…. A series of unfortunate events…

 I haven’t been blogging for quite a while. It has been a bit like the perfect storm personally and I have found myself challenged with being able to manage my life and not letting it implode with the challenges. Now everyone goes through a challenge that is part of life that is why it is important to understand that from a managerial point of view and not believe that “what happens at home stays at home”. In the earlier decades, everyone went to work and the more one stayed on in work, you learned how to keep personal problems separate from work problems, but in this knowledge economy, that is not so easy anymore.

HR magazine reported this morning that in a survey of 1000 home workers (home workers here defined as small businesses, freelancers and entrepreneurs) 81% believed they worked more than they would have if they worked in a traditional office as against working from home and 56% of that figure claim they find it harder to separate their home lives from working lives, even though they want that split. When blackberry’s were first introduced, there was a lot of worry about how business people would ever be able to switch off from work to get any “down time” if they continued having access to their office matters. The picture has changed with eh advent of smart phones, 24hour work culture; remote working technology and the drop in pricing for getting wired and online. This accessibility to a non-stop stream of information has multiplied and that is information from all forms inclusive of personal lives. I believe that this has added to the pressure people have and limited the amount of personal space available to individual workers. And that loss of personal space and time to deal with life matters will inevitably lead to it coming more and more into work. I think a lot more empathy will be demanded from managers, and a lot more attention will have to be paid to work life balance to make sure that employees can stay in work and give their best AND have time to give their best in their private lives. Otherwise a series of seemingly unfortunate little events, that should be unrelated, can lead to a perfect storm that no-one saw coming.