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'Flexible' Working Can Keep You Stressed Out For Longer, Lead to Illness (theguardian.com)
schwit1 sends news about the effects of flexible working schedules on the people who try them. Research has found that many employees fall into a "grazing" pattern for work — constantly being interrupted while working, and continuing to keep up with work emails when not — which results in having elevated stress levels for a longer period of time. This can make such workers more susceptible to illness, and it shows distinct biological consequences to having a poor work-life balance.
Flexible working policies can also raise the risk of poor working conditions, and create resentment among colleagues ... The findings are a blow to advocates of more sophisticated measures for enabling people to achieve a work-life balance in rich economies that tend to overwork some people while underutilising millions of others. With an estimated 10m working days lost to work-related stress in the UK last year, finding a good balance between the demands of home and the job now dominates concerns about the impact of work on health.
People who work would all have less stress if we were able to keep more of our paycheck instead of having it raided for government giveaways to non-workers.
I work four 10-hour days a week, which my employer calls a "flex schedule", and I telecommute.
It's a pretty sweet deal. And I totally ignore work when I'm off the clock.
I had a flexi-remote working job for two years and it was the best gig I ever had. Yes I'd reply to emails at all hours of the day, but I also worked an average 6 hours a day and found it easy to maintain a life/work balance. I ended up moving to Barcelona for six months and had my dream life for a while traveling around the world and working from wherever I happened to be that day.
If you have a job that you enjoy, a good boss and co-workers then it's great. But you have to be someone who can copy with blurred lines in your life and the idea that working/non-working isn't a binary distinction.
It's the same with being on-call in an IT-support gig. Some people are happy to carry a pager and responded to it now and then, others for some reason that I don't understand get really stressed by it and feel on edge the whole time the pager is on their belt.
I work from home, 8x5. I do not answer emails off hours, nor do I send them. They pay me for 40 hours, I give 40 hours.
Anyone who does different is a sucker or a thief.
It usually means "I want to be lazy, not do any planning, not do my job and you'll be at my beck and call to iron out my blunders".
And yes, that's going to stress you into a burn-out.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
In other news flexible working allows flexible approaches to working and less stress and less conflict between work and home :)
I work flexible hours, and I'm the happiest and most stress-free I've ever been. Didn't realize it until lately when I started experiencing stress again in my personal life. What a change! Don't let work dictate when your working hours are if you can help it. And especially don't *be* flexible about when work can schedule your hours if you can't set your own. The not-knowing of next week's schedule is what will cause your a constant tremor of worry, but being able to say "Oh, something came up, boss, I'll finish Wednesday's hours on Saturday" is like removing the weight of the world.
FTFA:
Working away from the office or part-time can isolate employees from social networks and career opportunities while fostering a “grazing” instinct that keeps dangerous stress hormones at persistently high levels, they said.
I don't see part-time work as a problem, as long as you are free to say that you don't work during those hours/days. On Wednesdays, I'm off. That means I don't respond to emails and of course don't come in to meetings or some such.
As for working away from the office, it's fine as long as I'm not actually working at home. Often, I'll just go to the local university library and work there for a day. Excellent wifi and absolute silence.
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If you job is keeping you stressed 24/7, then maybe you are doing a poor job? The way to deal with the stress of being fulling responsible for something, is to do such a good job that their is no need to worry about it.
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
I have a flexible schedule and sometimes it is great. During slower periods I can put aside work, go for a walk, go do something fun, relax. During busy times, my work day gets stretched and i end up doing more and more.
It's important to set limits on a flexible schedule. For example, try to stay below a set number of hours, or only work during certain times of the day. I find I handle the stress and workload a lot better if I force myself to take an hour off for lunch or only respond to e-mails between, say, 8am-8pm. Boundaries are important, perhaps even more so when none are required.
Flexible tasks though really help from being burnt out on any one thing
I can spend my time just about any work day either doing some website work, teaching a workshop, exploring new stuff that is job related or could be job related, answering phone calls, doing individual support for one or two people at a time, dealing with emails and our online ticketing system, etc.
My two coworkers and I split things up as we see them as being "fair". But when one of us gets tired with doing a particular thing, or dealign with a particular person, we can swap out. "I'll deal with $asshat_needing_help if you'll go do this intro to the web workshop for me"
Don't blame me, I voted for Kodos
Flexible working policies can also raise the risk of poor working conditions ...
I know an office manager who has the reverse problem when finding employees: There's no overtime but staff must work 3-5 days a week depending on how close the reporting date is, which is known months in advance. But many prospective employees don't organize their lives around their work schedule. Work, to them, is just something to do when they've got nothing happening in their personal life. The manager calls it 'working for shoe (shopping) money'.
The conclusions made on the article are fundamentally flawed from an English perspective, because looking at a Dutch company.
Historically harsh Calvinistic work ethics prescribe a strict work-life separation and that's one of the more blatant causes of stress, anxiety, irritation and frustration in a Dutch-only workspace. Rather than flexibility, isolation and alienation at work, so common in such environments, are the problem. People stress themselves due to lack of normal social interaction even when sitting at the office, that makes them also lose interest and systematically refuse any enthusiasm for whatever they do. Some call the lack of social interaction as "being professional", some others call it just plainly "inhuman".
In such workspaces, very differently than in a British, American or Spanish workspace, colleagues hardly ever socialize. They never or very rarely share interests or speak about anything else than the bad weather. They never, ever get to know each other on a personal level, neither they take initiative on their own to share drinks at the pub after a long working day, unless forced to do so or offered free beer. Socializing, in the good or bad, is an essential feature of English workplaces that a dutchman often sees as an annoying nuisance, preferring to go out in the evening with friends from their own community (or "pillar" as segregated communities where called in the past), but mostly never during the work week.
So going to office is boring and alienaing; the moment people keeps working and answering mails also from home, after the 9am-5pm working day, that alienation spreads into private life, breaks the balance and the removal mechanisms, causes stress. This in the Dutch society.
The English, and much more so the American work ethics, traditionally mix private and working life. Logically, since you have to spend 40 hours a week with the same people for the same scope, you accept to make that part of your life and you do not try to work mechanically until it's finished and then forget about the badness of it by seeing entirely different people. In a large American IT company you are on a mission together with your colleagues to make something happen. You know each other, sometimes even each other's families, and you gladly help each other A dutchman would see such strong commitment offending ("as if we can't help ourselves!"). The American way can be very stressful in terms of hard challenges, tiredness and (lack of) rest, but the kick of it, the "mission" in it may make it bearable, even when you have to connect your VPN at 2AM to help out a colleague or keep things running.
Flexibility, as opposed to bigot limitations (can you imagine? forbidding Whatsapp at the office?) in a human and especially in a social work environment is a Good Thing(TM), that may fill and shape a life. Stress can be controlled by sharing with others and knowing and respecting each own's limits. And if one knows and respects its limits, and his employer incidentally does that too, a private life can be built all around the working life, like an onion. Both working life and private life are life.
A flexible work schedule literally cannot mean less stress if that is a goal.
It's vastly less stressful to drive outside of core rush hour times.
Work is less stressful if you have more flexibility as to when it can get done, or you can do it at home without interruption. As for being "outside of social circles", how many slashdot readers would KILL for the chance to work at least one step removed from a typically politicized company org structure? That part is amazing!
The other reason why flexible working arrangements can lead to LESS stress and sickness, is that you can not be in the office when either YOU are sick, or everyone else is. There's times when a place I've worked at sounds like a plague ward, I can just pack up and not expose myself for hours on end to sickness in a cold environment.
People who feel more stress in a flexible work arrangement probably are those who are not really very good workers, only able to do what they are told. I imagine they might be more stressed.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I just had a creative gig and, for me, creativity doesn't happen only between 8am and 5pm. And it may strike for a few minutes or ten hours. Maybe I wake up at 3am with a flash of inspiration and I'm back to sleep by 3:30. Or nothing clicked until 4pm and I worked until 2am. I did the job for a flat rate with a couple check-in points to be sure I was producing what they wanted but how I managed my time was my business because I was working alone.
On the flip side, most of my career has required that I be available during regular business hours because I was working directly with other employees and clients who kept regular business hours. It's hard to work as a team if everyone floats in and out whenever they feel like it.
As for removing stress, I've found the best way to do that is have a big chunk of money in the bank and no debt. I highly recommend it.
Workers need a right to disconnect to give them downtime to recover.
You're telling us this, on the very first day of the New Year, here, in a country that is either way too loud We're number one!!,or too obnoxious Did I mention, We're number wan!to stop for a moment and consider that there is no other country that ignores vacation.
WARNING: Smartphones have side effects--most of them undocumented.
I'm doing the flexible work schedule thing myself, right now, to an extent. (Essentially, I work for a company that would ideally like me to stay in the office from 9-6PM every Monday through Friday -- but I've always pushed back against that, since so much of the I.T. support and maintenance I do can be done just as well from a computer at home over the VPN. I live 50+ miles from the office and the commute can really start to wear you down after a while.)
I have a great boss who is understanding, but other "higher ups" in the company are occasionally a little less understanding, if they feel they should get instant attention and help by just walking in and asking for it. We've started "reprogramming" people's expectations in that regard by implementing a ticket system it's pretty much mandatory to use. If you walk by and ask for help, we ask if you put in a ticket.....
As long as that's used, I get pop up alerts on my mobile devices the minute new tickets are put in and we can prioritize things pretty efficiently and get back to people from wherever we are. So I've sort of self-imposed a routine where I try to come into the office 2-3 days per week and work from home the others. The problem with these flexible schedules, though, is they require some discipline on YOUR part as the employee. People who need your help have NO idea if you're in the middle of trying to get a quick haircut, or putting gas in your car, or grabbing a late lunch, or ?? So yes, it requires some juggling if you're going to try to use your "not in the office" time to get other tasks done while taking support calls and doing your job. And doubly so if the flexible schedule includes the idea you'll work at least some of your hours as "off hours" vs. the 9-5 or 9-6 that others are in the office.
It really sounds to me like many of the people experiencing higher stress levels with all of this are unable to pull themselves away once they've put in their fair share of time? I guarantee if you work odd hours, you'll hear that phone beeping and see instant messages flying with people who just want to ask you a quick question, or need a quick password reset, or have a crisis where something crashed..... You have to remember that if you were working normal hours in the office, you'd be home and oblivious to all of that until the next morning, so pretend it's the same situation. Otherwise, it will slowly make you crazy.
It's really the only solution.
This right here. The article makes it sound like flexible times are stress, but I would define stress as having to settle mortgage documents but not being able to leave work to do it. Having to go to the bank / post office for something important but unable because I'm clocked in till 5pm. Having to go to the supermarket during the bloody peak hour of the day, and drive to work stuck in peak hour.
That last one is a real kicker for me. If I work 30min longer every day due to my flexible work hours and my boss expecting email replies somehow I still end up spending more quality time at home with the family on account of not having to sit in an endlessly and life draining queue on the highway (traffic here goes to utter shit at 7:45 so I aim to be at work an hour early and leave likewise). Need to go to the bank? Work late one night and then go to the bank the following morning on the way to work at 9am when it's open.
For me, it's the opposite of stress.
SO MUCH THIS.
If you have flexible work hours, split those work hours up in to your day in discrete chunks and do not do anything outside of those hours.
Preferably have a little rest between those chunks, with some exercise before that too.
Work, exercise, entertainment (can do both the Es together if you wish), sleep.
It is the method I have been using and I am even updating it just now to optimize it even better.
Mental work, physical, then relaxation just works so well to improving health and overall mood.
This article is about people that naturally get stressed very easily.
It matters not where, when or how they do their work, they will always suffer from it.
These people need some basic counselling to help them sort their life out and get those stresses out and away from their mind.
There is no reason to be constantly stressed unless you are in a stressful situation! Being stressed 24/7 is not healthy, because it just screws your body up so hard since it isn't being used to do anything.
$$$End-of-life care is in fact part of the problem.
So are treatments for cancer and such that extend life and put more people in $$$End-of-life care. Just look at the nursing home and related population and demand for nurses and home-care workers.
This is one reason the oligarchy has completely dismantled rational immigration systems in the west. Cheap foreign workers are desperately needed for relatively low-level medical jobs - aides, low-level nurses, transport, drivers, lab techs
This has less to do with macro economic than it does Federal-level financing in a society with a negative birth rate after the baby boomer generation. Boomers simply did not have enough children to support the ponzi schemes created by social security and the welfare state. Governments haven't dismantled immigration systems to support old people (they don't care about them), but to prop up the unsustainable central banking system which depends on constant growth and perpetual positive interest rates. These systems are based on debt instead of assets, and the only way to continue debt payments is perpetual growth, which requires an ever-increasing population of tax-paying workers.
"Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
--- Jerry Garcia
So. What I get on a tablet is the beta interface? I thought this had died long ago...
It's not the years, honey, it's the mileage. - Colonel Henry Walton Jones, Jr., Ph.D.
I appreciate the concern and suggestion, but I don't think that's an issue where I work. Maybe someday, when we have a different group of people managing I.T. But the thing is, we *do* come in on a regular basis and take care of anything from server or network upgrades to making sure a new hire has a computer configured and ready to go for them on their desk when they come in, in the morning.
The outsourced I.T. guy who lives 5,000 miles away can't be expected to agree to pop in on a Saturday afternoon while everyone's out of the office, to upgrade some of the hardware,or to be on site when they're having an important videoconference, just in case anything goes wrong.
We're trying to strike a balance between providing personal service and providing organized, FAIR service. It's really not fair that one person can jump over 5 other people who waited longer for help, just because he or she was in a position to come in to your office and drop a laptop on your desk, demanding an immediate solution.
...constantly being interrupted is the real problem. I work a normal schedule and constant interruptions are my number one source of stress. It is understandable that working a flexible schedule would amplify the source of the real problem. Best solution: get rid of phones, instant messaging, email and let people work from home. If somebody needs you to do something for them, utilize a ticketing system and require all work requests to route through that. This goes beyond IT support and covers general office work as well. If people have no other way to contact you other than by ticket it would help bring clarity to issues with workflow and support levels.
-==- Buy a Mac and leave me alone!