Q: I am the HR director for a large advertising agency. What are your views on the work-life balance?
A: Traditional thinking was that when you arrived at work you left your emotional baggage—and often your personality—at the door. You put your "work face" on. Work was work, and life happened outside office hours. And as for play, well, that was definitely reserved for outside office hours.
But that sort of thinking is obsolete. It belonged to a world where work happened only in the office. It was a world without mobile phones and, crucially, the BlackBerry. But those boundaries have broken down. You can receive a work email sitting on a chairlift on your skiing holiday. Your pocket vibrates just as you're sitting down to Sunday lunch. You surf the Net in your downtime at home, but you still check your work email every five minutes. You even check your work email before you leave... for work.
Because of technology, there is no getting away from work. So work-life balance becomes a foolish term. The lines between home and office are blurred. But technology doesn't mean you have a 24-hour slog, day in, day out.
Ricardo Semler says it well in his book, The Seven-Day Weekend: "If we want people to only do company work while they're in the office, shouldn't we also have corporate police to make sure they're not working on company business on weekends?"
He's right. The same way work seeps into your personal life, so personal life should be able to permeate into work, too. The organisations that will be able to retain talent in future will be those that truly leave behind the presenteeism mentality and empower employees to align their personalities with their work. By allowing employees to be themselves, you free them to unleash the full potential of their creativity at work.
Sahar Hashemi's latest book is Switched On
