Work-life balance is dead. Deal with it.
Former GE CEO Jack Welch is causing quite a stir today with remarks quoted in a Wall Street Journal article insisting that, for women, there’s no such thing as work-life balance. There are consequences to the choices you make, Welch says, and if you’re not at work “in the clutch”—presumably because you’re home dealing with your child or taking maternity leave—you could be passed over when opportunities for promotion arise.
Whether this is cold, hard reality or an unwillingness to accommodate fundamental human biology is open to debate. The fact that men have a competitive advantage simply because they don’t give birth seems fundamentally unfair. But on the broader issue of work-life balance, Welch is absolutely right, except it’s a gender-neutral problem. It doesn’t matter if you’re a man or a woman. Unless you’re earning an hourly wage under a collective bargaining agreement, work-life balance is a relic of a bygone age.
Today, it’s all about work-life integration.
The concept of work-life balance suggests a clear line of demarcation between your job and the rest of your life. When you go home, work ceases to be a factor and you can focus on your family, your friends, your hobbies and other interests.
Here’s a Twitter poll question for you:
I can almost certainly predict the results. When I ask this question of an audience, most people raise their hands—yes, their first conscious act upon waking is to grab the mobile phone off the bedside table and see if anything pressing came up while they slept.
Seriously, when was the last time you went to work at 9 a.m., left at 5 p.m. and took no work home with you? It’s one reason I resist companies blocking access to non-work-related websites. Companies that insist employees should not be permitted non-work-related Web surfing during work hours should also accept that employees will engage in no non-home-related activities when they’re away from the office.
I excluded hourly union workers, but even this demographic is now going online to their company intranets that are increasingly accessible from home, not to mention representing their companies in conversations taking place on social networks.
Work-life integration acknowledges that the line of demarcation has evaporated, but also recognizes that the distinction between time spent at work and time spent elsewhere is equally fuzzy. If I spend two hours at home tonight doing work, why should anyone at work give a damn if I spend 90 minutes on Facebook while I’m at the office? The only question is whether my work is getting done, on time, and the quality of my work meets or exceeds what the company expects.
To a large extent, this could address the women-having-babies issue, too. I was struck by Russell Crowe’s character in “Body of Lies.” Ed Hoffman is a CIA honcho who conducts most of his business over a mobile phone while driving his kids to school or taking them to the park or getting ready for dinner with the family. It just doesn’t matter where you are or what else you’re doing, as long as the job gets done.
Work-life integration has replaced work-life balance. Now we just need the business world to catch on.
07/13/09 | 15 Comments | Work-life balance is dead. Deal with it.