Back on the Chain Gang
SteveTonight on the HR Happy Hour show, 8PM ET, we will be talking Work/Life Balance, keeping yourself sane when getting pulled in 100 different directions, and maybe even if the fundamental idea of work is truly changing (or should change).
Joining Shauna and I will be Leanne Chase from Career Life Connection and Chris Ferdinandi from Renegade HR.
Does it even make sense to be talking about work/life balance issues with millions of people out of work? For many of the unemployed, 'life' sucks right about now, and any 'work' would do. So maybe it is foolish to even discuss the topic.
But we will.
My son attends a program for about an hour or so each day after school to bridge the time from school dismissal until I or his Mom are through with our 'official' work days and can take him home. It is just an hour, he generally has a decent enough time there, so it really is not that much of a problem. But from time to time I have had to stop by the child care center early in the morning, perhaps as early as 6 or 6:30 AM to drop off a check or a note, and almost without fail I will see parents carrying sleepy or even still sleeping small children into the center.
Parents that are usually well-dressed, driving nice cars, hauling really young kids to daycare in the cold and dark, almost certainly so they can get themselves to an office somewhere by a prescribed time.
Every time I see that it makes me very, very sad.
And that is the reason I wanted to do this show.
I understand work is work and when you have a job working for someone else, you don't get to make the rules. Sometimes the rules stink. They are archaic. And they have more to do with maintaining some kind of post-industrial status quo that serves primarily to make managers and owners lives easier. If they know where everyone is and how long they are meant to be there that is one less variable to actually have to manage.
Talking about Work/Life issues on the show this week may not really solve anything, or make anyone's situation all that better. But it will hopefully add just another small piece to the puzzle that maybe one day will result in no more business suit wearing parents dragging sleeping, freezing kids to daycare at 6:30 in the morning.
But until then, we're Back on the Chain Gang.
Reader Comments (5)
I think this is a really good topic for the show. My day won't end today until 7:30 tonight but I'm going to try to get home as quickly as possible to listen and chime in!
Thanks very much Crystal, I hope you can listen in and even better call in! You rock!
It is kind of funny (not ha ha funny) that the time of this chat is 8:00 ET. I
Gosh I love that song.
@HR Pro - Kind of the point I think. Work and Life are not really separate things for many folks. Listening to the show I suppose could be considered 'work' or as a stretch professional development. But it is also fun, and we have many regular callers and friends. So if we are having fun then it can't be 'work' and must be 'life' right?
@Laurie - Me too.