Work-life balance: What Americans can learn from the British
Work-life balance: What Americans can learn from the British
As many of us can afford to work less, and yet we decide against it. While we are preparing for the return to the workplace, we look at why the work-life balance is still so difficult to grasp
Tim Armstrong, the 43-year-old CEO of AOL, gets up at 5 a.m. He tries to hold back emails until 7 a.m. Then he can be reached by email "in the morning, while driving and late in the evening". He enjoys part of the weekend, but then starts work on Sunday at 7 p.m., calls and writes emails.
Karen Blackett, CEO from Mediacom UK, receives about 500 emails a day. She comes home on time at 6:30 p.m. to spend time with her son, but then returns to work for calls and emails at 8:00 p.m.
These reports about CEO's life, as described in the Guardian in 2013, are a depressing reading. The authors of the article summarize it well if they ask: "What does it bring to be rich and successful if you have to get up every day before sunrise to answer 500 emails?"
Some will argue that work is as worthwhile as the alternative; that it is an infinite pleasure to laze around on the beach all day, and that productivity - the feeling of having achieved something - makes people happy.
Everyone is different, but I think it is fair to say that the Sweet Spot is far from 500 emails a day, but not quite as far away as constant lazing on the beach.
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A current study reminds me of this tension that claims that British employees take more vacation days than their colleagues around the world. In Great Britain, 75 % of the employees surveyed stated that they will probably take their entire vacation this year (on average 27 days a year).
In the dramatic contrast, only 44 % of the American employees expected to do the same, even though their median is 12 days - only one more than in China. In fact, America is one of the few countries in the world in which there is no statutory minimum vacation.
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Why such inequality? Professor of Psychology and Author of "Wellbeing: Productivity and Happiness at Work" Cary L. Cooper offers two explanations. Firstly, that Americans are naturally Workaholic: “To advance at work, is of fundamental importance for your self -image and for the image that you want to convey to your employer and the outside world - America is open for shops around the clock!”
The second explanation is that American employees are more uncertain in their workplace due to weaker laws in relation to layoffs, sick leave and working hours. Cooper writes: "Since employees are more susceptible to the immediate job loss, if they do not deliver, I suspect that many employees are afraid of taking their vacation entitlement, he is also lean because they fear that this will send the message that I am not being fully committed or 100 % perceived.
This attitude to work is through and through depressing, be it an approval of the Great American Dream or a severe case of "presentism". Too much work can harm health and reduce productivity. Besides (and I don't think it's anti -capitalist to say that), are there certainly better things that we can start with as people with our time?
This question has been asked often, perhaps most famous by the economist John Maynard Keynes, who predicted that the citizens of the industrialized countries work 15-hour weeks by around 2030 and use the time gained by the technology for more noble jobs: travel, music, art, literature.
Unfortunately, Keynes was wrong. Technology was not a liberator, but a teacher who was used by group giants to "help" us to work from anywhere.
Alt = “Work-Life-Balance”> Microsoft's Marketing Campaign for Office 365
Many of us already question the senselessness of long working hours. Perhaps people will perceive us in the distant future with the sympathetic amusement that we reserve the right to hunters and fortune tellers. You have spent your life working on the bike like hamsters! They thought they would achieve something!
Not everyone can afford to work less, but we can and should at least take our vacation. For some, this may mean taking on a less powerful job, but believe me, it's worth it. The alternative is to further climb the greasy pole of career success and to determine that there is simply no rest break even at the climax - only more from the same.
Traveling, spending time with family and friends, learning a new language, reading good books, going jogging are much more important than 500 emails to answer a day. If we put the "Choose Life" rhetoric aside and evaluate our life from a practical, objective point of view, so many of us will find that we can and should work less. Life is so much more fun.
More on the subject of less work can be found in How Much is Enough?: Money and the Good Life by Edward and Robert Skidelsky.
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