Tag Archives: Work Stress

Work/Life Balance Is a Myth

Posted in Benefits, Compensation, Employee Engagement, Employee Relations, HR Policy, Radical HR, Wellness, Workplace by

Allow me to let you in on a little secret, Work/Life Balance is bullshit.

Much like the Easter Bunny, the Lochness Monster or calorie free macaroni and cheese, work/life balance is a myth. Just as Hallmark made up Sweetest Day to boost it’s bottom line, Work/Life balance was made up by Corporate America as a concocted promotion to convince employees that work and life are binary.

Corporate America created the problem, named the problem and then offered “solutions” to the problem. Corporate America created the problem, squeezing every little ounce out of its employees to increase their revenue streams, fatten the owners’ pockets and please its shareholders. Not surprisingly, this turned Americans into over-worked, over-stressed humans who felt put into a position to choose job or family and life. And voila, Corporate America invents the concept of Work/Life balance capitalizing on this zero-sum game. Americans choose work and lose, and Corporate America reaps the rewards. To quell the simmering anger, Corporate America threw us all a bone by offering “Work/Life” balance programs such as flexible scheduling, part-time opportunities, work-from-home, job shares and childcare-at-work. Yet, even with these programs Americans still report being just as overburdened as they were 5, 10, 15 and 20 years ago.

In a 2016 New York Times Article by Susan Dominus, Rethinking the Work-Life Equation, the author recaps the TOMO study by Phyllis Moen and Erin Kelly, professors studying the interaction between work, family and health. Moen and Kelly offer up what they call “Work-Life Fit”. Think of this concept not as life and work on the same linear plane, think of work as one little cheese wedge in the Trivial Pursuit playing piece of life.  Like this:

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And, in order for this mind shift to take place these things need to happen:

1) Give employees almost total control of how they work- including where, when and how they work. Focus on the outcomes of work against company goals and objectives and not how many hours employees work. As the TOMO paper states, this shifts flexibility from being a privilege to a given. Treating employees as self-sufficient human beings by empowering ownership of their work product should result in adult-like behaviors. In the end, most employees just want to do the work. Who cares how they do it?

2) Pay more-than-living wages. Let’s actually rethink compensation and the value of the work that employees provide your organization. Stop basing compensation on  your competitors, FLSA mandates and wildly fluctuating market conditions, and pay employees based on the purpose of his or her work towards the desired results of the company. Can’t find the money? Look no further then your top executives. Does the success of the company really and truly fall on the shoulders of one or two men and women? I can’t even really think of a scenario in today’s world where that could even remotely be true. As workers become more specialized in their expertise and skills, CEO’s and President’s, rely on a more collaborative team of knowledge workers to achieve the company’s vision and mission. Consider this, in 2015, CEO pay increased 16.4% from the previous year while every-day workers got dicked with a meager 2.4% increase to base salary. The money is there, it just needs to be given to ALL of those in the organization that bring value and worth.

3) Paid Family and Medical leave for all working Americans. Fair warning, throughout my blog, I’m going to beat this one to death. The United States is literally the only developed, first world country with ZERO nationally mandated paid parental and sick leave laws. So you can give us all the stupid flex schedules you want company, but if I have to decide between my health and work, I’m choosing my health. If I have to choose between my family or my job, I’m choosing family. This is not because I’m financially secure but  because my more actualized self compels me to make decisions that I will not regret on my death bed. And also, I’m little pissed Corporate America that you would force me to choose one or the other.

In reality, all of these things will take time and a great cultural shift to happen. As an employee of a company, think about how you can individually set boundaries for yourself, think about when and how you will turn work off, think about what emails and calls you will accept outside of work hours if any at all, and consider flexibility and ownership of work when you accept a job offer.

 

HR Mix Tape

Posted in Employee Relations, Lists, Radical HR by

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For those musically inclined, you may hear a song and relate it to your professional or personal life. In HR, there are days when the theme of Happy Days could be playing in my head or when circus music is on a never-ending rotation. Back in the day, we would make mix tapes for our friends, for road trips, for playing in our walkman, for the summer of 1990 and just any old reason we wanted to compile all of our favorite music on one medium.

For no good reason at all here is the 2016 HR Mix Tape Play list. I shall call it HR Jams.

  1. “Welcome to the Jungle”- Guns N’ Roses tale of LA’s dark side, is also a great tune to play on your way into the office especially during the week of a full moon.
  2. “People Are Strange”- The Doors. Perfectly captures the variety of human behaviors, actions and responses in the workplace that an HR professional will encounter on any given day.
  3. “Sussudio” – Phil Collin’s made-up song title reminds of me of silly business buzzphrases and office jargon such as  “human capital management”, “the optics of it”, “synergy”, “core competency”, and “corporate values”.
  4. The Bangles, “Manic Monday”. For dealing with the onslaught of Monday morning work bombs.
  5. “Gimme Some Money”- Spinal Tap. Above ALL else, employees work to be paid y’all.
  6. Black Eyed Peas, “Shut Up”- because God gave you 2 ears and 1 mouth for a reason. IMO, effective workplaces are led by leaders who listen just as much, if not more, than they speak.
  7. Bruno Mars, “The Lazy Song”, some days are just dead in the water before they even begin.
  8. “Lean On Me”, Bill Withers. Having meaningful relationships in the workplace is a direct correlation to employee happiness. This song reminds me of that.
  9. Grateful Dead, “Touch of Grey”- because HR must and should operate in the grey.
  10. “California Love”, Tupac and Dr. Dre’s ode to California. Actually, this is the opposite about how I feel about managing the HR function in California, but there is no song to my knowledge titled, “California Hate”.

What songs would you add to the B side?

My Professional Struggles

Posted in Professional Development by

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In The Gifts of Imperfection, Brené Brown discusses how owning our stories and intentionally practicing authenticity helps us to accept that we are enough. On most days, I think I’m a pretty good HR professional. But there are times when the shameful thoughts creep in and lend doubt to the reasons I continue to pursue this profession. So here I am bearing my vulnerabilities to all 4 of my blog followers. Thanks mom, dad and friends 🙂

Here are my professional struggles:

  1. I don’t like rules and policies. However, rules and policies are fundamental HR. Yet, I’ve never really been a fan of making rules and policies for everything. Why? Because I believe rules and policies are used as crutches by managers unwilling or unable to have honest and constructive conversations with their employees. I believe that if we treat people like adults, they will act like adults. I believe that patriarchal leadership is propped up by tons of rules and policies. I like to have the flexibility to work on a case-by-case basis. I don’t mind working in the gray area. Rules and policies spoil all the fun and totally kill creativity in solving complex employee relations issues.
  2. I don’t know if I believe that getting a seat at the table will really elevate the HR profession to strategic business partner. HR professionals are conditioned to attain “a seat at the table”. By doing this, we are told that HR will gain the same “street cred” as the business functions that create income streams; thus HR will have a voice in the strategic direction of the business. HR is told that we too can earn our spot at the big kids table if we execute the tactical work flawlessly, if we source, recruit, hire, train, engage and retain superb talent, that we anticipate business trends and execute on change management. This laundry list while not even exhaustive is already bewildering. It just doesn’t seem attainable. But I’m not willing to give up hope.
  3. I am sometimes too results-oriented. When there’s a problem, I must find a solution. My high “A” factor (dominance) drive on the PI assessment tells me so. However, in the world of HR and particularly in the practice of employee relations, sometimes there are no solutions. I have the tendency to automatically jump to a “remove the hand from the hot stove” reaction. Because of this I often find myself exasperated by employees who come to my office with a laundry list of problems and present zero solutions. I’m overwhelmed by my own prejudicial beliefs that someone could only be seeking my counsel rather than an answer. I also find myself overwhelmed because sometimes these problems have no solutions, or no solution that I have control over anyways. The reason is that in HR, sometimes the “solution” is just that you be there, that you provide a kind ear, that you are a sounding board, that you offer compassion and empathy. As an HR professional, I struggle to accept that listening can be enough.
  4. I take on too much and when my cup overfloweth, I freak out. As an oldest child, Leo, an ENTJ on the Myers Briggs and a High A on the aforementioned PI assessment, I am hyper-driven and have an insatiable need to prove something. A la Trump, I need to prove I can do all of the things and do them the best they have ever been done before. I see a challenge and I run it down, tackle it and rip it’s esophagus out like some sort of wild cat of the Serengeti. Inevitably, I take on so much that I can’t possibly meet deadlines while turning in a product worthy of my high standards. This also sometimes leads to a sort of paralysis where my world feels like it’s spinning off axis and to exert control I waste my time doing something silly like organizing files on my desktop. As an HR Generalist, I have my hand in all sorts of things and I constantly struggle with with the need to prove, knowing my limits and saying no.
  5. I have zero patience. In the world of work and HR, this is probably my achilles heel. As a child I struggled with having patience, and I continue with it as an adult. Things need to get done and they need to get done now. There is no time to wait. I have millions of other things to do, people to see, places to go, checklists to check off and so on and so on.

Getting my struggles out in writing helps. I also love to speak with fellow HR professionals; we bond over being in the same boat.

If you are feeling the struggle, I strongly recommend watching Brené Brown’s uber popular TED talk, The Power of Vulnerability. Also consider sharing your struggles with a community of HR professionals in the comments.