

“If you feel you do not have time to develop friendships outside of work, exercise, or just relax to take care of yourself, particularly if you place a high value on needing time for self, you are unlikely to have healthy work— life boundaries.“ (Kossek, 2016, p.265)

What are your work boundaries? How are you setting boundaries to ensure you have a sense of control over your life in these COVID times? Please don’t hesitate to get in touch if the above resonates with you in light of your own situation.

© First published via the Mannaz Journal – reprinted here with permission.

 

About the Author: Julie Regan

Julie is a professional transition coach, working with people in career transition and those exploring and developing their artistic and creative practice. She is the Director of Creative Coaching Options and brings over 20 years’ experience working in the creative arts and coaching space. Julie is also a writer and film enthusiast.

Experiencing zoom fatigue & moving forward

In my last article I wrote about how the global COVID pandemic has seen change become the order of the day, along with the realisation that we now have the opportunity to do things differently. Nowhere is this more evident than in how we conduct our working lives, for example, using video conferencing technology like Zoom on a daily basis.

Many of us are working from home, or a mixture of home and office, or indeed not working at all due to the loss of employment. It has been a time of massive re-adjustment as we’ve pivoted to create new structures for our working day.

Office meetings are now held via Zoom or other remote platforms; the in-person connection gone as we sit in our home work spaces and speak to colleagues about our joint projects and delivery schedules. We have a new phenomenon of Zoom meeting fatigue as managers attempt to hold teams together through daily remote connect up times. And you hear people speak of craving face-to-face connection like old times, longing for a chance to share a coffee with a client or work colleague over lunch.

Working from home during the pandemic and often freed from the daily commute, we’ve been offered a period of reflection; an opportunity to re-evaluate how we spend our time and the rituals we have in place to support our daily lives. As a result, attitudes to work, a place that once provided the major sense of connection, achievement, and satisfaction have changed; work no longer has the same focus in our lives.

Don’t get me wrong, work still holds an important place in our day. However, the last year has allowed many of us to restructure and reorder our time to fit other things that equally provide a sense of achievement and connection into our daily routine. It has allowed us to work smarter so we can easily include physical activities like going to the gym, gardening or taking a long walk; so we can connect and have more time with family and friends at the end of our working day instead of commuting; so we can read or relax watching our favorite streaming series. We have looked to other things to provide us with a sense of accomplishment and satisfaction, at other ways of connecting to people.

New rituals have been put in place as we move to create some sort of stability and certainty in uncertain times.  In my community, the first wave of the pandemic and lockdown saw an increased number of us walking in our local park in the morning and grabbing a coffee as we headed home to start our working day. Not a big thing, but a change in the way we started our day as we all tried to maintain a fitness routine and some sense of connection to our neighbours from a distance.

And I am not saying we are working less or slacking off; far from it, as research shows that productivity has increased and people are actually working longer hours when working from home. Research from the National Bureau of Economic Research in the USA in 2020 found that

“Compared to pre-pandemic levels, increases in the number of meetings per person (+12.9 percent) and the number of attendees per meeting (+13.5 percent), but decreases in the average length of meetings (-20.1 percent). Collectively, the net effect is that people spent less time in meetings per day (-11.5 percent) in the post- lockdown period. We also find significant and durable increases in length of the average workday (+8.2 percent, or +48.5 minutes), along with short-term increases in email activity” (DeFilippis et al., 2020).

Which brings me to the issue of work-life balance and how to maintain healthy boundaries between work and home in the ‘new normal’ work environment. I’ll address this in my next post.

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How are you doing work differently in 2021? Have you put healthy boundaries and new rituals for your working day into play? What do you find most enjoyable, and challenging, in your current work structure? Please get in touch if you are looking to do things differently in 2021 and would like to uncover how best to do this.

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REFERENCES:

DeFilippis, E., Impink, S. M., Singell, M., Polzer, J. T., & Raffaella Sadun, R. (2020) NBER WORKING PAPER SERIES. National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.: Collaborating During Coronavirus: The Impact of COVID-19 on the Nature of Work.

© First published via the Mannaz Journal – reprinted here with permission.

 

About the Author: Julie Regan

Julie is a professional transition coach, working with people in career transition and those exploring and developing their artistic and creative practice. She is the Director of Creative Coaching Options and brings over 20 years’ experience working in the creative arts and coaching space. Julie is also a writer and film enthusiast.