Australians have Intimacy Issues
There are questions regarding professionalism within the current work industry and its effects on personal identity and wellbeing. Should I answer that work email while out with friends? Should I dedicate the weekend to perfecting work proposals? Shall I become Facebook friends with my work colleagues? Does my boss even know the hours I spend at work?
I had intended to discuss the phenomenal ability new technologies have created for professionals in the workplace; however, as I dove into the topic of communication technologies, the more I read the more it occurred to me that professionals were finding it difficult to ‘switch off’, working outside of paid hours. Media technologies have been promoted as giving us freedom to do what we want, when we want, creating flexibility to suit the conditions of a modern workplace and the ability to follow an entrepreneurial business culture. And indeed they do; however, for the majority of us in salaried occupations, the distinctions between work and distancing oneself from work to live a life is often a difficult practice. Modern workplaces have undergone a revolution with fluctuations in economy and technological advances distributing work habits amongst generations.
In contrast to previous generations, we live longer, have larger disposable incomes and have an overall better standard of living, though we fall short in combining these two aspects in creating work-life balance. Stepping back, the baby boomer workforce was seen to be an independently driven generation, while generation X developed a better sense of work life balance. This could have been attributed to the limited communication channels, where work tasks were contained to work hours, making distinction to personal life. “It was a different era with entirely different thinking,” says Tom Leamon, adjunct professor of occupational safety at the Harvard University School of Public Health. Media technologies were different and so were daily practices. While generation Y (millennials) were marked as the flexible generation growing up while technologies were evolving which provided access to information, opportunity for innovation and new forms of communication.
Generation Z, on the other hand, may be the most challenged of all, looking for stability and security as a result of the oversaturation of media technologies. Such rapid technological advancements have created expansive opportunities and industry developments, however, have made it subsequently difficult to disconnect from work and focus on daily occurrences without fusion. This has become contemporary office culture, where personal and professional identities are distorted from the dissemination of communication platforms and devices: a process called presence bleed. Workers feel a sense of pressure and responsibility, working beyond paid hours, with location and time of work having become secondary considerations in the drive to meet deadlines.
Starting to sound familiar?
Though ‘connectivity’ has never been so strong with a digital device always close by, such tech advancements in contemporary society have socially alienated us even when we’re together. Melissa Gregg in Work’s Intimacy discusses the implications of work-life, where employees withdraw from engaging in complex human relationships to continue working beyond paid hours to build self-esteem, boost performance flexibility and gain rewards in the ‘capitalist marketplace’. The form of accomplishment that professional work generates, rivals markers of self-identity, skewing the dimensions of traditional work regime, underpinning professionals willingness to work outside paid hours. The nature of affective labour has been adopted by professionals with the intention to meet deadlines and evoke an emotional response from managers, though tasks in service industry jobs have been identified as tiresome as manual labour physical occupations, risking further psychological health. This issue requires a collective or policy response.
Assessing legislation, The National Employment Standards state that employers must not ask full time workers to work more than 38 hours, unless the additional hours are reasonable. There is no strict definition for the term ‘reasonable’, and what’s acceptable differs with each workplace. Dr Jim Stanford, from the institutes centre for future work states that Australians are working far more than that and this practice is unsustainable.
When people live in a dog-eat-dog environment for long enough they start to think ‘yes, I should work 20 hours unpaid overtime a week to keep my job.’
The Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (AIHW) reported that Australia ranked 27th out of 35 Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries in ‘work life balance’.
‘And despite our laid-back image, we are also in the bottom third of nations for the time we devote to leisure and personal care.’
Is this the wakeup call we need? The workforce is developing, requiring individuals to acquire more qualifications, which enforces individuals to work over-time (usually unpaid) to meet deadlines ensuring job security. Regardless, it’s crucial to identify appropriate behaviours and prioritise before sacrificing necessary personal time to continue working. It’s time to learn to unplug.
