What this story covers:
Technology allows workers to communicate easily with co-workers at the office or at home. It’s a blessing and a curse. We can work from anywhere, which gives us flexibility. But our devices keep work always within reach. Finding the right work-life balance can be a challenge.
Why it matters:
There are more and more ways to communicate out of the office — e-mail, text, Slack, Zoom. We keep work in our pockets. Lines between work and home have been blurred — a problem that is even more noticeable now that many of us work from home during the COVID-19 pandemic.
By Matt Cregger & Khadean Coombs
Working from home, in many ways, is a luxury. These days, it’s also a necessity for many employees. Offices across the world are closed due to the COVID-19 pandemic. And many workers are now realizing what people who regularly work from home have known for awhile — the lines between work and home can easily become blurred.
The 40-hour workweek has given way to the modern workday — a day not defined by hours logged in the office but by hours logged… anywhere. That includes at home before coming into the office, and even at night after eating dinner or tucking kids into bed. The home has fallen from its status as a haven, a hideaway from the corporate world and come to be just another place with a Wi-Fi signal.
It’s easy to stay in touch with co-workers through communication technology that’s been around for awhile (cell phones and e-mail) and that’s relatively new (Slack and Zoom). Modern technology is a blessing and a curse. It allows us to stay in touch and work where we want, but it also keeps us tethered to our jobs and leaves the impression that we’re always within reach.
In this podcast, we explore how technology has changed the nature of work, and what that means for our work-life balance. What are the new expectations for being on call? How much is too much? How did we get here?
Larry Rosen, a psychology professor at California State University, Dominguez Hills, who studies the psychological impact of technology, said it wasn’t that long ago that workers could only communicate through e-mail away from the office.
“There was no expectation that you would respond immediately,” he said.
In the last decade, more and more communication tools have been introduced. Offices have put them to use.
“Each of those ways kind of pushed up into a little bit of a corner where we had so much communication coming in that we felt that we had to respond immediately just to get rid of it and get it off of our plates. And what that did is put us into this strange situation that we’re in now, where any message that we get, we almost have this knee-jerk reaction that says better respond immediately.”
– Larry Rosen
Sheerica Ware, who has worked at media companies such as CNN and Politico, said she feels pressure to respond immediately to colleagues — even when she’s at home.
“It is a little bit more challenging working remotely because you feel that urge, especially me as a young professional just getting started in my career, to check that email, respond back,” she said.
Ware is not alone — employees regularly check work e-mail, respond to messages and do work at all hours of the day.
Finding the right work-life balance can be an immense challenge. Some people have turned — funny as it may sound — to technology to help.
Rosen said employers can help their workers by being up front about their expectations for communication outside of the office.
“Every job comes with a job manual,” he said. “Every company has an employee manual, and in that employee manual should be information about communication. Most of them don’t have this yet. If they don’t have it, then you need to ask what is your policy on communication? How soon do you expect people to respond back?… I think it’s really going to be absolutely critical in this day and age that we get our companies to set certain boundaries.”
