Time for the family?
Oft lassen sich Berufs- und Privatleben nur schwer miteinander vereinbaren. Viele von uns verbringen mehr Zeit in der Arbeit mit Kollegen als zuhause mit der Familie. Und dass sich einige Unternehmen als „Familie“bezeichnen, macht die Sache nicht einfache
When is family not family? Answer: when it’s at work, says the psychologist Carl Cederström. Writing in The Guardian, he finds common ground with management consultant Alison Green. In Ask a Manager, she warns of the dangers of mistaking your workplace and colleagues for family.
“As you are busy trying to prove your loyalty and commitment to the company, you may no longer have the time to treat your family as family,” Cederström writes. “In short, work and life becomes confused. Family comparisons are thinly disguised ways to extract more work out of people.”
The New York Times estimates that fulltime employees in the US spend more than 2,000 hours a year at work. It’s a similar story in the UK, where full-time staff work an average 42.3 hours per week, the highest in the EU. That’s a lot of time with people whose lives become intertwined with your own. Friendships (and hostilities) develop. Relationships flourish. But you’re paid to go to work — and can be hired or fired in seconds.
Why do some executives then insist on referring to their organization as “family”? “They’re searching for a model that represents the kind of relationships they want to have with their employees — a lifetime relationship with a sense of belonging,” reports the Harvard Business Review, recommending that firms use the term “team” instead.
“The characterization [of family] can seem like a harmless way to generate camaraderie and community,” says Bruce
Poon Tip, writing for Qz.com. “But your co-workers are not actually ‘like a family’. You’re born into your family; where you work and who you hire involves making choices.” Tip regrets once describing his own firm, G Adventures, as a “family”. For employers who make the same mistake, he recommends a change of terminology to “tribe”. Tribes, he explains, like teams at work, have common goals and values, but also natural hierarchies and clear lines of leadership.
Of course, it’s possible that your work “family” might be more understanding than your real one. Writing in The Guardian, Marion Mcgilvary describes how her co-workers have become her closest friends and confidantes. When she was in hospital, it was they who visited, offering love and support. “It was touching but alarming to see how much of my life revolved around the office,” writes Mcgilvary, “but hardly surprising ... it’s difficult to maintain relationships in the scant hours between leaving the office and falling into bed.”
Add commuting time, homeworking and unpaid overtime to working hours, while deducting sleeping hours from the day, and there is little time available for home life. Despite the rise in flexible working, parents are the hardest hit. According to Workingfamilies.org.uk, just 20 per cent of UK families find the right balance between time (spent with family) and money (earning or having enough income).
Fathers, increasingly involved in childcare, are learning what women have known for years — there is a parent penalty. Research by mineral water company Highland Spring shows that long working hours, lengthy commutes and arriving home exhausted mean that a quarter of parents never get enough time with their children. In fact, the average family gets just 34 minutes a day of “undistracted” time together and only three hours at weekends.
As The Guardian reports, it’s a worldwide problem: “My kids would love it if I could pick them up from school,” says Tina, from France. “I seldom work less than 50 hours a week. It is often hard on my children, who complain about what time I return home,” says Tom, from the Netherlands. “The workload in an average week is about 65 hours. Our son is less than a year old and quite an active child. My wife is always exhausted,” says Jason, from Japan. “If I didn’t stay so late at work, my kids might have a better bedtime routine,” adds Stef, from Scotland.
The website Familylives.org.uk makes suggestions for improving family life: arriving home relaxed, eating with the kids, enjoying bedtime routines and making one night a week a “special” family activity night. Your children, and society in general, will benefit from the time you spend with them more than your workplace ever will.
And there are good reasons why organizations should also discard the idea of employees being called “family”. Writing in the Financial Times, Lucy Kellaway describes the use of the term as “one of the most delusional metaphors of modern corporate life. … Families are the best Petri dish ever known for love — and for hate. Workplaces operate much more smoothly without either.”
“It was touching but alarming to see how much of my life revolved around the office”