If you have to work for a living – and most of us do, life can get really complicated especially if you have a spouse and/or kids.  I have gotten past that point in my life, where I have to worry so much about the work life balance, as both of my children have left my house (although I still pay for their car insurance and cell phones). Nonetheless I understand the strife that folks go through everyday having to deal with the pressures of family life.

Last week I was walking thorough my work place and could not help but overhear a distressed employee on the phone.  He was speaking to his wife and said, “Can your mom pick you up and you get Susie at school and then come by here and get the car and take Susie to the doctor?”  I am not sure what he had going on, on all fronts but it seemed liked he had a lot going on this day.

Man, I felt for this fellow. He has a sick kid a wife at home with no transportation and he is trying not to leave work so he can save his valuable paid time off for a real emergency. Today he is just looking at a bad day which requires some special arrangements, not really worth burning time off. Now I don’t think this gentleman is any different than a lot of working parents.  He is trying to manage competing priorities everyday.

Our Company provides paid time off and FMLA; suffice it to say we try to provide employees with the needed time to deal with family emergencies or unplanned family situations.   But ultimately it is up to the employee, to decide when to “spend” their time off.   Now when my guy hangs up the phone and goes back to work do you think he is going to be completed focus on and immersed in his work.  I think not.

I am the HR guy – the people person.  Can I help this guy, should I help him?  As I said he has options but has chose not to exercise them for whatever reason.

Quickly, I run through several scenarios in my mind but none of them seem to really help the situation. Should I go pick up his wife?  Should I give him a get out of jail card?  I really can’t do anything for this fellow that I am not willing to do for anyone else, so I do nothing.  Now I feel like I have somehow failed him and the situation as a whole.

So let’s review, we have an employee who is going back to their job, and going to worry about their spouse and their sick child, the amount of time off he has left and what it is that he is doing at work.  If we are lucky we will be getting about 33% of his attention.  And the HR guy feels inadequate and uncaring which will not really help my work focus either.

I am sure this situation happens every week in most every workplace around the country. How do we help the employees find the balance they need, and make them understand we need them at work being fully engaged?  After all, life is complicated.

Photo Credit Insing. 

Guest blogger on Blogging4Jobs is Dave Ryan has been in HR since it was called Personnel. Dave is active with SHRM in many different aspects.  Dave is also a certified U.S.A. Hockey Official and a frequent speaker at local colleges who speaks about H.R. topics and social media in the workplace. Dave enjoys reading blogs, staying current on H.R. topics, officiating ice hockey, golf, computers and all gadgets electronic. You can find Dave on LinkedInDavetheHRCzar and on twitter, @davethehrczar.

As employees reach communication fatigue in critical mass, the psychology and act of slacking at companies across the world also reaches a disturbing level.  Forty-four percent of employees are not committed to perform even though they know what to do.

While I’m not sure that are directly correlated, I do believe the two are inter-connected.  Over the last three years, companies have drastically downsized and restructured leaving employee commitment levels dangerously low.  And so we slack not necessarily because we are a disengaged workforce disinterested in our work but because we have to.  Slacking to demonstrate our necessity within the organization.  Filling our days with meeting requests, coffee breaks, and conference calls about conference calls. Because professional slacks have a knack for looking and acting productive even when it’s actually the opposite.

I once had a supervisor named Bill.  He made slacking look like an Olympic sport.  Bill successfully scheduled massive amounts of meetings and re-scheduled them on a daily basis.  Since our calendars were open to most anyone to view, I periodically took a peek as I was curious about the involvement in all his activities.  Bill had successfully mastered the fine art of slacking.  He was a friend to all and made the regular rounds chatting it up while he patiently waited for the 21 months until his retirement.

Over dinner not long before I left the organization,   Bill told me exactly that.  He was a slacker yet not in so many words.  Hanging on by his fingernails through four HR  reorganizations one of which resulted in a position demotion.  Bill didn’t owe anything to the company, and I believe he felt the same way about me.  He regularly encouraged me as a business owner and entrepreneur.  Perhaps, the man was really on to something.

Or you could make the argument that slacking is one’s natural environment.  It was Bill’s nature to be a slacker.  On average your employees spend about two hours a day at work not counting lunch wasting away.  Facebook or no Facebook.  Smoking or no smoking.  The slackers remain slacking.  Corporate slackers and unproductivity cost companies $759 billion a year across the nation.  And that’s not including March Madness.

The psychology of slacking has found a direct correlation to your work environment.  A scientific study by the University of Exter revealed that employees who are empowered to create and design their own workplace environments are more productive having a positive impact on a company’s bottom line.

So it’s safe to say that people who are involved in the design and control of their own work environments, make the company more money and are less likely to slack.  Or maybe they just  have a better system than good old Bill.

So maybe Bill was just ahead of his time, a true visionary making the case for performance based pay and resulted oriented workforces.  I’m not sure, but I have a feeling that Bill’s on a beach drinking a pina collada as you are reading this now. So maybe there is an upside to the Psychology of Slacking?  I mean it worked for Bill.  Shouldn’t it work for you?

Photo Credit Flickr.

One of my favorite fellow bloggers is Chris Wilson who is also located in Oklahoma City.  While his blog focuses on digital marketing strategies for businesses, many of his posts are relevant to those in the job hunt as well as the human resource industry.  A recent post of his discusses, a revealing Slide Share presentation by Jeff Brenman of Apollo Ideas discussing  the future of the workplace.

With Chris and Jeff’s posts in mind, it is important for us to understand that how we as the employer and employees view and see the workplace is changing.  And because of this what companies are looking for in candidates is also changing.  How will you as a job seeker and me as a human resource business professional adapt?

• Transparency. Your activities both inside and outside of the office will be tracked. Everything you do and say both online and offline can and will effect your company’s future success.  For businesses, this is certainly scary stuff which is why having a clear vision of who you are, your company is, and what the rules are is especially important.
• Flat. Your work location won’t matter.  Offices for the most part will become the thing of the past.  Skype, Videoconferencing, and streaming video will be the future of the way in which we work.  If your company has an office space, it will most likely be shared, a term called coworking where creative people often outside of your company work in a shared workspace.  Working from home will be the norm.
• ROWE with me. Companies like Best Buy have been using the ROWE for years with great success.  ROWE stands for Results Oriented Work Environment.  Environments like these are ideal for the global world we live in and offer flexible hours, employee satisfaction, and a focus on results.  Imagine taking Wednesday off to attend your child’s school play and spending that evening in the virtual office without having to take a vacation day or feeling guilty if you didn’t.
• On demand. One of the down sides to this new world of work is that because work is flexible and results based it is also always changing.  Employees and businesses will have to learn to quickly make solid business decisions while also understanding that because change is constant so will the work load and hours required to do your job.  Employees will begin to work on a more contract and consultancy basis to allow businesses to better adapt to the changing needs of the business world and marketplace.