I do think this is going to be one of the big balancing acts that organizations are going to have to conduct when it comes to wellbeing. How do I keep track of how my employees are doing, without violating their privacy?
Where I will disagree with Doug though is when he says few people are talking about this. I have this conversation with clients, peers, and others, every single day, sometimes multiple times in a day.
Everyone is talking about it, but they aren’t talking about it in regards to email, rather it is within collaboration platforms like Teams and Slack where shared files are always links, and those links may be in a variety of locations.
Those linked files matter, but not in the same way an email attachment used it, and legal teams are going to have to understand all of that. Is your team ready?
Whether you want to talk about social media posts about “always grinding”, the never-ending side-hustle, etc. even in the midst of a global pandemic and the acknowledgement of the mental health issues tied to overwork, we still brag about how much we overwork. In the workplace, we talk a good game about employee wellness, and work-life balance, but who wins all the accolades at the end of each project, or quarter? The folks who put in the “extra effort”. (aka “hours”)
It’s as if we never really left that early Protestant environment, and it’s the same reason why so many people who have been successful have such a hard time accepting that things have changed. We still hang on to the belief that says good people work hard, and that hard work leads to success. Bad people don’t work hard, and this is why they don’t have success.
Truthfully though, I think this story shows a couple of really important points.
Recognize that mistakes happen
The importance of two-factor identification
The importance of taking action as soon as you realize the mistake
The importance of getting the technical folks involved immediately instead of hiding it
Anything the government comes up with might protect workers from being required to work all the time, but the devil in the detail is how to allow workers to choose which hours they do work within that? It gets a bit messy, doesn’t it, and really isn’t that the issue with the government getting involved? It limits the possibilities by putting a defined “work” time, when what is really needed is the flexibility to figure out the best time, and location, that allows a worker to get what needs to be done, done, and still have a life that is outside of work. That’s going to look different for everyone, so there can’t be rules passed down from an outsider, there will need to be an understanding between workers, and management, on what works best for everyone, including when they will disconnect.
That does, of course, require some more effort and imagination. Are you up to it?
The headline from this Time article lays it out pretty simply:
The Pandemic Revealed How Much We Hate Our Jobs.
I wonder if all of the talk about laziness, unemployment benefits, toxic workplaces, etc. really all comes down to this. There are a significant number of people in this world working in jobs they simply don’t like. Or, to look at it another way, there are a significant number of jobs that give us no reason to not hate them.