Technology is blurring the work/home boundaries. But is taking work home the thin end of the wedge in a culture that already has some of the longest working hours in Europe?
A study by the CBI found a big increase in ‘teleworking’ over the past year, with six in ten firms offering staff the chance to work outside the office, up from 13% five years ago.[1]
Rise of flexible working
This rise was prompted by improved technology, which allows people to work more effectively away from the workplace, said the business group. But is this entirely a good thing?
Back in 2005, Madeleine Bunting’s hard-hitting book Willing Slaves, How the Overwork Culture is Ruling Our Lives, was seen as something of an exposé of Britain’s long hours culture.[2] In particular she warns of potential damage to families when, assisted by technological advances, workers are unable to shut the office door behind them, bringing extra work home at weekends and taking business calls.
Squeezed-out kids
Shortly afterwards, the BBC’s Panorama revealed research that 35% of the 500 children they surveyed thought their parents were too stressed out and they were not getting enough time with them. Bunting, who appeared on the programme said: “I think we've sort of squeezed out kids in many ways to fit our large and growing work lives." She said that rather than providing more leisure time, for many people new technology had adversely impacted on their work-life balance. "I didn't come across that many people who seemed to me to have drawn the benefits of technology without getting, at the same time, enslaved by technology," she said.[3]
When added to the extra hours spent at work rather than doing work at home in what is supposed to be ‘down time’ the TUC estimates that 5.26 million people worked unpaid overtime in 2010, clocking up an average of more than seven hours a week without pay. The TUC research said that workers were missing out on almost £5,500 a year by working so much unpaid overtime, worth around £29bn to the UK economy.[4]
Guilt trips
Over in North America, a study of US employee communications found that women reported more psychological distress than men if they were contacted on work-related business while at home or with their families. The researches found it was not related to an ability or lack of it to organise work-life balance but a deep-rooted sense of guilt about roles. “While women have increasingly taken on a central role as economic providers in today's dual-earner households, strong cultural norms may still shape ideas about family responsibilities," said Scott Schieman, one of the report’s authors.[5]
In an article entitled Bringing work home:implications for BLS productivity measures, Lucy Eldridge and Sabrina Wulff Pabilonia looked at various studies on whether workers bringing work home with them skewed measures of productivity growth, but concluded that was not enough evidence to suggest that it did. It also found that that bringing work home was much more common among employees than examples of those working exclusively from home. The majority of work at home lasted for less than two hours per day, and a significant proportion was done in the evenings after work and on weekends. Another study indicated the prime motivator was career progression and salary enhancement.[6]
Headfirst
With the boundaries between work and home being blurred by rapid developments in mobile communications, employers and employees need to look closely at how to manage expectations and stress levels. So it was particularly refreshing to read how Hampshire County Council tackles this issue ‘head’ on with their headteachers in their policy booklet, Headfirst, that can be viewed here.
One of the problems of dealing with emails and client calls after hours, possibly after dinner and a glass of wine is that one’s guard can be down – one accountant told us that he was bemused to get a text from a client over the weekend signed LOL xxx because she forgot she was in work mode…
[1] www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/jobs/hr-news/8587392/Employers-ditch-9-5-in-favour-of-remote-working.html
[2] www.harpercollins.co.uk/Our_Titles/Pages/Home.aspx?objId=27761
[3] http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/4658956.stm
[4] www.tuc.org.uk/workplace/tuc-19200-f0.cfm
[5] www.upi.com/Health_News/2011/03/12/Women-feel-more-guilty-taking-work-home/UPI-69351299975773/#ixzz1Q77rmAFU
[6] www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2010/12/art2full.pdf