Workaholism: Find Balance in a 24/7 World
Working long hours and always being available is just part of being a project manager, right? Wrong.
30 August 2011
Do your project managers work overtime every day? Are you able to contact them anytime, anywhere? Do they forego their hard-earned holiday time? If so, you may have workaholics in your midst. And that’s not always a good thing.
There’s a difference between working hard and being a workaholic. Workaholism is working beyond the standard hours in a day at the expense of social activities, relationships and sometimes even one’s health, says Bryan Robinson, Asheville, North Carolina, USA-based author of Chained to the Desk: A Guidebook for Workaholics, their Partners and Children, and the Clinicians who Treat Them.
Workaholic tendencies are often influenced — and even condoned — by organizations, Mr. Robinson adds.
“Think of the supermarket. It doesn’t create food addictions, but you know they’re there. The workplace doesn’t create workaholism, but it can certainly support and enable it,” he says. “From the top down, organizations push and press workers to deliver more, faster. People are afraid of losing their jobs, and in some cases are afraid to take vacations.”
Only 33 percent of workers in Japan took a vacation in 2010, ranking it as the world’s most workaholic country, followed by Australia (47 percent), South Africa (47 percent) and South Korea (53 percent), according to a survey by Ipsos Global and Reuters. The survey looked at 12,691 workers in 24 nations.
Due to the nature of the profession, project management lends itself to workaholism, says David Kretschmer, implementation manager at Bupa Australia, a private health insurance company in Melbourne, Australia.
“Project managers are committed to their project and quality outcomes. It’s very hard for us to walk away from things that are not complete,” he says.
Organizations can help project managers get a better handle on work-life balance. In South Korea, for example, a branch of Shinhan Financial Group keeps a rein on workaholic employees by locking them out of their computer system during their required two-week holiday.
Methods don’t have to be so severe. Start with getting a better understanding of your project managers’ workload before adding more tasks or responsibilities, Mr. Kretschmer says.
Create a culture where taking time off is OK, “instead of encouraging people not to or creating conditions where they can’t,” Mr. Robinson says. “When you have restorative rest and you can disconnect and know that your manager supports you, it calms you down.”
To prevent overburdening your project talent, look into adding additional resources, suggests Andrea Kay, Cincinnati, Ohio, USA-based author of “Work’s a Bitch and Then You Make it Work.”
“Encourage project managers to think about who else has expertise that can be contributed to a particular project, or figure out a way to share a project with another person,” says Ms. Kay, also a career consultant.
In his current role, Mr. Kretschmer says his organization makes a concerted effort to be more empathetic to job pressures.
“When I come in at 7 a.m., I’m asked at 3 p.m. when I’m going home. Additional resourcing is found if too much work is accumulating,” he says. “I’ve been offered and encouraged to use a number of business analysts who have been assigned to the project.”
Organizations should have project managers perform tasks that play to their expertise — and be allowed to delegate other responsibilities.
“Having senior project managers spend three hours printing and binding a project summary report is not effective,” Mr. Kretschmer says. “It leads to the project manager making up those hours after work.”
If organizations can do a better job of encouraging work-life balance, it could provide one of the greatest returns on investment.
“People think more clearly and positively, and their morale is higher,” Mr. Robinson says. “Anything the organization can do to keep that up is going to filter down.”
