We do work to live and not living to work. When work becomes central to life, life becomes a strained work and instead of living life we strive life. Well work cannot be avoided nor given up. But an effort must be definitely made to balance work with life. The idea is have the best of the both worlds.
November 25 is declared as “National Go Home on Time Day’ in Australia. Can we Indians draw any lessons from the Ausies? A matter to be thought seriously with who are calling themselves ‘corporates'.
Many of our go getters do narrate with pride how he joined the company as an executive and rose to the present position by saying “I put in long hours at my office. I never went home before 9.00 pm”. This means, a common perception of hard work in our country is staying back at office beyond the stipulated hours. Despite the trends of flexi timing and telecommuting, many bosses have still a feel that real hard workers can only be identified by the time they spend in the office.
Many Indian companies over a period of time have matured and they now see their workforce as an asset. Many MNC’s are getting into the practice and even has an HR procedure for people not to stay beyond half hour than the prescribed hours. Working on weekend-Saturday or Sunday is a near offence in some organisations.
But it is still an over used term in corporate vocabulary- going the extra mile it is always taken for granted that one has to stay at the desk and work late into night!!!. While some HR’s say not to stay beyond the prescribed hours, there are many who states with a corporate pride at interviews that you should get into a habit of staying back till 9.00 pm.
Several team leaders have a standard fixation that they have to stay back after their team members leave to evaluate the day’s work done. They will send mails only after 7:00pm to their boss on the tasks completed. These people want to impress their bosses that they ‘stretch’ each day in the office for work’s are. They want to show to the team members the sacrifice they are making for the team.
May be on occasions this is needed, but such work schedule hampers one’s working style in the long run. The desire to work smarter and complete the assigned task on time is slowly lost. Such leaders develop the tendency to go slow during the working hours. They comfort themselves by saying “anyhow I have to stay back late. I will finish it then”.
Managers must realize that they are role models to their team members. If a manager stays late, the team feels that they have to stay back too. Many such managers are not realizing the capability of an employee who is capable to finish off his day’s work within the stipulated time period, but instead sees them as early birds and keeps an eye on them or waits for an opportunity to talk to them the of staying back. Yes, its really happening!!!
Such a work pattern, of course may be a right balance for a starter, but the right balance for you today will probably be different for you tomorrow.”
When I was part of a so-called corporate, I used to wonder how the back-end staff who reaches offices by travelling more than 45 minutes used to wait for their boss’s approval every day to leave office, even if it is much beyond the stipulated hours. The boss had made this as a pattern of his and their life, but can we call him as a successful person comparing his position with his work style? But he feels he is, or rather pretends he is.
Work-life balance is essential, both in terms of achievement and enjoyment especially related to four areas- work, friends, family and self. We may be doing justice to the first two, as workplace comprises of teams, but we are not doing justice to our self and our family.
Achievement and enjoyment are the two sides of a coin of life values. We cannot have the one without the other. Trying to live a one sided life is the reason why so many the so called successful people are not happy as they should be.
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