Long hours do not equal productivity ! !
A feature article in today’s issue of USA Today reports on the growing epidemic of workaholics in the American workplace. It’s true. Americans are working longer and longer hours. For the last 15 years, it has been common to see blackberries and cell phones in airports and hotels making them de facto extensions of the work place. Over that same time period, work has encroached more and more on everyday home and recreational life. Blackberry and cell phone work usage is now ubiquitous, showing up at all times of the day and all days of the week. Blackberry alerts and cell phone calls take place everywhere – in restaurants, on golf courses, in shopping malls, at sporting events, and, of course, as a requirement for driving a car.
Work has invaded every aspect of our personal lives including church services and family dinners. There is essentially no respect for individual personal time. Unfortunately, many executives and managers have enabled this phenomenon by doing the calling and responding to callers.
What have we gained from all this extra “work”? Not much. Aren’t our businesses thriving from all this extra effort? Statistically you could make a case that they are. GNP and American business productivity have steadily grown over the past 2 decades. But most of this growth has come from operational and process improvements. There is little evidence that the longer hours that many employees feel pressured to work are contributing to a meaningful advancement of the business. What we are doing is destroying our personal relationships and sometimes even our physical and mental health. In a future entry, we will discuss what really happens to these extra hours and why they are such a poor bargain for American businesses.
If you find yourself in an environment of escalating demands on your time from work, take heart. There is help for getting the balance between your work and personal life back under control. Oakley Advisors executive coaches provide our clients with powerful tools and techniques that help them restore balance to their lives. With our coaching, clients find they are able to manage their time better and systematically segment work to become much more effective. We give them tools to help them recognize and remove what we refer to as “non productive behavior”, both in themselves and their staffs. The result is a better separation between work and personal life. Our clients experience increased productivity in the time that they spend at work, are happier with their jobs, and are more motivated to perform when they are at work. That better performance directly translates into a true productivity gain for the business.
Jerry Kleinhaus
Oakley Advisors
Certified Executive Coaching
Cincinnati, Ohio
