Work Life Balance

[elgaucho]

So how is everyone? Feels like an age since I posted here, although I've naturally been lurking in the corner of the Arms regularly to make sure everyone is still having a good time! I can't really keep away from you lot!

Life got pretty hectic for me in the last 9 months or so.

Like others in this forum, I also work in projects and change. I think it's one of those worlds where you vary from being busy and up against the wall, to sometimes things being a little quieter. I got a fairly big project to manage back in September / October, which has kept me pretty busy until the end of last month. All in all, it's gone pretty well, but not without additional hours to get the job done. In some cases I think I was in the office from around 7 when I start, and logging off at 11pm or later, after taking a couple hours break in the evening.

And between that I've had to take on a lot of responsibility for my old man, who's now gotten past the point of managing his (annoyingly complicated) accounts. So between work and my free / home time being tied up to sort out support for him, as well as resolve practical problems and try to find trustworthy people to help when he's 15,000 miles away, it's been a pretty intense time.

It's certainly meant that gaming, overall, died a death in terms of being able to get immersed in it - with the exception being Horizon Forbidden West, which was one of the games I actually bought a PS5 in anticipation of! (no regrets, it's absolutely fabulous!)

But all this got me thinking about work life balance, and whether I'm just a victim of circumstances, or losing perspective on what this looks like. I'm lucky to work in a job I enjoy, where I'm challenged daily, and have the freedom to come up with and advance creative solutions, and look to take us forward as a company with data driven metrics (I'm definitely a data geek too!). But I'm left still wanting to know what work/life balance is to you all as a frame of reference.

The hours I did on this project were significant, but not more than I've done for other projects. The way I see it, after the project is done, I'll still have an opportunity to work a bit more relaxedly until the next 'big one' comes along.

My general view on resourcing is that a little overtime is fine. But.... if you're having to do overtime ALL the time, then the company has a resourcing issue and you should draw a red line on the hours and effort you work. Don't mitigate the impact of their under resourcing or you're making your own job harder in the future. I don't think it helps you OR the company to do that. I think on average I'm probably staying an additional hour a day at work, but I do find time during the day to socialise and chat with people and keep abreast of what's happening, how morale is doing etc, so I'm fairly comfortable that this evens out, and I do take an hour for lunch to eat comfortably and get out for a walk / fresh air. My normal working week should be 40 hours usually, which is slightly more than the UK, at least from my experience.

So...
How many hours a week are you contracted for versus what you actually do?
Do you object to working additional hours?
Do you like what you do?
Do you feel your work / life balance is as it should be? What should it look like if not, and is it something you challenge your company on?

I'd love to hear what you guys think, if it's not too personal to ask!

And hey again! I'll try to start posting again in another week or two when I'm back home from helping my old man!

[Wrathbone]

How many hours a week are you contracted for versus what you actually do?
33.75 hours (4.5 days), and I typically work exactly that outside of very unusual circumstances or flexing my Friday afternoons off.

Do you object to working additional hours?
As long as I'm offered recompense in time or money and it's not an excessive amount, I have no objections. I used to do semi-frequent paid overtime for a year or two when we were short staffed.

Do you like what you do?
I don't hate what I do. On the rare occasions that I get an interesting project and some clear time to get stuck in without constant hassling from others, I very much enjoy my work. I do have a healthy disdain for the corporate side of things, but when I'm allowed to actually do my job it's mostly fine.

Do you feel your work / life balance is as it should be? What should it look like if not, and is it something you challenge your company on?
I'm under no illusions - my work / life balance is about as good as I could hope for it to be. Outside of management and sales, the company I work for does not generally promote a culture of always being available, and particularly with my development job there's no real call for that anyway. When I finish work at the end of the day, I've finished work. I don't have a work phone and I don't check my work emails outside of work hours. When I look at the insane hours my sister puts in as a primary school teacher (easily a 60+ hour week), I'm frequently reminded of how fortunate I am to be able to completely disconnect my work life and personal life.

Interesting subject, good to see you back on the forum!

[Raid]

I'm probably not a great example for this as I'm currently still waiting to hear whether I'm losing my job, having had to take another stint off for mental health reasons (which I've had to do a lot over the last five or six years), but I suppose I have strong opinions on this topic. For reference I work a call centre job for a major bank, having moved from the company's branch network about a year ago.

How many hours a week are you contracted for versus what you actually do?
I've been reducing my contracted hours over the last few months, from 35 in February to 22 at the moment (although I'd requested a drop down to 16 for this month which hasn't happened). I work from home, and the VPN and software take an absolute age to connect and load (my work machine stores nothing locally for security reasons), so if you count the time I spend logging in in the morning I guess I work an extra hour per week, but in terms of actually doing what I'm paid for I doubt I work more than 15 minutes extra.

Do you object to working additional hours?
I object to working additional minutes.

Do you like what you do?
Not even remotely. The actual work would be fine were it not for the ridiculously controlling policies the company institute to ensure employees are being productive.

Do you feel your work / life balance is as it should be? What should it look like if not, and is it something you challenge your company on?
This is the complicated bit. The reason I'm still in this horrible job is because I recently made a decision to retrain in my own time for the career I actually want, and so I've reduced my hours to the point where I think I can cope with the stress it produces, while giving me just enough income to survive. The company have been generally very supportive of this. I work from home, so there's no commute, I start work earlier than most which helps when I've been suffering from insomnia for much of the last year and am up earlier than most anyway, and I can largely choose my exact shift patterns. So yes, I think my work-life balance is theoretically good. Unfortunately that's not taking into account the hours of lying awake stressing myself out about how much I hate it all and not really having any better options.

[Alan]

35, usually do around 45. As long as I’m payed I don’t mind, especially because it’s generally exceptionally easy work.

Balance is another thing though because it being predominantly night shift does have a bigger impact than the same hours on a day shift would. I don’t love the job but as jobs go is not bad. I like that it’s not a static indoors job and sometimes we get contracts that are ridiculously easy and I end up spending more time reading or playing vita than working.

[elgaucho]

Do you like what you do?
I don't hate what I do. On the rare occasions that I get an interesting project and some clear time to get stuck in without constant hassling from others, I very much enjoy my work. I do have a healthy disdain for the corporate side of things, but when I'm allowed to actually do my job it's mostly fine.

I think I've kind of accepted that it really doesn't matter WHAT your job is in life, every job is politics, to one degree or another. I think I'm fairly lucky in that I can get along with a lot of different personality types, and fortunate to not have to deal with any real arseholes, as I doubt I'd keep my mouth shut very well if I did! ha!

Raid alludes to the same thing, and how sometimes corporate policies just get in the way of work:

Do you like what you do?
Not even remotely. The actual work would be fine were it not for the ridiculously controlling policies the company institute to ensure employees are being productive.

There's a fine line between measuring productivity and basically bottlenecking any autonomy, which enables better performance.

Any workplace that's trying to get productivity every minute of the day strikes me as though it'd be pretty toxic. People aren't robots, and can't be treated as such. Everyone deserves respect, and time to take a break should be a given. By all means measure the aggregate results, identify opportunities for technical improvements that will make the job easier, and have meaningful discussions on performance IF there are material issues or divergence. But I get the sense there's a lot of nitpicking that goes way beyond that, especially with timekeeping software.

35, usually do around 45. As long as I’m payed I don’t mind, especially because it’s generally exceptionally easy work.

Balance is another thing though because it being predominantly night shift does have a bigger impact than the same hours on a day shift would. I don’t love the job but as jobs go is not bad. I like that it’s not a static indoors job and sometimes we get contracts that are ridiculously easy and I end up spending more time reading or playing vita than working.

I have a friend (had? haven't spoken in a while) who worked for the Highways Agency, and his shifts were quite mindbending... three days morning shift, three days night, three days off or something like that. It never seemed to bother him, but it was weird only crossing him in our apartment every now and then due to the shifts.

There's some parts of me that think it might be nice to be able to enjoy part of the day more not at work, but I think it might have more inconveniences overall, and I don't adapt well to lack of sleep!

You guys' hours seem pretty reasonable all said and done, and kudos to Raid for finding the time to learn and find something new! That's awesome!

I do wish you were being given that opportunity THROUGH work though - there are so many opportunities to develop and transition, especially in a big bank, and they really ought to be supporting that progression internally. I've been lucky this last couple of years to really be able to develop my SQL skills in parallel as part of my job, as it helps me produce the data I then apply in everything else.

[Mantis]

I'm contracted to 37 hours a week (lunches not paid) but also receive what is essentially a prepaid overtime allowance which requires I do something like 320 extra hours a year. It can be averaged out to make each working day longer as a default but it is mainly there to cover exceptionally long shifts and weekend working which crops up from time to time. I'm on call for one week every month from 7am to 7am the following Monday during which time I have to answer the phone at any time of the day it rings, I dislike this immensely as it means I always have to be glued to my work phone and it can really make it hard to plan things outside of work in those weeks as a call out typically means travelling somewhere immediately. The allowance bumps my salary up almost two entire paybands though so as much as it is a pain and I would like to go back to 9-5 without the on call obligation, it would be difficult to part with the money even if I did secure a promotion.

Beyond that though my work life balance isn't too bad. There is a lot of internal pressure from certain managers to give your life up for the job and effectively be on call 24/7 and I have attracted criticism in the past for not being willing to assist with a deployment outside of my on call week, but generally it isn't too bad. Bits of my job are quite fun, though I would gladly give it all up if someone was willing to pay me to do my hobbies instead, I volunteer for things to keep the teams sweet at times and some months my on call period is very quiet. Most would probably consider my role to be quite high stress and dangerous, the days we do go out can often lead to pulling 16-20 hour shifts, sometimes consecutively, and I have been called at 3am in the morning during my on call period a few times. I generally don't get stressed at it the same way many of my colleagues do though because at the end of the day it is just a job. Ultimately, I do my bit to a good standard and then switch off and don't think about work at all. Some of my colleagues are hardwired to never stop thinking about work and even answer emails during their annual leave. They are insane, frankly.

[arqueturus]

How many hours a week are you contracted for versus what you actually do?
I'm contracted to work 35 but I'll often work a couple of hours here an there extra as a situation demands it

Do you object to working additional hours?
There is no onus on me to work those extra hours I mention above. If I do that I won't get paid overtime but will be able to take the time back as I have good relationships with my leaders/managers and I'm generally seen as an asset to my company. Just like you, if there's a project going on and there's a need, paid overtime comes into play but again I'm not forced to work this but I do because it's easy money. I should mention I work remotely and have done for the last 5 years now - it's very easy to work extra time so I've become a bit more aware of that and had to get some more discipline into working hours, but again, this was pre pandemic so it's ingrained now.


Do you like what you do?
Generally yes. At time there's challenges to overcome and I deal with the red tape, politics and bureaucracy but on balance I enjoy it and I feel I'm pretty well paid for what I do. However, I would drop this job to do something I really enjoyed if I knew it came with the same sort of stability and less risk if I could afford to. I am not one of those people that needs to be working to be fulfilled - but I do need money to do the things that fulfil me.


Do you feel your work / life balance is as it should be?
Yeah, I'm lucky, my company handled C-19 extremely well and do have a general sense of wellbeing for their employees, we have extra holidays, they abolished sickness policy and, if you had kids, you were not expected to work full capacity/be available all the time. They rolled out a flexible working policy after it all as they realised it was beneficial to many people. Even now, people can go and do school runs etc. - that's in my department mind.

Prior to Covid, I was thinking of making the jump from where I am but how they've handled things and treat staff along with some stories I've heard of how others have been treated has made me revise that. I negotiated a payrise recently which has helped that decision along too.

I'm extremely lucky. I wish I'd arrived where I am now about 15 years ago.


What should it look like if not, and is it something you challenge your company on?
See above really - if I was unhappy I would certainly challenge them (same as I did for the payrise)