Work/Life Balance

In this episode, we explore the concept of work/life balance and the inherent conflict of interest that employers have in facilitating it.

Transcript

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Hey, they're beautiful people. Welcome to NOVL Takes the podcast where we lift the veil on business as usual. Join us for our novel takes on business, culture, and the art of getting things done. I'm partner and principal Rachel Gans-Boriskin. And I'm founder and principal of Sarah Patrick. It's time for a NOVL take. So work-life balance. It's a phrase we hear all the time. Employees are demanding it. Mm-hmm. And employers are promising it. But if everyone wants it, why is it so difficult to attain? Right. On today's show, we're gonna talk about the inherent conflict of interest of the work-life balance and whether it in fact can be achieved. I was thinking about this as I was preparing for our conversation today, and I remembered this, this month where I got one e-mail about, attending a webinar on mental health and that webinar suggested that we had to exercise, meditate, and really maintain a work-life balance to, you know, reduce stress. Mm-hmm. And help us be centered. And then a week later there was another event that was being promoted and its central message was how stress can actually be good for you.. No! And again, these were both sponsored by the same employer. Mm-hmm. Both, within a a one month period and To me it was sort of like, yeah, gee, I wonder why my employer is telling me that stress is good for me. But also even all of these suggestions that they're making, are actually incumbent upon me. Mm-hmm. to do. Mm-hmm. I have to carve out the time to meditate, to exercise I have to be conscious of a work-life balance. And suddenly self-care, became another job on top of the one that I have an additional responsibility. Yeah. I think the idea of the work-life balance casts out, from the professional space primarily, right? It's a question of how you balance your professional productivity with all those other things that you are outside of the professional space. I don't think of the life work balance when I'm at home and I'm kind of in my zone. You know, thinking about, everything that I am outside the professional space, I don't think about, okay, how am I gonna balance all of my, you know, personal life with my work life. I think about it in the reverse coming. Casting out from a professional space. So kind of who knowing that it is really a professional concept first, who is responsible for maintaining this? Right? Right. I, I think this is a way of saying workers, take control. You are stressed because you have failed, right? As an individual mm-hmm to create those boundaries. Why aren't you showing up in the office, cheerful, happy, able to leave things behind? You're are failing. You need to do some work on that. I think particularly this hits women. Because women are the ones who have, by and large more of the home responsibilities. I often think of work-life balance in this sort of family context. Who's the person who's gonna take the kid to the pediatrician? Who's gotta go to a recital? A sports game? Whatever that is. It feels like yet another way of telling women, go do work on yourself mm-hmm. in order to do better. And I'm "okay. I'll put it on the to-do list." It's, it's an endless list of things to feel guilty about. Mm-hmm. That's a really interesting perspective. I don't know that I hear it with as much guilt, but I definitely hear it with the onus being on the individual. Right. I feel like, in terms of who is responsible for it, if the responsibility is on the employer, then it does sound like there is that inherent conflict of interest with it being on the employer because it maybe sits in contest with their primary objective, which is your output. Right? Um, but they presumably want for your success. They understand that burnout is a thing. They do want you to have a work-life balance. They do recognize that you are an individual that exists outside of the professional sphere, but, outside of encouraging that work-life balance, what can be done. So if encouragement is all that there is, then the onus is on you, to kind of maintain that work-life balance. I don't know though that I read it with as much, guilt, but definitely a, level of responsibility that is incredibly hard to maintain if it is not supported by your employer. So, so you're saying the guilt is my, that's my bad? That might be your guilt? Yeah. Okay. Well, I mean, I, you know, I'm, I'm, I'm a Jewish mother. I am a daughter of a Jewish mother. So yeah. Okay. I'll own that. I think the guilt, the guilt may be hardwired. I imagine, Catholics feel it too. But to me, it feels like that question of why aren't you taking care of this. Maybe it's also the sort of self-help space of, you should be meditating every day. And there was a while where I was doing that. I was getting up every morning and meditating for an hour. To do that, I had to be up at five mm. and then, you know, somewhere along the line I was like, is an hour of meditation better than an hour of sleep? And I was really tired and I went with sleep.. But you know, how would I, I find that time? And I did find for me, you know, there are meditation apps that say like, oh, you get meditation in 10 minutes and we're looking for like the shortest mm-hmm. quantity of time we can spend mm-hmm. to feel mentally better. Even our mental health stuff becomes about productivity. Right. But I know for me with meditation, I need 45 minutes to really get the benefits. But I don't have the 45 minutes to give because of that schedule. Right. So understanding, you know, there are only a certain amount of hours in the day. Right. It's always a question of where you borrow your time from, right? And if you're thinking about how do you structure a day, a week or whatever, If the fixed amount of time is the time that you're dedicating to work, then you have to borrow it from somewhere else. And for those of us, who are parents, that that then inherently comes from our time with our families. It comes from our time for ourselves. It comes from all of this other time that's spent outside of work, because often in environments where there isn't as much work life balance encouraged by our employers, we have to borrow it outside of what feels like really fixed time dedicated to our jobs. Right. And I think the other thing is, as your kids get older, they have a schedule. Right. So that it's, I've got the fixed time that is set for work, and then I have the fixed schedule for my kids', you know, extracurriculars. Mm-hmm. I will confess to being really relieved that neither of my children are athletic. Because if I had to manage, soccer practice, soccer games, basketball games, whatever else, I would have no time- at all. Right. Everyone's getting overscheduled. You think about, you've got like stacked meetings. It's one meeting after another after another. And no break. Mm-hmm.. And then you go home and it's So, we don't even have any kind of balance in home or life. Mm-hmm. Right. Right. And you know, there are a growing number of employers who are supportive of this work-life balance. employer work-life balance is actually credited with increased productivity You know, I think that it's also, an idea about what makes us mm-hmm. productive. I, I find that people will say, well, I just want to sit and I'm just gonna work for three hours straight and just get this done. and that's, I, I think we believe that's how it is. You're just gonna lock yourself in a room and do things, without the distraction. Mm-hmm.. . But actually what we find is that if you you take a break, you clear your head, mm-hmm. you let your body decompress from sitting, you actually come back and you're more productive. Right. We need down time., It makes us more productive. It helps us feel better physically, emotionally, And I think if you're doing any kind of intellectual work, stepping away mm-hmm. is where your brain starts doing the work in a subconscious way. Well, you get perspective mm-hmm. Right. And what balance might mean to me and what balance might mean to you might be different. Mm-hmm. I might need a walk. You might need a run. Or a conversation with somebody else. I think being able to manage balance on your own terms is also important. And I think leans into that idea of diversifying workspaces too. Because if there's some more space for possibly neurodiversity, in the workplace that's gonna increase your diversity too. That's gonna increase your productivity. I appreciate that you talked about neurodiversity because thinking about, for instance, remote work, mm-hmm. what does that mean? For some people, remote work is awful. Like if you have some executive functioning challenges, the structure of a day of, you know, the people around you, those things are really helpful. Mm-hmm If you are a person who has any kind of sensory processing issues, the move to, I mean, the worst- open office floor plans mm-hmm. with all of this stimulation. Right. And, you know, Tim's phone call over there and Tamara's typing very loudly. And God forbid Susan is chewing, you know? Right. Like it's too much. And you might be far more productive right at home. So understanding that, also helps. I think for employers, the balance is really, you know, as you mentioned about output. Mm-hmm.. So what are the conditions And even organizations that are legitimately concerned, and say, we see you as more than your productivity, they still need you to be productive. Right. Like they have bills to pay and things that they need to do. That's part of why they exist. And there's joy involved in doing your work. Especially if it is any kind of intellectual or creative work, you can feel really excited and prideful. Yeah. We shouldn't just say work is different than life. It's both. It is part of who you are. And I think what we're trying to get at is truly the work-life balance- the balance element of it. How do you find a way to integrate these two elements of what is your life? Don't say systems. Don't say. No, no, I wasn't, actually, what I was thinking about was the Apple TV show Severance. I don't know if you're familiar with this. So, the premise of severance is this company, says, well, you want work-life balance. You don't want to think about work when you're home. Right. And you don't want to be thinking about home when you're at work. And so employees agree to be "severed." So they have like a chip implanted in their head and it's like spatially triggered. So that when you get to the office and you go down this elevator and work on your floor, it, it sort of shuts off all ideas about home. Oh, that's horrifying. And you have no access to your home, and then when you come home you have no memory of work. No. Right. And so the people who are at work. Never leave. And the people who are at home, have no idea of work . And it's, I mean, it's horrific, right? And it is a horror concept and, and you know, all of that in it. It's really well done, but, that's not. What we want. That is the opposite of what I'm talking about, That's not, that's not an integration. We are people who work and we take insight from one space and we put it in another. Right. What I learned as a parent made me a better, teacher, made be a better coach. Right. What I learned from my partner at home and how he has navigated certain business situations, has certainly influenced how I think as a consultant. Mm-hmm. mm-hmm.. And so I'm not two people. Mm-hmm. I am one person. Right. we have, I think, a tendency to be really, binary right in our thinking. And so it's either or, but the fact that, you have your email in your smartphone- there isn't. As much as we might like to say, I go home and it's all off.. It's with you. Right. It's with you. Right? And you're thinking about the day. You're gonna process the day as well, especially when your work day takes up so much of your time and often so much of your mental kind of real estate. I'm thinking, you talked about severance in that kind of, I mean, again, that's horrifying. But, it kind of calls up for me even some of the limited ways that we talk about work-life balance, right? What's the first few things that come to mind? It's yoga, it's taking a walk. It's like these other things that are supposed to relieve us of some of that mental, expenditure on work so that we can then go be more productive. Yes. Yes to yoga. Yes to the walks. Yes to all of that. But I'm also thinking, like, the thing that always comes up for me is time to do the laundry, right? Something that helps me be the most productive is being able to get my laundry done because the amount of laundry that my family produces is extraordinary and takes up a lot of my mental real estate. And so if I. Listen, there, it is true for my family. So this is, so, if I can have a little bit of time in my, in my day to manage the amount of laundry that is output in my family, then that actually is what work-life balance means to me because that, that relieves this like mental burden and then I can go back to work. We talked about my issues with guilt. I am efficient. My grocery list is written in the order of the aisles Oh no of the market. My errands are planned to minimize left turns, because that takes more time. Mm-hmm. I don't know that life in that work life thing is all that balanced either. I will tell you every time I do laundry, my thought is, "I am currently actually producing more laundry as I'm doing it because I'm still wearing clothes" you know, I'm aware that what I'm wearing now is gonna have to be washed. But I guess I think it's so not, I'm not talking about what you do as in, as in life being the thing that you do when you are not being productive, right? If work is productivity, life being the absence of productivity. I'm talking about, how do you ensure that you are staying fully integrated as a human being, that you don't end up in that severance place where that you have to put one part of you down in order to be successful at work. And then, you know, the presumption is you get to go home and put the other part of you down, which as we've already discussed, is almost impossible to do right? Because of how much time and work takes up, how much, we are often dedicated to our jobs and how much our jobs make up, so much of our identity, , I guess I'm talking about being able to show up in your workspace a fully balanced and integrated human being mm-hmm which for me is being able to know I'm not coming home to piles and piles of laundry or knowing that if I am at work I have the, ability and bandwidth to be able to take my child to the pediatrician, should that be a thing that he needs to do. Like that for me is work life balance. In addition to the yoga. In addition to getting up and taking a walk. In addition to being able to get that perspective when I need it. I'm always have two minds on this because there are companies that are really rethinking this and attempting mm-hmm. to, address it. You'll see things like, oh well we're gonna have, a gym in the building. Yep. Showers so that you can go to the gym, shower, get dressed and go, you don't have to worry about that. Or you know, where they have childcare at work. And on one hand, like, oh, that, that seems to be a place that's really thinking about the needs of people. And if that's the idea, we want to help people balance these things and we know these are stressors, that's great. But there's a part of me that says, is this actually a ploy to make you stay longer? Right? Like, if I don't have to leave at three to go pick up my child from daycare, I can stay till five because the daycare here is open right till five. Right. And maybe I'll stay later if I just go to the gym after work and I don't have to do that. Or I can stay over in my office on this nice sofa because there's a shower downstairs in the gym. I mean, sometimes I think right that can be a message.

So There's two parts: 18:40

one is listening to what your employees want and need, and the other is creating a culture that says, this is actually to help you. these are things for you, not just for us. And I would go even further as to say that it's not just about creating that culture, but those tenants need to be documented. You need to, as an organization, put in writing. You will end your workday at x time or that, we are measuring you by product or output, as opposed to your time on the ground. Or that these services are here in the building as services for you, instead of services for us. The culture is, created because leadership models that culture and models it as an extension of what is documented. Not just as an idea. Not just ideas that are floating around. It has to be baked into the processes. There's been a move to say unlimited time off. Mm-hmm.. Mm-hmm. which sounds revolutionary. But it has been such a boon for business because they've discovered that people who are given unlimited time off, take less than people given actual time off. Mm-hmm. So what are those policies that say, no, we, we actually mean it. We want you to take this. Right? What are the ways managers model this behavior? I'm going on vacation. Or I do not, as a manager, send emails out at midnight. Right. and that's a simple thing,. Recognizing that people will grab the time where they can. And it may be that someone says, I have to do this tonight because I've gotta leave work early tomorrow, or whatever. But that's a simple technological fix. Schedule the email to go out at nine, right? So your employee doesn't wake up in the morning saying, wow, the boss was up till one in the morning sending this. That's the expectation, right. For me. Or send with a caveat that says, I do my work at these hours because mm-hmm. X, Y, Z, right? I also think, again, baking it into the processes, breaking it into the policies, a lot of these challenges are, can be solved by cross-training employees, cross-training teams, ensuring that when we, as employees, decide to go on vacation, we don't feel like we are creating such a gap in the system, that it is impossible for us to go anywhere, or for us to be absent. If we know that, our managers got us, that there are other junior members of our team that that can jump in when we are, absent. And that the team is comfortable with that, those things can, I think, encourage people to leave. I would say that that also involves a cultural shift. We run very, very lean businesses. People are so specialized, but you know, you and I have talked about the importance of collaboration. Mm-hmm. If we can think about ways that teams are learning from each other mm-hmm. so that, you know, you aren't quite so specialized,, there are shifts possible. And again, the US is different than other places because, you know, somehow they manage in Europe to have six weeks off. Mm-hmm. You know, lots of things do not get done in August in Europe because people are on vacation. So again that's a wider cultural shift. Mm. But it is possible to do business this way. I think we need to start expanding how we think about business, how we think about what's possible. You know, you and I have these very different ideas, about what constitutes work-life balance. Mm-hmm. That's an opportunity for a conversation right. Within your particular organization. What do you mean by this? Right. What would that mean? How can we create a culture that has that? Right. New organizations have the opportunity to build that intentionally from the beginning. Right. And existing organizations have the ability to bring people together to make small shifts and, over time, change culture. And that is not in contest with your bottom line. Mm-hmm. Yeah. All right. So we're gonna insist on boundaries here. Time boundaries. Before we go, if this conversation has piqued your interest and you wanna hear more about what we have to say, stay tuned for other episodes. If you're listening on Spotify or wherever you get your podcast, please rate and review us. Give us some love. And if you're curious about what we do over at NOVL or think we could help you or your organization, check us out and send us an inquiry over at thinknovl.com. That's T H I N K N O V l.com. That's it for us. This was NOVL takes.