Personal and Work Life
It has long been a general and accepted conception that work and personal life and different and being such must not cross over into the other’s boundaries. I would however disagree to this, and I have come to this conviction just recently(a year or so back).
For the longest time, I believed that work and personal life are very different and must be checked and parked in their proper place without overlapping or crossing each other’s boundaries. I have lived by this rule ever since I started working and I would say I was good at differentiating and checking each does not cross one another.
I however have come to a realization, every since I started working, I overextended and made the office my home. I immersed myself in work and I was loving it, I enjoyed it so much, I spent more time at work than at school and at home. I made the office my house, my locker was full of clothes and there are countless times when I would sleep over at work.
The rare times I was at home, with family and out of the office with friends, my mind would still be with my work. Work was my life and it was my passion. I also know of countless people who bring work home, some even working till the wee hours, effectively cutting quality time suppose to be dedicated for the family. Most of these people don’t file overtime.
I later on asked why it was ok for work life to cross personal life yet personal life is treated like a baggage and checked in before going to work, I said to myself, that is unfair….. I dwelled on this corporate situation for a bit and I the realized that the top management may have already realized this fact and that is most probably the reason why most organizations focus on initiatives that improve not only technical and work competencies, capabilities and work careers of their employees, most organizations have already extended them into the personal life.
I think corporations have realized that there is a direct connection between both work and personal life, for if work life is not doing well, personal life will directly suffer, this goes for a not so well personal life to greatly affect productivity and work performance. I believe this is the main objective and reason why top management fully supports activities and personal development initiatives that extend to the families of employees, a happy employee is a productive employee.
However, there are still some enculturated mentalities among current middle managers, a couple of isolated cases would still give employees negative evaluations for mixing work and personal life and will even enforce guidelines to make sure personal life will be checked in the baggage counter before entering the workplace.
As I have already expressed in my earlier article, Most initiatives from top down gets blurred and mis-implemented.
But I do understand these initiatives and changes do not happen over night and it takes a lot more time to change cultures. So, I would therefore advice people who are in these isolated situations to give your full support and do not tire in persuading your superiors as they are also people who have families I am sure constant communication and the right approach will bring them to the right point of view.
For managers who still think the way of old, try and have an open mind, this is the era of social and collaborative management, employees are more social, free thinking, driven, passionate and have very good self-confidence and acceptance. Harnessing the new workforce by open and good communication will be beneficial to everyone and will directly have a positive effect on the organization.