Is Bleisure Killing Work-Life Balance?
From open offices designed to resemble a Mondrian painting to the ringing of an iPhone on a bedside table, constant connectivity has crept into our professional and personal lives, undoubtedly blurring the lines between work and play. For better or worse, however, is a question worth asking.
Cloud-based collaboration tools and other technological advances transmuted the very concepts of “work” and “workplace”. Today, the three Aristotelian dramatic unities no longer apply. Workflow has been shattered, allowing multiple people to work simultaneously on the same project from different places, or skip freely between business and leisure, at all times of day and night.
“Work is shifting more towards an experience than a place”
For younger generations, the territorial separation between “workplace” and “home turf” simply does not exist. Gamification is gaining momentum, with apps like Slack surfing on the trend and allowing you to order ice cream from a bot to be delivered directly at your office (in the United States, at least). Millennials, aged 18 to 34, just surpassed the out-sized Baby Boom generation as largest living generation this year. And no matter how many surveys or social media posts you read, what they say is pretty clear:
- the “anywhere, anytime” work trend is inevitable,
- there should be greater flexibility to prescribe their own working hours;
- virtual networks result in greater employee engagement and higher productivity,
- work is shifting more towards an experience than a place.
Basically, what we see is the rise of a whole new attitude towards work and business. With boundaries being broken down, people expect work to be more rewarding and less compartmentalized than what it was before. And bleisure is born (which, you guessed it, comes from a portmanteau of business and leisure).
Miriam Rayman, cultural intelligence strategist at Flamingo London, came up with the term bleisure back in 2008, along with colleagues at the Future Laboratory. In a blog post written last year, she argues: “At that time, we were aspiring towards seamlessness, we longed for life on demand, where we could shop, eat, work, whenever we wanted. The bleisure generation was a particularly entrepreneurial type who would turn an evening out over drinks into a networking opportunity, where Facebook could just as easily be a place to win clients.”
The benefits of change
If, historically, people went to work because they had to, today, both work and leisure are either pleasurable… or torturous. Silicon Valley offers a myriad of paradigmatic examples of pleasurable environments, such as Airbnb, Google or Facebook. Aside from being trendy, their structures, processes and people take advantage of collaboration, lack rigid hierarchy and encourage quick decision-making. Not to mention the perks of working there are now widely known and have contributed to their reputation, even from afar.
“It doesn’t have as much to do with money as with psychology”
But this doesn’t apply to tech giants only. For those of you who have not yet read my previous posts, I will say it again: in today’s world, people are poly-motivated. As opposed to common opinion, people don’t do business because they’re obsessed about profits, they do so because they like the game: the brainstorming sessions, the battle of brains, the rises and falls, the excitement. It doesn’t have as much to do with money as with psychology (go read Dr Bashshur’s interview if you haven’t already. Seriously). Money barely serves as a key performance index to measure wit, stamina and insight. Anything that could replace this metric and be as efficient in terms of measurement (say, for instance, recognition of your peers or of your industry) could make you just as dedicated to your job.
In a world where it has become the employer’s job to market himself towards potential candidates, your company’s culture and environment can make a huge difference in terms of quality of your applicants as well as your turnover. More than the traditional job description, employees focus on whether their potential new boss allows flexwork, organizes team lunches and seminars, encourages training, gym classes or sends its people on bleisure trips. Oh, and Winesdays and ping pong tables have become a must (of course).
Beware of the pitfalls
At the other end of the spectrum, alarming surveys around the globe warn against the increasing amount of people texting behind the wheel, checking their phone in bed and even… during sex! So if that kind of thinking can potentially improve the way businesses function, it doesn’t mean it is necessarily good for everyone. Employees taking advantage of technology to work remotely often do not really disconnect during weekends and bank holidays -who has never been to a dinner with friends where phones were placed at the centre of the table and the first one to check his paid the bill?-, making burnout a real threat.
Dr Christine Grant, associate head of the psychology and behavioural sciences department of Coventry University has researched the impact of remote working on work-life balance, well-being and job effectiveness. In an interview, she warns: “There’s something going on that means we’re not getting any respite, and we need that for resilience. It might be alright over the short term, but week in, week out, it will have an impact.” Rayman adds: “people now want a more compartmentalized lifestyle because the blurring of business and leisure left us feeling burnt out, and stressed that we weren’t doing either business or leisure particularly well. (…) The thing is, after five years of being promised seamless living, we’ve realized it is actually quite stressful and can leave us exhausted.”
“Workaholism is probably the only dependency that society tends to encourage” — Martin Ouellette
Burnout isn’t the only potential issue. Other adepts of the bleisure trend start to enjoy their work so much that it fulfills them enough to consider work as leisure itself. And here comes workaholism. Now, I consider myself an expert on the matter, and yet I’ll say it anyway: workaholism can come from hedonism, but also escapism and narcissism.
One man’s joy is another man’s sorrow
Here is the tricky part: as my partner keeps saying, “workaholism is probably the only dependency that society tends to encourage rather than condemn”. Because let’s face it: it makes for entrepreneurial people. Managers, businessmen (and women), scientists… They’re restless thinkers and doers, ambitious overachievers aiming for personal satisfaction through their work. And instead of being worried, we reward their efficiency with raises and more responsibilities to satisfy their addiction. Just think about how many views Justine Musk got on Quora for writing about obsessive behaviour as the key to extreme success! Of course, one could argue that these changes reflect the actual desires of the workers themselves, and yet parents have never felt so much pressure to perform, women are tired of being torn between their career and their families, and graduates have more debts and less desire to have kids than ever. I remember my three-year old daughter telling me “how come you’re not working today, mom?! Go back to your computer!” on a Saturday morning. If I laughed back then, I wouldn’t be able to tell you why.
And yet ironically, workaholism could be considered a direct result of the leisure culture, itself coming from a need to revitalize the economy; the 35-hour work week and promotion of leisure activities served to create jobs in key sectors, thus bringing down the unemployment rate. I had an interesting discussion the other day with a woman who happens to work in a non-profit promoting work-life balance, and she said: “When you think about it, the real estate industry works mainly thanks to people splitting up. There would never be as much dynamism if people weren’t changing partners as often as they do nowadays.”
As a reaction, companies such as Puma, BMW and VW have made out-of-hours calling or emailing against company policy. France has made it downright illegal. Women like Sheryl Sandberg recommend working full-time, but leaving at 5:30 sharp… So what now? Should we go back to cubicles, commuting and cohesive social structures? Should we condemn cafés and hotels offering spaces and amenities for the growing population of Bleisurites who want to settle down with their laptops while sipping a glass of Sancerre? Or on the contrary, is the decompartmentalization worth it if it goes both ways? Should we be allowed to skip work on a Thursday morning to go see an exhibition in an arts gallery and catch up later during the weekend? How rigid should these policies be to ensure workers’ physical and mental health? What are your thoughts on the matter? Your turn to continue the conversation: share your comments below!
Audrey Raby is a strategist and a storyteller. She has managed several marketing and creative communication firms in Montreal, after having lived in Brussels for eight years as an expatriate journalist.
