LEAVE US ALONE
How blurred lines between work and home lead to burnout
Modern technology means that no matter where you are, or what time it is, the boss can always reach you. So how do workers create a clear boundary between office life and home life? One academic, whom the Sunday Star-Times has agreed not to name because she is in the process of leaving her university job, said she had made the decision to give up her career, and a big part of her identity, because she could no longer cope with the work-related burnout.
‘‘It was really emotional because a lot of my work identity, and my personal identity, was centred around being an academic and that was where I saw myself in life.’’
The lack of boundaries around working hours was a big factor in her decision to leave the university sector.
‘‘The work just had to be done. It also meant that if one of us was sick there was no cover. We could take the day off being sick but then that work would pile up.’’
She said there was a sense of the work ‘‘being neverending’’.
Covid-19 exacerbated the issue, as the university placed pressure on staff to do more to help improve its financial position.
‘‘But no matter how hard we worked, to increase student numbers or to make cuts, it wasn’t good enough.’’
She had two small children and found that she was not being as present in their lives as she wanted to be.
‘‘I would find myself losing it and breaking down in tears in front of my children, which is something I had never done until that point, and in front of my partner. I just couldn’t separate from the stress and anxiety, and I couldn’t cope.’’
At her new job, there is a greater focus on wellbeing, though still no clear guidelines on turning off in the evening.
Companies and organisations need to start implementing clearer boundaries for staff to allow for separation from work at the end of the day, she said.
Auckland University of Technology researcher
Jarrod Haar said organisations needed to remember that healthy workers were productive, but ‘‘burnt-out workers are useless’’.
Haar conducted research last year looking at the risk of burnout for New Zealand workers.
‘‘Technology is such a pervasive force. There are some managers who delight in emailing workers at 6am and then saying, at 6.30am, ‘hey you haven’t responded to me, what’s going on’?’’
Workers under the age of 29 years old, those who were digital natives and spent more of their lives online, were 206 per cent more likely to be burnt out, the research found.
‘‘There’s an organisational response that could happen, also maybe Government legislation. I think we would find that the world wouldn’t come crashing down around us,’’ Haar said.
Globally, some businesses were turning off access to work emails and internal systems over the weekend, forcing employees to switch off.
But the weakest link is employees, who feel the pressure to respond, regardless of the time.
Younger workers also faced less security in work, pushing them to work longer, Haar said.
‘‘But if we look at those 70-hour weeks younger workers are doing, I think you will find that they are very productive up to 40 hours and then productivity begins to dive.’’
Businesswoman Juanita Neville-Te Rito has built her company around the idea that work needs to fit around people’s lives. Every email from Neville-Te Rito has a message on the bottom.
It says: ‘‘Make flexibility work – if you receive an email from me outside of normal business hours, I am sending it at a time that suits me. Unless it’s urgent, I’m not expecting you to read or reply until normal business hours.’’
Neville-Te Rito said that too often technology, and emails in particular, interrupted life outside of work.
‘‘I come from corporate retail and there was the expectation that you would be available 24/7.’’
But outside of a handful of real emergencies, constant availability was not really necessary, she said.
When Neville-Te Rito set up her retail consultancy business, she decided that staff would get paid for 40 hours a week, but could work those hours when they chose.
Flexibility means managing expectations with staff and clients.
Neville-Te Rito tries to include a priority designation in the subject line of her emails, so staff who have their notifications turned on can understand the importance of the email before opening it.
She also uses the delay send function, so that even if she is working at 11pm to fit around her life as a mother, others don’t feel like they have to.
A University of Otago study of 2595 employees working from home during last year’s lockdown found that 35 per cent of respondents were concerned about switching off from work at the end of the day.
Internationally, governments are recognising the blur of work and private lives.
France introduced the El Khomri law in 2017 which encouraged businesses to avoid any intrusion into employees’ private lives and required negotiations between companies and staff about when their electronic communication devices could remain switched off.
This month a code of practice giving Irish workers the ‘‘right to disconnect’’ from work and not engage in electronic communications outside of their normal hours came into effect.
Australian unions have argued for the need to create an ironclad entitlement around the right to switch off and in 2019, the Police Association of Victoria secured an enforceable right to disconnect in its collective agreement, banning superiors from contacting staff outside work hours except in the case of emergencies.
But in New Zealand, the Government is not looking to implement any rules around an employee’s right to disconnect.
Workplace Relations and Safety Minister Michael Wood said the requirement to work outside rostered hours depended on the
employment agreement.
If employees felt they were being unfairly expected to work outside their normal working hours, the first thing they should do is raise the issue with their employer, Woods said.
If the two sides were unable to reach an agreement, then dispute resolution services were available, including free employment mediation.
Woods said he was not looking at introducing specific ‘‘right to disconnect rules’’ but the Government was working on other policies to ensure people were treated and paid fairly for their work.
Public Service Association national secretary Kerry Davies said workers were increasingly worried about the blurred lines between their personal and professional lives.
Working from home in the wake of Covid-19 had been a mixed bag for employees, with some enjoying the flexibility while others struggled to clearly divide between work and private time, she said.
‘‘With or without a ‘right to disconnect’ law, New Zealand workplaces should have clear policies and expectations about when an employee gets to switch off. If your job does require you to be on call, there should be reasonable limits and compensation involved.’’
Expecting staff to work long days or to constantly be available has led to increasing levels of burnout.
Professional coach for lawyers, Katie Gray, said the past year had been tough for white-collar workers, particularly in professions like law.
‘‘There is almost this feeling that you have to make hay while the sun shines, you have to keep working as hard as you can because you don’t know how long the work will be sustained,’’ she said.
‘‘But at the same time it has been very difficult to keep up that momentum over what has been a very long period, with no escape.’’
All the things people needed to build resilience, like social interaction, regular exercise and entertainment were missing or difficult to include as work hours encroached on the rest of life, Gray said.
Employers needed to be clear with their workers that they could disconnect from the office.
‘‘Unfortunately, in workplaces and in professional services in particular, the culture is that you don’t just have to show up and do your job, you have to exceed expectations, you have to go above and beyond.
‘‘There is almost this belief that if you are not stressed out to the max, if you are not busy enough then you are not as valuable to the organisation as someone who is running around, stressed out and overwhelmed.’’
But if workers were not switching off and recharging, then they were less productive.