Work life balance? We've heard of it. Pandemic means 9-5 shifts are a thing of the past for many
- Reference: 1602867851
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2020/10/16/work_life_balance/
- Source link:
According to a quick temperature reading, 5,556 employees recorded an opinion on Blind, an anonymous app-based forum, and 57 per cent said the blend of work and play has been skewed since lockdown measures were introduced.
Among the verified employees - they needed to provide a work email addy to be able to access the survey - were folk from Amazon, Microsoft, Google, Facebook, Intel, SAP, Oracle, Cisco, Adobe, IBM, Nvidia and more.
“There used to be some delineation between work and home life, now it’s gone,” said an anonymous person at Google, “Not working from home, just living at work.”
According to 65 per of 652 workers at Amazon who voiced an opinion, working from home meant their work life balance had deteriorated. The same was true for 63 per cent of 363 staff at Microsoft and 65 per cent of 330 individuals at the Chocolate Factory.
Matthew Ball, chief analyst at Canalys, highlighted [1]Parkinson’s Law at the recent virtual Forum 2020, which states that "work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion" - if someone has a 9-5 shift then they make sure they try to finish things in that timeframe.
“When a task is completed, they just move on to another. However, when working from home, for the hard workers, work still fills all time available from the time they wake up to the time they go to bed.
“But for the more work-shy work shrinks. So they need to do the same as before, but in less time. They basically just do less,” he added.
There was a word of warning for those spending longer at their desk: It’s not sustainable. Ball joked that we may see the “work-shy being forced to return to the office” whereas the “hard workers” may “want to come back to the office just for a break.”
According to Forrester, at least one-third of staff will primarily work from home in 2021 compared to just 4 per cent in 2019 - though this is predicated on finding a vaccine for the virus and distributing it.
This rate is far lower than some discussed by the likes of [2]Dell , [3]Dropbox , [4]Fujitsu or the UK’s [5]Institute of Directors .
[6]Microsoft recently told its 150,000 + employees that they can work from anywhere, anytime, most of the time.
Ball at Canalys said that on the one side, workers have shown they can be productive at home, and so offices aren’t needed, but on the flip side, “businesses want to maintain their culture and onboard new employees with new skills, all of which is best done with people in the office.”
“Work is no longer a set place or a set time. And as offices reopen, we will see the rise of hybrid workers, which will be essential in a more resilient business environment.
“These hybrid workers are location-independent, spending part of the time in the office and the other working remotely. They can switch to fully remote instantly. Many of us now fit into this category and will remain so, so the balance between office and home will fluctuate over time. These workers will need almost the identical IT set-up in both locations. Taking all your equipment from one to the other is awkward.”
How do you plan to work after the pandemic? Let us know in the comments below. ®
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[1] https://www.economist.com/news/1955/11/19/parkinsons-law
[2] https://www.theregister.com/2020/08/28/dell_q2_2021_work_from_home/
[3] https://www.theregister.com/2020/10/14/dropbox_wfh/
[4] https://www.theregister.com/2020/07/06/fujitsu_we_are_closing_50/
[5] https://www.theregister.com/2020/10/05/institute_of_directors_remote_working_survey/
[6] https://www.theregister.com/2020/10/12/microsoft_work_from_home_policy/
[7] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
Re: Work from home hours
Photography? From home? There's a market for lots of photos of your kitchen and bedroom? Cool! Where do you apply?
Re: Work from home?
LOL! ^_^ If you've followed my posts long enough you'll know that, yeah, I actually have been paid for photography...taken in the bedroom... >;-)
but that's not for this work, ROFL. Product shots. Paid, torturously technical, sometimes when it won't cooperate painfully labor intensive, product shots.
Ugh.
Save yourself. Just...don't.
Re: Work from home?
I'm keener on landscape photography. Is there a market for post apocalypse kitchen landscapes? Or jungle landscapes in the garden? I got me some bears! It's my sad fate to want to do everything that others prefer me not to do.
Re: How about post apocalypse kitchen landscapes?
Like just about any other interest, once you make it a profession - getting paid for it but needing to meet other people's expectations - the joy gets sucked right the heck out of it.
I've had 13 different jobs during my lifetime. I've done everything from drive tractor-trailer cross country, to managing a professional photo lab, to installing home theater in the homes of the rich and famous, to tech jobs including disaster recovery. I've had an interesting but good life. Yet every job eventually ends up sucking the joy out of what you thought you loved doing in your spare time thanks to deadlines, demanding customers, jobs you'd really not rather do but it's being paid for, and overall stress of expectations needing to be met.
same as before
But since I was WFH before it doesn't really make that much difference.
Re: same as before
Same here, except when i was working at work, the extra i did i usually logged and got paid for, now i work my hours, leave my home office work area, and using my home laptop, sit on my sofa, and with my free time continue working on and off.
Before when i did (started in feb working from home), i would work longer at work, book the extra hours, come home and do the same until i went to bed.
Corporate Culture
My observation is some companies prefer a hard work-life balance for all employees. In my case I am expected to work a regular set of hours so people can get a hold of me and have some idea of my schedule. I am not expected to regularly week out these hours and am not expected to log on during the weekend or while on vacation as a matter of routine. I have a reasonable balance whether I am in the office or at home. Other companies do not extend these courtesies to their employees. And there is no real work-life balance at these companies.
Re: Corporate Culture - Corporate Cogs
A very good, old friend(it's been years) is caught in the corporate machine. Chasing his promotions, chasing retirement benefits, always on call, getting shuffled to other cities half way across the country to avoid redundancy, pity really, he is missed. I'm reminded of Bell Boy by The Who
Knock on WFH
In the past, my users were off work by 6pm or so. Before it was very late, I was free to login for 2 minutes and restart their workstations and servers in the evenings, however since people have to work from home, and care for family, they are working split shifts, and I now see users working at 11pm, and then the missus gives WFT eye because I'm working!
I've found my actual work has dropped off a bit since lockdown, although I'm still normally at my kitchen table til around 7pm. However, that's mostly because a two year data-centre migration and consolidation was coming to a close towards the end of last year, with a late flurry due to political disruption in Hong Kong and a drive to get the last of our W2K8 kit decommed before January.
We'd just about got that done, before it was all hands to the pump as soon as February hit, since WHO declared a public health emergency of international consequence at the back end of January, completing most of our prep by mid-March. 90% of the firm went to WFH, with little loss of service, just a large downturn in our business.
They try to flog us donkeys 24/7
But we resist and demand to be put on shifts. I don't care if your hair is on fire, when the shop whistle blows I'm out.
Re: They try to flog us donkeys 24/7
Prior to my recent retirement they paid me eight till four. That's when I worked. Outside that time, the computer is off, and if someone wants to call me it had better not be about work except in very very special circumstances.
I've been working from home for years and I have to say my work life balance is definitely skewed...not towards life or even towards work, but towards laziness; Always Lazy, never Idle. I fit life and work in whenever I have a moment. And now it seems a lot of the world is catching up with me and I'm no longer alone. I've never been happier.
Icon is me hard at work. I hope my anonymity is safe behind my devious nom de plume!
Before all this Covid stuff my office hours were 8-4 plus any usual sys admin type stuff that needs to happen out of hours. I managed to mostly avoid rush hours and keep the coverage.
At one point WFH during the current situation that somehow morphed onto 7-5+ and with no travelling to decompress it seemed pretty full-on as soon as I got up and walked down stairs.
Since then I’ve switched to 9-5 which seems to be OK and means there’s a sliver more time to interact with my US colleagues. Though overall the lack of hubbub and other social interaction you’d usually get in the office does tend to make me lose track of time a bit more.
Work from home hours
For me, this is 100% true. I was just given more work from home items today, for the weekend, and I put more hours into doing it (paid photography) than I did at the office.
And I'm beat, I overdid it with my workout yesterday. But the stuff is (somewhat) expected to be done on a reasonable schedule (I've been trying to put a kibosh on that expectation, it's my damn weekend!).
You might be asking yourself "photography? I thought this was a tech site." I'm a man of many talents and cover a lot of ground in this business.