ANOTHER reason people may be reluctant to address their work/life balance is that they fear if they raise these issues with their employer they will be perceived as not being serious about their career. This fear can be exacerbated by the fact that what workplaces want has changed dramatically. In the old days when a ditch had to be dug, everyone knew that no one actually liked digging ditches, but it had to be done, so what are you going to do? Pick up your shovel and dig. You didn’t have to pretend you were enjoying it. In fact, if you looked like you were enjoying it, you would probably be declared a witch.
Nowadays workplaces put so much emphasis on morale and a positive attitude and everyone being part of one big happy family that to ask for something completely reasonable like fewer or more flexible working hours can make you feel as if you are walking around with the words ‘I have no ambition and I want my career to stagnate and die’ written on your forehead.
Many workplaces now offer activities that are in direct competition with those that traditional family and social life offers.
There are work drinks, work barbecues, work breakfasts, work lunches, work dinners, work dragon boat racing, work golf, work sports teams and work sports days. Meanwhile endless seminars, conferences, team-building exercises, retreats and meetings endeavour to reinforce the idea that work requires not just your presence and diligent attention to the task at hand, but also your enthusiasm, passion, and complete and total commitment. It’s easy to get so caught up in all this ‘we’re all just one big happy family’ malarkey that you can actually forget that your real family are those waiting longer and longer, later and later, for you to get home at night.
Over the last few decades employers have increasingly fostered the idea of the workplace as a ‘family’, a place that isn’t there just to purchase your labour, but which can also meet many of your social and emotional needs. It can offer you support, friendship, social occasions, meals and touch football. All these things are sensibly designed by employers to encourage a sense of teamwork and shared purpose among workers, and to give people a good time. But they also serve to underline the fundamental centrality of the workplace to a person’s life, and to signal to employees that many of the fundamental needs the family has traditionally fulfilled—social interaction, support, fun, kicking the footy around, sharing a meal—are also available at work. Why go all the way home for dinner when you can go up to the firm’s gymnasium, get some exercise, have a free dinner from the microwave or canteen, chat with the other ‘team players’ who are also working late, and then bang out a couple more hours’ work before returning home exhausted, useful only for sleep?
This, of course, isn’t every job, but it is a lot of jobs. Workplaces are diversifying in what they offer. In the old days they offered work. That was pretty much it. Now it’s work plus frills, trimmings and bowling nights. There are more and more activities and, as a result, more and more pressure on employees to show they are ‘team players’ and ‘totally committed’ by participating in them. Well sorry, but I don’t want to go bowling. I want to go to work, do my job and then I want to go home.
Just as there is no such thing as a free lunch, there is no such thing as a free work bowling night. Work-based activities may appear to be free, but you end up paying for all the soccer games, after-work drinks and wine and cheese nights by being expected to meet enhanced employer expectations. In the old days, they just wanted you to turn up, do a decent job then go home. Now, in return for all the extras, employers don’t just expect you to turn up and do the job, but to turn up bursting with enthusiasm, passion, commitment and a desire to bust a gut to surpass your targets. And that means staying late and working weekends when it’s busy.
In such circumstances it’s understandable that people are wary of raising work/life balance issues with an employer, fearing that it will be noted that they are a person who does not have the right attitude, and that they will be gently, or not so gently, steered away from the action into a career backwater.
Many want to rebalance their life, but they think any attempt to do so will mark them out. They are nervous about the cost of departing from what appears to be the workplace cultural norm: someone who is keen, enthusiastic, committed and willing to make whatever sacrifices are necessary to do their job as well as it can possibly be done. So in this book I will try to put those fears into perspective and explain how you can achieve a more balanced life without being labelled as someone who isn’t really interested in their career.
There is no doubt that many employers put a lot of effort into trying to create a culture of teamwork, commitment and Sunday barbecues. But all the extracurricular activities they offer are a means to an end. What employers ultimately want are motivated, efficient people who do their job well, and extracurricular activities and team-building workshops are simply a means to try to ensure that’s what they get. What has always been, and will always be, of fundamental importance to employers is the quality of an employee’s work. They want you to be good at your job and to do good work far more than they want you to join the touch football team or go to Friday evening drinks. In fact, the touch football team and the Friday night drinks are often only there because they believe that in some way it will help to create a workforce that does good work.
So when you start to think about work/life balance, don’t be mentally roadblocked by the idea that you need to pay homage to all the cultural team-building norms and attend all of the Thursday night activities. You don’t. If you want to get serious about addressing your work/life balance you need to focus on the main game: the work you do. If you work hard while you are at work, and do a good job, you will make yourself valuable to your employer. And being perceived by your employer as a valuable employee is important, because it increases your bargaining power. If you focus on becoming an efficient and good worker it should allow you to bypass all that other team-building stuff and insulate you from any criticism you may attract for doing so.