More from the 'Email is ruining our lives' department

I have not written about email and how horrible it is for some time, so I was kind of glad that I was reminded of that horribleness (probably not a word, but let's keep going), while reviewing a recent survey about after-work hours email habits published by the enterprise service management company Samanage.

It's a short, but informative report, and I recommend taking a few minutes to read the entire thing, but if you can't spare the 20 minutes or so (probably because you have to get back to your email), I will just call out the two most interesting survey findings and then because you expect no less, offer some FREE commentary about what these data points should make us think about as HR/business leaders.Ed Ruscha 'Actual Size', 1962

Finding 1:

More than 1 in 3 survey respondents (35.2%), said they spend more than 1 hour per day checking emails outside of work.

Implication: The demands and expectations on many of us are so high that we simply can never get 'caught up', at least to the point where we can enjoy a night, or heaven forbid an entire weekend, without work, (in the form of endless emails), continuing to roll in. 

When asked why we spend so much time after hours on email, almost all the responses are some version of the notion (and expectation), that if we don't spend at least part of your off-hours dealing with email, you won't be doing your job. That's pretty sad, and pretty frightening at the same time.

Finding 2:

20% of survey respondents reported that checking after-hours email produces negative feelings about work, including feeling overwhelmed and frustrated.

Implication: Of all the findings in the survey, this is the one that I think bears the most consideration by HR and business leaders. The long-term, heck even medium-term effects of this email overload into all hours of the day and night are taking a toll on the workforce, at least 20% of them anyway. And that is not an insignificant figure. How would you feel if you knew that 20% of your team was 'overwhelmed and frustrated?' 

And it is not just the employee's feelings and welfare you should think about. What about their friends and family members who all too often find themselves taking a back seat to your employee having to answer her email during dinner or at the ball game or when they are meant to be doing something, anything that is 'not work?'  

Ugh. But I know that email is never going away, not in our working lifetimes anyway. I have finally resigned myself to that reality.

However it can be less terrible. And we can do better to make sure it is not ruining our free time, filling us with anxiety, and tethering us to our work and workplaces no matter where we may be and what we are doing.

I don't think I am going to write about email anymore, at least for some time. I am kind of tired of thinking about it. But after all these years and the many, many hours I have spent writing about the tool I guess the simplest conclusion or recommendation I have reached to try and make things better is this:

Before writing another email, especially one after hours or on the weekend stop writing and think for 30 seconds or "Do I really, really need to send this message, with this information, to these people, right now?"

Followed closely by a this follow-up:

"How do I want people to feel about me, their job, the team, and the organization when they see this email?"

Think about both of these questions before you hit 'send' at 11:30PM on Friday night.

Actually, think about them at 10:20AM on Tuesday as well.

Have a great week!

Whose fault is it that you are working too much?

A week or so ago I wrote about how France is considering placing a ban of sorts on after-hours email - the idea that people/workers are working too many hours as it is, and they should have the right to ignore work-related email messages that are sent outside of 'normal' working hours.  

As is normally the case when an idea like that pops up, a number of folks chime in about how that is a terrible idea, and that people/workers need (and for the most part want), the ability to move between 'work' and 'not work' more freely and fluidly than the traditional design of work (in the office from 8:30 - 5:00, or some such), typically allows.

In the modern world it is argued, people should 'blend' work and not work so casually that sitting in on a conference call while watching Junior's U8 soccer game and ducking out of the office at 10:30AM to go have a facial should both be seen as more or less normal and acceptable ways of 'blending' work and not work. And while I think that this is generally both a good and decent idea, and the way of the future (and possibly the present) of work for many folks, I also think that the balance never seems to really balance. Said differently, work is like water (or air), it flows naturally to where it isn't, and it expands to fill all the available space it can.

I thought about this entire idea again, of the French idea to set a harder border or barrier between work and not work when I read this piece on the Campaign Live site the other day - Wieden & Kennedy trials limits to working hours, on how the Ad agency W&K is approaching these work/life issues. Here is a little bit from the piece:

For the next few months, the creative agency is barring staff from organising meetings before 10am and after 4pm in a bid to stop its employees coming into work too early and leaving too late. No staff will be expected to work more than 40 hours a week. 

Agency staff have also been told not to send or read work e-mails after 7pm and are encouraged to leave work at 4.30pm on Fridays.

Neil Christie, the agency’s managing director, told Campaign that the changes are intended to make Wieden & Kennedy a more appealing place to work.

In recent years, creative agencies have been forced to compete for talent with tech companies, such as Google, that ask an equal commitment of employees but are able to offer higher salaries to recruits.

Pretty basic but still interesting ideas, that while positioned as a 'We think you all are working too much' also come off as decent recommendations on how to make better use of the time you are working. Early morning meetings stink. Late afternoon meetings stink even more. So trying to ban both of these makes sense not just from a 'we need to work less hours' point of view but also a 'let's make work a little more productive and enjoyable' while we are there perspective.

But the real question is why the leaders at Wieden & Kennedy felt the need to set some guidelines and restrictions in order to ensure their staffs will work less. I bet most folks, when given the choice between working 70-80 hours a week and just logging a reasonable 40 hours will choose the latter, (all things being equal which sadly, all things never are). 

Someone (or someones), in leadership there have set up a system/culture where, save for the few W&K staffers that probably really love what they are doing, have not much of a life outside of work, and see putting in 70-80 hours a week as the cost of getting ahead in the ad agency business, working all of the time is the norm and the expectation. And now leadership sees that this culture is not sustainable and may be creating an issue with retention and recruiting. Shocking, I know. It turns out that after a while grinding it out week after week takes a toll on people.

But it is a little bit cheeky as a leader to place restrictions on working hours and after hours emails and not take at least some of the responsibility for creating the very conditions that you are know having to curb.

Whose fault is it that you are working too much? Probably not yours, at least not totally.

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

It's after 5PM: Don't you even THINK about replying to that email

Clearing out a bunch of 'saved for later' articles in my feed reader this past weekend and I came across this gem from our pals at the Washington Post - France may pass a law allowing people to ignore work emails at home. Here is all you need to know on this, (in case you couldn't figure out the gist from the on the nose headine):

Among a host of new reforms designed to loosen the more stringent regulations in the country’s labor market, France’s labor minister, Myriam El Khomri, is including a provision that would give employees the right to ignore professional emails and other messages when outside the office. It would essentially codify a division between work and home and, on a deeper level, between public and private life.

El Khomri apparently fleeced this idea from a report by Bruno Mettling, a director general in charge of human resources at Orange, the telecommunications giant. Mettling believes this policy would benefit employers as much as their employees, whom, he has said, are likely to suffer “psychosocial risks” from a ceaseless communication cycle. As reported in Le Monde, a recent study found than approximately 3.2 million French workers are at risk of “burning out,” defined as a combination of physical exhaustion and emotional anxiety. Although France is already famous for its 35-hour workweek, many firms skirt the rules — often through employees who continue working remotely long after they leave for the day.

I know what my (primarily) USA-based readers are thinking right about now. Likely some combination of 'Those French don't know what it takes to compete in the modern economy', 'It is too late for that idea, technology has made the walls between work and non-work just about irrelevant', and 'You will never get the raise/title/office/parking space you want without working ALL THE TIME'.

At least here in the USA, the vast majority of advice and strategery around helping folks with trying to achieve a better level of work/life balance seems to recommend moving much more fluidly between work and not-work. Most of the writing on this seems to advocate for allowing workers much more flexibility over their time and schedules so that they can take care of personal things on 'work' time, with the understanding that they are actually 'working' lots of the time they are not technically 'at work'. Since we all have smartphones that connect us to work 24/7, the thinking goes that we would all have better balance and harmony between work and life by trying to blend the two together more seamlessly.

And I guess that is reasonably decent advice and probably, (by necessity as much as choice), that is what most of us try and do to make sure work and life are both given their due.

But the proposal from the French labor minister is advocating the exact opposite of what conventional (and US-centric), experts mostly are pushing. The proposed French law would (at least in terms of email), attempt to re-build the traditional and firm divide and separation between work and not-work. If this were to pass, then if it is outside of your 'work' time, then feel free to ignore that email. No questions asked. No repercussions. At least in theory.

An interesting, if very Frecnch-sounding idea.

But here is the question I want to leave with you: What if the French are right about this and the commonly accepted wisdom and advice about blending work and life is wrong?

What if we'd all be happier, and better engaged, and more able to focus on our work if we were not, you know, working all the time?

What if you truly shut it down at 5PM every day?

What would that look like?

PODCAST: #HRHappyHour 237 - 4 Ways to Take a Successful Retreat

HR Happy Hour 237 - 4 Ways to Take a Successful Retreat

Recorded Wednesday March 2, 2016

Hosts: Steve Boese, Trish McFarlane

Guests: Laurie Ruettimann

Listen to the show HERE

This week on the HR Happy Hour Show, Steve and Trish talked with Laurie Ruettimann.  Laurie is a former Human Resources leader turned influential speaker, writer and strategist. She owns a human resources consultancy that offers a wide array of HR services to human resources leaders and executives.  You can follow her blog at http://laurieruettimann.com.

Since Laurie and Trish each went on retreats recently, Steve talked to them about the things that made a retreat valuable and rewarding that are easily replicable for a weekend/day/a few hours away.  We also tied the discussion to ways that leads to a more human approach to work.  Finally, we wrapped up the show by discussing Globoforce's WorkHuman event.  WorkHuman is happening in Orlando from May 9-11 and is a place to learn about how to create a more human workplace.  

You can listen to the show on the show page here, or by using the widget player below:

You can learn more about WorkHuman here - http://bit.ly/whtrmctw and show listeners can use promo code WH16TM300 for $300 off your registration.

This was a fun show and I hope you take a break from work to give it a listen!

And remember to be sure to subscribe to the HR Happy Hour on iTunes or your favorite podcast app - just search for 'HR Happy Hour' and you will be sure to never miss a show.

Young single people, guys in their 50s, and not much in between

Back 159 years ago when I worked on my first major IT project team doing an an old-school ERP implementation one thing about the composition of the 25 or so person project team was pretty striking.  The team itself was sourced from a few places - regular full-time staff of the client that was funding the project, several implementation experts from the software solution provider, a few technical consultants from one of the Big 4 (I think it was still Big 6 back then) consultancies, and finally three or four independent contractors taking full advantage of the 'gig economy' before that was a thing. So about 25 or so folks, it was a pretty large project with a mix of subject matter experts, software developers, QA and testing people, and project manager types.

But what was interesting, (and what would turn out to be not at all uncommon I would learn), was that there were almost no members of the team between the ages of say 30 and about 50, otherwise known as 'prime' working years for most folks.

That diverse, (we had folks from at least 10 countries on the project), and large project team was almost completely devoid of people in what would be the classic working and parenting years, say about 30 to about 50. There were definitely no women in that age range on the project, and there may have been one or two men (at most), that were parents of kids they still had some level of responsibility to care for.

One of the 'veteran' guys from the Big 6 firm that was more or less running the project summed it up for me about midway through the project.  He said something to the effect that (at least at that time), IT consulting and big enterprise technology project work was either a game for young people who have not settled down and have no spouses/kids to worry about, or older guys, (and it was almost always guys), whose kids were grown up and either moved out or at least were old enough that their Dad could get away with being on the road 200 nights a year.

Apart from the technical skills needed to succeed on a project like that, there were also the personal stresses and demands that having the kind of job was likely to put on you and any family/friends/pets that you may have had. You were more or less on the road, traveling to the project site Monday - Friday, week after week, month after month until the project was over. At which point you'd maybe get a little bit of downtime and then start the cycle and lifestyle again with a new client/project. I did this kind of work for a long time, what made me discontinue this and move to something more stable, (and with far less travel), was becoming a parent some 15 years or so ago.

What's the point of this trip down memory lane?

I caught this piece, a profile of Facebook's Maxine Williams, the relatively new person in charge of diversity initiatives at the company, where the interviewer was pressing her and Facebook to try and explain their efforts in promoting a more diverse workforce, and their relative successes and failures in this regard. it is a pretty interesting piece, and I recommend giving it a read.

But after reading it, and thinking about these issues a bit, I was reminded of that 20 year-old project team, and how the nature of the work, and the nature of how (at least back then), most people tried to live their lives, that would have made 'generational' diversity, (is that even a thing?), extremely difficult, if not impossible to achieve. It would have been really tough to find very many mid-career parents willing to sign up for the demands of those jobs, so what we ended up with was a group of folks that had little to no problems with being away from home all the time. That is just how it worked out and what made sense for the workers, the client, and the project itself.

The closing point of all this? Tip O'Neill said that 'All politics is local.' John Sumser has said that all recruiting is local. I kind of think that sometimes we need to think about that when also thinking about diversity and workforce composition in that manner as well. Not every type of job or project is going to easily lend itself to a natural, blended, and widely diverse collection of people willing , able, and capable of performing said jobs.

If one of the goals of a consulting company that did projects like the one I described above had it as a goal to become more diverse and balanced across generations, it would have taken some pretty significant shifts in how work was organized, how client demands and expectations were managed, and how individual consultants were evaluated and rewarded. And that would have been a much a bigger set of issues than just trying to recruit or retain a few more people that were in their early 40s.  

Maybe diversity, however you define it, is only partially, and maybe even a small part overall, of a recruiting problem, and is more influenced by how, where, and when the work gets done than by where you run your job ads or the campuses where you recruit.