It was a glorious
Saturday afternoon in early summer and I was hunched over a picnic table
garnishing a hamburger when my cell phone rang. I had been in the middle of a
good laugh after someone had told a delightful little anecdote but noticed it
was one of my employees and, since they were calling me on the weekend, thought
it must be something important.
I politely excused
myself and gave my employee my undivided attention. I had handed him a rather
large project from an important client and several weeks earlier had asked him
how long it would take to complete the project. They were apologetic that this
was the day that they had said they would be able to finish it, were almost at
the finish line, but that friends had come in from out of town.
Before he could even
finish his story I asked why he was working on the project when it was so
beautiful outside. I told him quite succinctly to stop his work and go out and
enjoy the rest of the day and not bother me until Monday.
When I returned to
finish garnishing my burger, the group of acquaintances I was sharing this
beautiful barbecue with looked at me with their mouths agape saying, “I wish
you were my boss”.
“Telling an employee to
enjoy life is a boss’ job,” I replied. And I truly mean that, for the following
reasons:
1) I handpicked my employees and I trust
each and every one of them. I also know that none of them slack off when it’s
not time. I let him set the parameters of when the job would be completed, I
understand the nature of his job and what it would take to actually complete
the project, and I knew full well that his finishing it in a couple of days
meant I wouldn’t have to break any promises to our client. So we’d stay in good
standing regardless. My experience has shown that giving my employees a great
deal of freedom has yielded better results.
2) There is no evidence that working
longer hours makes a person more productive. In fact, there have been several
studies that outline the benefit to a company’s bottom line by giving employees
greater flexibility in their working hours and that overworking employees can
have very negative effects. Some studies even go so far as to suggest that
overworking an employee can lead to them suffering from a variety of health
issues leading to them having to miss work. If that weren’t enough, at least
one study, Impacts of Late Working Hours on Employee’s Performance:
A Case Study on Engineers in Telecom Company of Pakistan, by Quereshi et al., even suggests that overworking an employee
could lead to unethical behavior including, “sexual harassment and breaching the code of conduct
of the organization”.
3) I know that if I behave erratically, or make
irrational demands from my employees, that it makes them question if we are a
good fit. Pushed too far and I could be down one employee and that can be worse
than the work not being done on time. Although telling him, “Sorry bud, the
work has got to get done” might not have been an irrational demand on my part
in this particular instance, I’m still stating quite clearly to him that work
is more important than his relationship with his friends.
What is more important?
So this does raise the question: what actually is
more important, work or friends? Many people spend more of their time, in a
given week, at work than anywhere else, so we are forced to make several
considerations based on this fact. The first is that, if they are going to be
asked to spend so much time there, is it too small a thing to ask that they
enjoy themselves? Second, should work and life really be kept so separate and
need to be kept in balance, or is work very much a part of life that should fit
harmoniously with all the other aspects of existence that we engage in? And
finally, in business, it’s important to remember that relationships are
everything, and that the social capital you build in fostering them, whether
with clients or with staff, will last with you for the rest of your life.
