The demand for extended time off to balance long working hours shows up employer inflexibility, says Chris Bones
One of the most surprising insights we have gained from our work on talent concerns work-life balance. I have always assumed that wanting a balanced life was about
having time on a regular basis to dedicate to family, friends and activities, taking weekends off, keeping evenings free, and ensuring you use up your annual leave.
However for a growing number of colleagues this is not what is meant by a balanced life. Forget about work-life balance, they tell us, I want to work for six months and then take six months off. I really want to take a month out between this job and the next one to travel and learn a language, was another comment. These people and they come from all age ranges and all levels in the company are part of a new phenomenon: binge working.
This group of people take a particular view of the psychological contract that exists between an employer and those they employ. They are not looking for the security of a regular payslip, rather they want the security of knowing they can return to work after an extended unpaid absence. They are not looking for status roles, rather they see a virtue in project roles including those currently given to the interim managers discussed on page 42 of this issue where there is a beginning and end to a series of activities. They are not looking to be trained
in skills that we think they need, rather they want personal development that will be as important
for their time out of the organisation as for the time they spend within
it languages, influencing and coaching would come near the top of their lists.
While not all of them take the extreme position of six months in, six months out, the perceived value of extended time off as a balance to periods of highly concentrated working is rapidly on the increase.
I think this is because more and more people work hard and long which isnt difficult to do in the world in which we now work. Technology makes us available 24 hours a day; the tyranny of the email screen demanding attention can drive work patterns well out of normal hours how many of us have received emails that show they were sent late at night? Mobile phones make us constantly accessible and text messages beep and flash demanding an
immediate response.
All this creates pressure on individuals. What I observe is that the generations now working their way through junior and middle management roles have adapted the way they work to the way they live their lives. Their familiarity with technology and what it can do means they are willing to use it at all times, not just when they are at work.
Binge working reflects this use and abuse of technology. It isnt about hours in the office so much as hours in front of a computer screen or on a mobile phone. Its evident in the way that everyone rushes to get a signal to pick up their voicemail at the end of or during a break from a meeting, in the way we regularly eat lunch at our desks and in the competing chorus of, often very sensitive, business conversations heard on mobile phones in the mornings and evenings on the train to and from work.
I believe employers need to do something to address what is happening around us. Despite what some may think, Im not convinced binge working is good for the individual or for the organisation. We are putting huge pressures on people to change their way of working, yet currently few of us offer the sort of breaks in employment that might allow those who binge work a version of balance. We ask for greater adaptability from those who work for us, yet many of us show reluctance to create real flexibility in how we define the employment relationship.
What technology has brought with it is a fundamental change in the nature of work. What this needs from employers is a 21st century response. As we begin the fourth year of the new millennium, it behoves us as HR professionals to turn our minds to this challenge. If we dont, binge working will, inevitably, result in the same dreadful outcome as other addictive bingeing; and I for one would hate to see us wait for that to happen before we take action.
