In the "good old days," bringing your work home was pretty rare. Usually, it meant after-dinner perusal of proposals or a few pieces of correspondence you hadn't gotten to during the day. Perhaps it was a client dinner with your spouses, or a Saturday morning round of golf with the boss.
Today, bringing your work home is standard operating procedure, in light of leaner workforces, spawned by multiple lay-offs that pile additional demands on everyone. But our extended work hours are also being fueled by the proliferation of PDAs and the Internet, which enable round-the-clock communications with everyone in the company, no matter where in the world they may be at any given moment of the day, or day of the week.
In fact, you'd better have a good reason for failing to respond to an important weekend email. Saying you hadn't checked your email won't wash.
Vacations used to be sacrosanct and so would serve as a valid reason for being out of touch, as did being on an airliner at 35,000 feet. Today, about the only airtight excuse is being unconscious in an ICU.
The issue came to mind with a recent New York Times story: "Breakfast Can Wait. The Day's First Stop is Online." That, and a back-and-forth email exchange with a friend who queried me about my thoughts on the article, which concerns the impact of the Internet, PDAs and laptops on people's personal lives.
The featured families discuss their adapting and coping mechanisms, and rules regarding use (and non-use) of the Internet at home during family time. They also reminisce about the times when the breakfast table meant starting the day together, sharing the coming day's plans and expectations, instead of starting the day with emails, Twitters and blogs.
It's amusing to see people on vacation staring into a BlackBerry, tapping their responses, while lounging in the sun on a beach. We've all heard the anecdotes of how BlackBerrys have intruded on deeply personal occasions like weddings and funerals. And, we know of spouses who lay down the law about "no emails" while on vacation.
I had to laugh at a former boss who once called me on his cell phone while on a Caribbean cruise with his family - because he could.
Me: "Why are you whispering? I can't hear you."
Boss: "So my wife won't hear me. I'm not supposed to be calling the office."
Me: [LOL]
Modern technology's advance runs on parallel tracks with our expectations as to what it can and should do for us. The archetypal story - perhaps apocryphal - concerns the young businessman who happily discovers he can now email while flying to his destination. He's thrilled and immediately is tapping away on his laptop. Suddenly, he loses the connection. He's outraged, as though it's an entitlement withdrawn.
This ratcheting up of expectations demands perfection. It also manifests itself when, during a teleconference (true story), someone actually apologized - as though it was their fault - because their Internet connection was down and they couldn't access the materials being distributed online during the call.
The ability to send and receive email at all times and most locations also means that underlings strive to impress the boss (and one-up each other) by staying in touch during vacations and family emergencies, or emailing the boss in the wee hours of the morning.
This is getting out of hand. Technology has made it too easy for our work lives to encroach on and dominate our personal lives. But the increased access technology provides is not a license to intrude, nor does it lessen the critical and central importance of healthy personal lives, particularly if they involve other people like spouses and children. So managers - especially senior managers - must be proactive and explicit in defining the boundaries between their employees' personal lives and the business.
As my friend pointed out in our email exchange, yes, people need to be "fluent in new technologies," but managers must "still respect their employees' personal space."
That means prohibiting email contacts during personal time, except when dire circumstances demand otherwise. Each business is different and that boundary may necessarily be vague.
The point is, the blurring of the line between our personal and business lives has a potentially adverse impact on the quality of our work. We can't be effective in our jobs unless we are whole persons, with unique interests and drives. And we can't be whole without that clear distinction between work and home.
Today, bringing your work home is standard operating procedure, in light of leaner workforces, spawned by multiple lay-offs that pile additional demands on everyone. But our extended work hours are also being fueled by the proliferation of PDAs and the Internet, which enable round-the-clock communications with everyone in the company, no matter where in the world they may be at any given moment of the day, or day of the week.
In fact, you'd better have a good reason for failing to respond to an important weekend email. Saying you hadn't checked your email won't wash.
Vacations used to be sacrosanct and so would serve as a valid reason for being out of touch, as did being on an airliner at 35,000 feet. Today, about the only airtight excuse is being unconscious in an ICU.
The issue came to mind with a recent New York Times story: "Breakfast Can Wait. The Day's First Stop is Online." That, and a back-and-forth email exchange with a friend who queried me about my thoughts on the article, which concerns the impact of the Internet, PDAs and laptops on people's personal lives.
The featured families discuss their adapting and coping mechanisms, and rules regarding use (and non-use) of the Internet at home during family time. They also reminisce about the times when the breakfast table meant starting the day together, sharing the coming day's plans and expectations, instead of starting the day with emails, Twitters and blogs.
It's amusing to see people on vacation staring into a BlackBerry, tapping their responses, while lounging in the sun on a beach. We've all heard the anecdotes of how BlackBerrys have intruded on deeply personal occasions like weddings and funerals. And, we know of spouses who lay down the law about "no emails" while on vacation.
I had to laugh at a former boss who once called me on his cell phone while on a Caribbean cruise with his family - because he could.
Me: "Why are you whispering? I can't hear you."
Boss: "So my wife won't hear me. I'm not supposed to be calling the office."
Me: [LOL]
Modern technology's advance runs on parallel tracks with our expectations as to what it can and should do for us. The archetypal story - perhaps apocryphal - concerns the young businessman who happily discovers he can now email while flying to his destination. He's thrilled and immediately is tapping away on his laptop. Suddenly, he loses the connection. He's outraged, as though it's an entitlement withdrawn.
This ratcheting up of expectations demands perfection. It also manifests itself when, during a teleconference (true story), someone actually apologized - as though it was their fault - because their Internet connection was down and they couldn't access the materials being distributed online during the call.
The ability to send and receive email at all times and most locations also means that underlings strive to impress the boss (and one-up each other) by staying in touch during vacations and family emergencies, or emailing the boss in the wee hours of the morning.
This is getting out of hand. Technology has made it too easy for our work lives to encroach on and dominate our personal lives. But the increased access technology provides is not a license to intrude, nor does it lessen the critical and central importance of healthy personal lives, particularly if they involve other people like spouses and children. So managers - especially senior managers - must be proactive and explicit in defining the boundaries between their employees' personal lives and the business.
As my friend pointed out in our email exchange, yes, people need to be "fluent in new technologies," but managers must "still respect their employees' personal space."
That means prohibiting email contacts during personal time, except when dire circumstances demand otherwise. Each business is different and that boundary may necessarily be vague.
The point is, the blurring of the line between our personal and business lives has a potentially adverse impact on the quality of our work. We can't be effective in our jobs unless we are whole persons, with unique interests and drives. And we can't be whole without that clear distinction between work and home.
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