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Another day, another work:life study.

Accord­ing to some research for head­hunters Korn/Ferry Inter­na­tional, 80% of exec­u­tives are always con­nected to their work – whether through mobiles, PDAs, lap­tops or what­ever. And 77% of these believe that the tech­nol­ogy behind all this enhances their work:life bal­ance. The study cov­ered 2,300 exec­u­tives in 75 coun­tries (which when you do the maths is just over 30 per coun­try – so not the most robust sam­ple ever).

Sadly I don’t have the break­downs per coun­try but our expe­ri­ence at Ban­ner has shown that these atti­tudes vary rad­i­cally by geog­ra­phy. In research we’ve done over the last cou­ple of years, we’ve seen a vast range of results from enthu­si­asm in the US and UK through to out­right rejec­tion of the idea in Ger­many (and Ital­ians sim­ply find the devices too ugly to contemplate).

In a related piece of news, Rut­gers Uni­ver­sity has ques­tioned whether employ­ers may be legally liable for their employ­ees’ crack­berry addic­tions. Gayle Porter, asso­ciate pro­fes­sor of man­age­ment at Rut­gers has been work­ing on a study that exam­ines the impact of this tech­nol­ogy on work­ers’ lives and which looks at the employer’s respon­si­bil­i­ties for pro­tect­ing them. A flavour:

“There are costs attached to exces­sive work due to tech­nol­ogy,” says Porter. “Infor­ma­tion and com­mu­ni­ca­tion tech­nol­ogy (ICT) addic­tion has been treated by pol­icy mak­ers as a kind of ele­phant in the room – every­one sees it, but no one wants to acknowl­edge it directly. Owing to vested inter­ests of the employ­ers and the ICT indus­try, signs of pos­si­ble addic­tion – excess use of ICT and related stress ill­nesses – are often ignored.”

On a basic level, I’d ques­tion whether this is some kind of jum­bling of cause and effect – the employee works too much so it must be the tech­nol­ogy that’s caus­ing it. Porter goes on:

“Employ­ers right­fully pro­vide pro­grams to help work­ers with chem­i­cal or sub­stance addictions…Addiction to tech­nol­ogy can be equally dam­ag­ing to the men­tal health of the worker.”

Are employ­ees really addicted to the tech­nol­ogy? I’m not so sure. They may be addicted to the expe­ri­ence of being in con­trol. They may covet the feel­ing of ele­vated self-esteem (look Ma, I’ve made it, I’ve got a Black­Berry!). But equat­ing this with a sub­stance addic­tion feels wrong-headed.

Over the years, I’ve sat behind the glass of many focus groups and have talked to the kinds of peo­ple both these stud­ies are refer­ring to. For the most part, they are not the air-punching go-getters of the first study, nor the hope­less addicts of the sec­ond. They are by and large prag­matic peo­ple who use the tech­nol­ogy at hand (quite lit­er­ally) to nav­i­gate the world around them. They often see using these devices as a way of using dead time bet­ter, get­ting out of the office ear­lier, see­ing more of their kids.

Of course there are some toxic com­pa­nies who are happy to over­work their employ­ees. And yes, crack­ber­ries (of all makes) are one more way of doing this. But the symp­tom is not the cause.

Work:life bal­ance, I believe, is largely a fal­lacy. It sets up a way of think­ing that’s at odds with how many of us in infor­ma­tion work expe­ri­ence our days. Work is life. Like­wise, life is work. Today, it’s less about bal­anc­ing and more about blend­ing. Pro­gres­sive com­pa­nies realise this and hand over the tools for employ­ees to blend it the best they can.

I’m writ­ing this at home on a Sat­ur­day night. But the same tech­nol­ogy allows me to take my daugh­ter to school at least once a week, it means I can respond to my team when they need me and, of course, I can always find the off button.

Good night.

Sources: Reuters, Rut­gers (via CrunchGear)

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