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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.
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.
Then why are you still working? If being out of work is so great with everything being paid for you, what kind of masochist are you that you're still trying to keep a job?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
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.
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.
The commenter is pointing out that a person on welfare programs likely also doesn't have everything they need, and very likely also has to try to find work or do something to maintain a balance. For example I've a family member that is trying to get into a new career later in life. They can't do fulltime work (for a piss poor pay rate of $9.50) which would help them get into a position they want, or they lose medical benefits that they need in case something hits the fan, which is likely.
There are many cases where people will be poorer for making more money.
In other words, welfare for individuals isn't enough to live on, and the Opportunist was attempting a rhetorical question to show a fallacy in the general assumptions made.
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.
wow talk about taking things out of context.
inflation has gone up so much that you need two incomes to compensate for it. When women started working people suddenly had extra income. which they then spent on things. businesses expanded, which hired more workers, and the situation pushed farther and farther. now you need two incomes to survive.
Also back then medical expenses where cheap yes but then so was the care. no mri, no cat scans, more people died on the table than lived. etc. medical expenses are sky rocketing because we have old people who need constant care, but can't pay for it. however if we take away that care they get pissy. try it. in the USA our budget is easily broken down into 30% for medicare, 30% for SS and 30% for military with he balance for every thing else.
not once will you hear any political talk about cutting SS down sharply to pay for the ever growing debt.
now back to inflation. yes officially the USA government puts it 2% a year more or less, however it all secondary markets (not food, gas, etc) it goes up on average 5%. with some goods like TV's or dishwashers actually going down -2%. that is why new tv's keep coming out, and why refrigerators are still $500-$1000 the same price they were 30 years ago. Car however keep going up. with base models of basic cars used to $12k in 2000, it is closer to $18k for the same model(mostly) now.
lastly before medicare. 60% of the population didn't have any health care. doctors are for the rich after all. that is your moto is it not? Currently 30% of the population doesn't have decent medical care. I can't afford visits to my primary care doctor. I can't afford the co-pay even with health care. I don't have an extra $100 per visit to spend.
i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
Now imagine how much of a burden people who don't have anything to lose would be. Because if the choice is to starve to death or to kill you and take the 20 bucks in your wallet, your chances to reach retirement age are rather low.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
In that case, I can only advise you to update your resume and start quietly looking for a new job. Any company that has so little regard for their employee's health and morale isn't worth working for, but it's always best to make sure they don't know you're even looking until you turn in your notice.
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