Congrats, You’ve “Earned” the Right to a Miserable Work-Life Balance!
https://open.spotify.com/episode/2hltMlV8cEAUatWjw9dFJS
While I was out on my walk this morning, I was listening to a business podcast where the host bemoaned young people complaining about the lack of freedom in the workspace.
Basically, they quickly got to the point of saying that you (as an employee) are not entitled to a four-day week or remote work until you’ve earned it, because businesses need structure and the business always comes first. It’s a perk for the elite, and if you don’t like it, you’re a whiny little bitch.
I’m not going to mention who the podcaster was, because I’m not getting into a pissing match with them, but needless to say, they’re wrong. Think “your weird uncle Greg having a sneaky shifty with the family hamster” levels of wrong.
Businesses need structure in order to operate efficiently and be profitable. Nobody would ever be daft enough to deny this.
But claiming that you can’t have a four-day week or work remotely, until you’ve proven that you’re better than everyone else and “earned it” assumes a number of disturbing things.
Firstly, it assumes that the business’s well-being should be the only priority in an employee’s life. Nope, followed by another massive dollop of nope.
The only people who should ever worry about the health of a business are the business owners.
When you hire someone, you agree to pay them X amount of money to do Y tasks for Z hours a week. All the employees should ever worry about is accomplishing the tasks for which they are paid. No more, no less.
As an employee, you know that if you don’t complete your allotted tasks, or aren’t available for the number of hours a week you’re paid, then you should and probably will be fired. That’s just common sense, and if you cannot act accordingly, to be responsible, and uphold your end of the contract, then maybe you need to find some other way to pay the bills.
I hear that OnlyFans and shilling for totalitarian regimes pay well. Maybe combine them?
Loyalty to a company is no longer a thing. It’s a relic of the past, from a time when companies knew they had a civic duty to their employees and communities, and not just a fiduciary one to their shareholders.
The vast majority of companies have proven that their loyalty to you ends at the next quarterly shareholders’ report. Let’s not kid ourselves into thinking that employees should be any different.
Employees shouldn’t have to worry about the rest of the business. That’s not their job. If they’re worrying about the state of your business, you’re failing as a business owner. You’re doing something wrong.
Secondly, the notion that businesses are entirely incapable of restructuring and changing their processes to accommodate a four-day week or remote work, absolutely terrifies me.
A business that cannot adapt to new ways of doing things, such as new working paradigms, that provide the means to be competitive when hiring and retaining quality employees, is ultimately doomed to fail.
This isn’t new thinking. It’s just not popular thinking among stagnant, controlling, micro-managing business owners and middle managers with trust issues.
Forward-thinking owners realize that the most productive employees are well-rested, have lives and hobbies outside of work (because they have time to), are engaged by their work, and ultimately happy to be working there.