Company Culture and the Work-Life Balance

I was chatting with someone recently who disclosed that their company actively encourages them to be "on call" when not at work. While this is quite normal in some positions - being close to a computer or telephone on nights and weekends - this company took it a step further, suggesting that their employees proactively call in on the weekends to ask if help is needed.

The company recently began touting itself as a 24-hour operation, but it never expanded its workforce to follow suit.

Now, when an issue arises, and nobody is there to address it, the executives at the company ask questions like

I thought we were a 24-hour operation! Where is everyone?

In this case, there's a disconnect between the C-level at the organization and its managers, who are trying to do more with less. While 12-hour-a-day workaholism has always been in the corporate world, an even more extreme 18-hour-a-day example is still very prevalent in the startup scene. The latter is quickly bleeding into the established former. With smartphones and email acting as a leash, an employee has to defy their employer's expectations, and their own reflex to impress, to actually maintain a proper work-life balance.

At my company, I try to communicate a very high priority on work-life balance. My theory: if people aren't over-worked, you'll net more productivity in the long run. Many studies were done in the 70s that concluded 40-hours as being the ideal productivity workload. More recently, that number has creeped up to 60 hours. Over time, an over-worked employee gets burned out.

It's tough to develop conclusive evidence on how burnout affects long-term productivity, as it's very subjective, but I think it'd break down like this:

Sales Person A:

40 hours per week

Closes 20 deals a month for 12 months*

240 deals a year

Sales Person B:

80 hours per week (100% more)

Closes 30 deals a month for 3 months

Closes 10 deals a month for the remaining 9 months (burned out)

180 deals a year

There are two laws at play here: the law of diminishing returns in the short term, and the Law of Overworkedness(tm) in the long-term.

Either way you slice it, if your company values motivated employees, you're not living up to it. In theory, it's abundantly clear that overworked employees aren't good for business. So why do companies insist on it? There may be a few industries where it does make sense:Industrial - factory workers, people who build things - requires very little thought, and just having bodies where they need to be will increase the supply chain and allow for more goods to be sold.

Other industries, like the food and service industry, may sound like it'd fit the same way, but consider this: if your waitperson just started their shift, they're going to be very friendly, and your customer's experience at the restaurant will be enjoyable. The chance of repeat business is high. On the other hand, let's say the waitperson is on the tail-end of working a double shift. They're going to be exhausted, and probably very short with your customer.

Is less staff worth the risk of losing repeat business? Probably not. Whatever money the restaurant saved by keeping that waiter there was completely negated by losing the returning customer.

There are exceptions for everything, but for jobs that require a lot of reflection and creative thinking, there's no way adding more hours to increase productivity will ever make sense.