Americans take an almost masochistic pride in long hours. To be busy is a sign of importance. The harder you work, the higher you rise. Vacations are the stuff of long weekends and an occasional seven-day stretch. A 35-hour workweek is for the French or some other culture that sips wine at midday. In the U.S., it's all about what you do--not who you are. And those who sleep five hours a night or juggle two seemingly full-time pursuits evoke envy, not sympathy.
High tech, which was supposed to free people from the office, has in practice eroded the boundaries between work and leisure. There's no haven from e-mail and the telephone, no excuse not to produce at any hour of the day, and no obstacle to turning your kitchen table into a work station. With fewer than one-third of Americans working a traditional 9-to-5 day, even rituals such as the family dinner are disappearing.
But there's a payoff. To cope with a world where job descriptions are going to become even more all-encompassing, both workers and employers are starting to redefine their notion of work. The social contract is changing as a fluid schedule demands more flexibility from everyone in the workplace. Face time at the office has become increasingly irrelevant in climbing the corporate ladder. Instead, output and productivity are the gauge of success. For John A. Challenger, CEO of workplace consultancy Challenger, Gray & Christmas Inc., the blurring boundaries are liberating rather than enslaving. "We've been shackled by the idea of 9-to-5 since the early part of the last century," he says. "Today, we're much freer to go home and fit work around our needs."
Even if Americans can't bring themselves to take more official time off from the job, they increasingly will demand that the job be more accommodating to their personal time. The workweek may be broken up into three-hour chunks of time spread around the clock or compressed into an intense three-day period. Each employee will operate on a different internal clock, and employers will be more attuned to what actually constitutes productivity.
Already there are signs that Americans are starting to find more balance. As job time has encroached on leisure time, so too has leisure crept into the job. Workers increasingly are Internet shopping, exercising, chatting with friends, or otherwise building breaks into their day. They may work at midnight, but they also feel free to take off at 3 p.m. to see a child's school play. The aging of the workforce and the need for constant education are creating a less rigid view of careers--one that lets people dip in and out of the job market, work into their 70s, or take time off in their 30s to study, travel, or raise children.
Smart employers are restructuring the workplace to accommodate the shifting boundaries, enabling their staff to be more productive at home and find more fulfillment at work. Even salaried employees may increasingly be treated as free agents who define the parameters of their work day. And the office could morph into more of an extension of private life. SAS Institute Inc., the world's largest private software company, in Cary, N.C., has brought everything from nutrition counseling to youth day camps into the office environment. Sick SAS workers visit onsite medical facilities. The company's 4,000 employees bring 700 children to day care and, next year, should be able to enroll them in an SAS kindergarten. Working at home or putting in odd hours is the norm. "It's all about trusting employees," says human resources director Jeff Chambers, calling from a Florida beach. "We want people to have a challenging worklife and a life outside of work."
That's a big challenge for Corporate America. Many employers would rather dole out stock options or bonuses than time off. Yet a study by Yankelovich Partners Inc. shows that given the choice between two weeks of extra pay and two weeks of vacation, Americans would take the vacation by a margin of 2 to 1. "People are feeling overloaded," says President J. Walker Smith. One reason may be a demographic shift, as the massive baby boom generation enters a life stage in which making money becomes less important than family and personal pursuits. While an uncertain economy has left many workers worried about their jobs, September 11 underlined the fleeting emotional payoff of bigger paychecks.
Still, the U.S. work ethic is tough to shake. While much of the developed world has cut back the annual number of hours worked per person over the past decade, Americans have headed in the opposite direction--adding 58 hours to their yearly total. The Japanese, by contrast, have cut more than 191 hours. Yet U.S. workers don't even take what few holidays they get, giving back an average of 1.8 days, or almost $19.5 billion total, in unused vacation time to employers each year, according to a survey commissioned by online travel agent Expedia.com.
Indeed, complaints about work stress have become almost a badge of middle-class honor. Parents overschedule their children almost as much as themselves. "To keep busy is a mark of prestige in our society," says Bradd Shore, director of Atlanta's Emory Center for Myth & Ritual in American Life.
At the same time, the high cost of overwork is fast becoming evident. Medical studies show a correlation between a lack of vacation and increased heart attacks or other illnesses. Long hours also take a toll on productivity. Some studies even suggest that the vacation-loving French and Belgians now outproduce Americans on a per-hour basis. "At a certain point, there's a negative rate of return," says Lawrence Jeff Johnson, a senior executive at the International Labor Organization in Geneva. "If people work longer hours, they don't have time to refresh." He ought to know: After five years of living in Europe, the U.S.-born Johnson still hasn't adjusted to six weeks of annual vacation. In his first two years, he took two. Now, he's lucky to take three or four. "It's my Midwestern work ethic," he admits.
With fewer boundaries to delineate time off, the risk of burnout can be profound. But the value of a balanced life is also becoming more clear. After all, in a complex and increasingly competitive global economy, the well-rested--and productive--worker is king.
By Diane Brady
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