Since the start of the pandemic, traditional business hours have gone out the window. Instead, professionals are working around their family schedules. The working times are different for everyone, and the boss no longer has any control over the schedules of direct reports.
Published on 3 November 2022
Since the start of the pandemic, traditional business hours have gone out the window. Instead, professionals are working around their family schedules. The working times are different for everyone, and the boss no longer has any control over the schedules of direct reports.
These days, some people in your company are probably online in the early morning, while some are online late into the evening, and others, much of the weekend. This may make you feel like you need to be online all the time to accommodate all of these schedules, and to be available for communication at all hours.
Now more than ever, the phrase “business hours” is devoid of meaning. During the pandemic, “business hours” has morphed into “any hours”—or, more precisely, “all hours”—so it should be no surprise that burnout has become a serious and growing problem.
However, the pandemic-induced emotional exhaustion of employees is often overlooked by companies until it’s too late.
At this time of tremendous transition, leaders have a critical responsibility to be deliberate and explicit about expectations of availability, and to define exactly what “business hours” means to your organization. Leaders have an opportunity to make company culture much more supportive of employees’ work-life balance. And yes, despite all the talk before COVID about “work-life integration” and “work-life blending,” the pandemic has shown that work-life balance is more important than ever. The way I define this for my clients is simply, “Don’t work too much.” When you do other things in addition to work, you will have more creativity and motivation during your work time. The way I like to phrase it is that sometimes the best thing you can do for your work is not work!