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Vacation? what vacation? - Emerging Issues - flexible working conditions - Brief Article

HR Magazine, August, 2002 by Dave Patel

Flexible hours and the increasing use of technology have been hailed as boons for workers trying to balance their job demands with their personal or family obligations. But technology's promise of freeing workers from the constraints of place and time and boosting productivity could instead handcuff them with 24/7 work cycles that leave little room for personal needs.

Commonplace tools such as laptop computers and mobile phones are being joined by personal digital assistants, tracking devices, and wireless and high-speed Internet access--further enabling the boundaries of work time to blur. Add to this companies' ability to cobble together work teams from around the world, and it's evident that work is becoming less constrained by time and location.

Moreover, the ability to work anytime from anywhere, thanks to technology, may be a contributing factor in the rise of work hours. Studies of the entire U.S. workforce indicate that work hours have been increasing slowly over the past decade, and surveys of U.S. workers show that they feel they're working much more now than they did in the past. According to a U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics report released last year, more than 25 million Americans said they worked at least 49 hours a week in 1999, and 11 million of them said they worked more than 59 hours a week. Most were salaried employees, and their actual time on the job often did not show up in official statistics of hours worked.

With personal obligations and longer commuting times in recent years putting more pressure on workers to strive for work/life balance, policies such as flextime and telecommuting have become workplace staples. But the very technologies that give workers more time flexibility also give employers greater ability to contact workers anytime, anywhere. And often employers do just that. The use of electronic leashes seems to be increasing, extending even to employee vacations. It's a concern for employees generally, but especially for those who have difficulty turning off or shutting out work.

Moreover, work done with the assistance of portable technologies will increase. Computer chips are continually becoming smaller and more powerful--consider that today's hand-held computers have the processing power of desktop systems of just a few years ago.

As this technology further frees workers from traditional workplaces and work schedules, it may also promote 24/7 work cultures. In turn, human resource professionals will be asked to measure the long-term effects of such cycles on worker stress, productivity and staffing.

Although employment policies aimed at giving workers more flexibility could indeed help them achieve work/life balance, the most challenging--and perhaps most effective--method of kicking the anytime, anywhere work habit may be the creation of corporate cultures that truly reward balance.

If employees see that their company values balance and that rewards are based on productivity rather than simply availability, they will be much less apt to take the laptop and the PDA and the pager with them on vacation. Who knows? They may even decide not to give out their cell phone number.

For more information on emerging issues, visit www.shrm.org/trends.> Dave Patel is the manager of workplace trends and forecasting at SHRM.