I was listening to Andy Hines speaking the other day. He describes himself as an 'academic futurist' (great job title, I think). He's written an article 'A Dozen Surprises About the Future of Work'. In the session he focused on the surprise that 'workers prefer working to live instead of living to work', a concept he developed in the paper 'The end of work as we know it'. He suggested three key assumptions about work and asked us to consider our position on these:
1 Work is central to individual identity
I thought this a pretty interesting assumption as it came hot on the heels of my own team who in our weekly report, the challenges section, posted: 'trying to stop Naomi working on her annual leave.' This is not the first time they have challenged my work patterns but in my case my work is central to my individual identity and it is also a personal interest –I'm fascinated by the complexity of organisational functioning and I'm very fortunate to have paid employment for what I love doing. However, according to Almuth McDowall, a researcher on work/life balance'Most of us aspire to have our work and personal sphere 'in sync' and balance has become the buzzword ... in an ideal world, most people would like their output assessed by the results they achieve at work and not by the hours they spend slaving away at their desk, which in turn would leave them free to pursue their personal interests outside work'. By this definition 'personal interests' are not work. This is an assumption worth challenging.