Like many of you, I often work outside regular office hours while at home, in the airport, or on vacation. Mobile technology has created a “new normal” work life for a lot of us: Gallup research reveals that nearly all full-time U.S. workers (96%) have access to a computer, smartphone, or tablet, and 86% use a smartphone or tablet or both. A full two-thirds of Americans report that the amount of work they do outside normal working hours has increased a little to a lot because of mobile technology advances over the last decade.
But is this a net gain or net drain on our well-being? And how should leaders manage this after-hours work?
With technology improving all the time, and competition hotting up all along, each and every person needs to be one up on their colleague or competitor org. They place extra efforts and do longer hours at work, at peril to their family / personal lives, resulting in getting “burnt out” in a shorter span of time. This has risks of loosing a good employee, or them facing ill health. Seeing the postives as well as the negatives, it is obvious that the employer prevents neither to occur. Hence it could be limited to only urgent response, as decided by the employee.
Right on target here Udayan – no doubt it would be “over-reaching” for Employers to make any attempt to manage this particular facet of “work-life balance,” and enforcement would become the next challenge…