Work-Life Harmony/Employees/Great Resignation
Reclaiming Life, Not Quitting Quietly
Capitalism demands that we make our paid work the ‘one true love’ of our lives and practice the art of balancing. I suggest we reject both.
In The Iliad, Achilles, the Greek warrior, was presented with two choices — everlasting glory or long but insubstantial life. Today, the gods of capitalism would have offered Achilles a successful career where they could be ‘the best version’ of themselves or a stable albeit uneventful life.
When I joined the workforce as a twenty-three-year-old, big ideas and wicked problems occupied my mind. I believed that I could change the world. Six years later, “Heaven Knows I Am Miserable Now” by The Smiths is one of my most-heard songs on Spotify.
These days I dread asking people about their jobs; most often than not, I hear, “Oh, it’s so great, I am making an impact … such a strong learning curve … so much innovation, but work-life balance is a major issue.”
So, keeping that ‘but’ in mind, here is some food for thought for the many Achilles of today.
All work and no play …
The moment we hear ‘work’, we start thinking of our jobs, salaries, deadlines, scheduled meetings, emails, and the hundred notifications on Slack, WhatsApp, or Outlook. By now, many of you would have added one of them to your mental to-do list or already checked your notifications. If so, don’t drift away; this article is just for you.
As millennials, we grew up hearing the famous adage “turn your passion into your profession” or the repeated Confucius quote, “choose a job you love, and you will never have to work a day in your life”. I would give an arm and a leg to erase these from my mind. These adages effectively summarise the growing reasons why we need therapy over the weekends and why Oxford’s 2022 word of the year was ‘goblin mode’.
Capitalism would like us to believe that our paid jobs are the only work in our lives. But what happens to our second and third shifts — domestic and emotional labour? Many proclaim that doing something for your loved ones is not ‘work’. Those who believe so are welcome to turn my domestic chores into their passion.
Workplace family aka the toxic quicksand …
As an employed professional, you must have come across the famous catchphrase, “this company is like a family”. It’s a classic red flag that initially projects a comforting, almost loving space. However, soon one can unearth the serious psychological effect this has on the employees.
To what lengths would you go for your family? What sacrifices are you willing to make for them? Now, replace ‘family’ with ‘company’. Do your answers remain the same?
Although the melodramatic idea of loving family unconditionally is quite 1960s, some of us continue to live by it. However, our relationship with workplaces is essentially transactional — we provide services based on our skills and calibre, and the bosses pay us for it.
However, by equating family and work, we are coerced into believing that it deserves the unconditional love that should come naturally to us as it does for our family. If only we could lay off relatives as swiftly as these companies lay off their ‘family members’.
Have you ever felt guilty for not loving someone enough — not being able to give someone the love that they need and deserve? The immense shame that our troubled minds put us through because of it. Guess what? The company that tells you that it is a family would like you to feel the same shame when you fail to love it. Sweet, right?
The demand to seek joy, passion, self-actualisation, and fulfilment is swiftly replacing the idea of employment security that was long associated with jobs. No one questions how these demands dissuade us from seeking these outside the workplace, thus, making us surrender our lives to our jobs.
Scapegoated in loops: labour of love or loss of consent?
I would be the first person to admit that I have fallen into the trap of treating work as my ultimate passion more times than falling in love with fuckbois.
It doesn’t help that I initially pursued a career in the non-profit space in India. My first job was with an NGO that aimed to solve the problems in India’s education system. We entered the underprivileged classrooms for two years and received a small stipend.
Eventually, reality caught up. Many of us came from humble backgrounds and realised that working in a non-profit space is also a privilege. It only comes to those who have filled coffers and no responsibilities. By then, the Indian work-till-you-die ethic had firmly hegemonised us.
My eventual capitalist bosses used perverse ways to guilt-trip their employees for not working outside the regular hours. Like many start-up owners, they believed that their company was our baby too and that earning revenue for it was the ultimate goal of our lives.
These experiences made me realise how workplaces today encourage fetishising long working hours. As if being swamped with work 24x7 is something to be proud of rather than something to revolt against.
The job then demands everything, not allowing you the liberty to prioritise anything else over it. While those who adhere to these rules get rewarded, those who are unwilling are penalised.
But, this is not just about the working hours. In time, we start defining ourselves with our work, believing that only hustle will bring us success, and letting CEOs and self-proclaimed life coaches decide the parameters of our ambition. It compels us to give up our interpersonal relationships and personal interests for success. Our basic needs turned into luxuries that we can no longer access.
Ultimately, we are encouraged to see our work as a labour of love — easier to deny you your deserved salary because how can anyone put any value on love?
After being exploited to the point of no return, having a mental breakdown, and being diagnosed with PTSD, I realised that this was not the road I wished to walk down for the rest of my life. Though my experiences are not unique, they made me question what brought this on.
On paper, I received several employee benefits. I had my right to take leave for caregiving, sickness, or leisure. Yet, the work practices made me feel ashamed of prioritising myself over work. So, I worked from hospitals and through mental breakdowns.
The episode ‘The Prisoner’s Dilemma of Unlimited Leaves’ from The Ken’s podcast series ‘Cost to Company’ throws some light on this. Sneha notes that many people across industries often second-guess taking leaves despite some companies even offering them unlimited leaves.
One of the reasons for this is how the higher management would interpret their leaves. Will they be penalised? Will this affect their increment and promotions? These questions turn their rights into privileges.
It doesn’t help that companies often glorify this masochistic behaviour in their employees. During the town hall meetings, my bosses would award people who worked from hospital beds. These poor souls would be celebrated for imbibing the so-called organisational values and not be assured that their health was more important than a sales deadline.
Conversations with my peers across Indian start-ups have been disheartening but not unsurprising. Most bosses consider it okay to ask people to justify their time off. Apparently, it is also their right to ask people to cancel their scheduled leaves and get them to work beyond 45 hours a week. The subtext: not enough competent people, and the innovative solution: get one person to do the job of ten.
These same bosses believe that while their time is like diamonds, ours is like sand. While they may go on leave to rejuvenate, the employees should pledge their weekends and festivals towards work. Even if that work does not come under our purview and we are not paid for it — no incentive, no recognition. And when we don’t do it, we are tagged as ‘quietly quitting’ … for just reinforcing boundaries?
But, when one person does it and is celebrated for it, it becomes an expectation from others — to stretch beyond the working hours, burn the midnight oil, and prioritise the company or employer over everything else. If you don’t do it, many others are there to replace you.
However, through all this, we fail to see that our salaries continue to be stagnant or don’t even meet industry standards while we generate wealth for the companies. In the end, one question remains — how did I let this happen? And a voice whispers, what you considered love was just gaslighting, baby.
The invasion and its aftermath
In the last few years, the work culture has evolved, and capitalism in the garb of familial love has invaded our very being. The COVID-19 pandemic has further enabled this invasion. And now that it has happened, we would never be able to return to simpler times.
If you have a smartphone and a laptop (personal or company-owned), it doesn’t matter if it is 10 p.m., a Sunday, or a holiday — you are expected to be present at all times. So what if you were at a funeral or on vacation with family? You did not send that email and thus are not good enough.
Quitting my job and seeking peace brought me to the concept of work-life balance. People around me seem to have turned into acrobats — forever performing the balancing act but failing miserably at it.
In 2021, The Wire reported that according to the International Labour Organisation (ILO), Indians are the most overworked workers globally. Further, salaried Indians usually invest six days a week in work-related engagements. So much for balance.
Hundreds of articles and podcasts will tell you how to achieve work-life balance. Another hundred would let you know that it is a myth. At first glance, it seems simple — draw a balance between your professional and personal life. However, it’s problematic because it makes us believe that we can get on with our lives once the nine-hour shift is over.
The term ‘work-life balance’ heavily undermines our unpaid work by relegating it to a ‘non-work’ space. The situation is much worse for women as they end up lugging the domestic workload on their shoulders. As Eve Rodsky remarks in Fair Play, the world never accounts for the invisible working hours in a mother’s workday. Instead, the environment and people around them make the women feel insufficient both at home and at the workplace.
It was only during the pandemic that the Indian middle class came face-to-face with the enormity of domestic chores. They could no longer depend on hired help to clean up after them. It finally dawned on them that juggling a full-time job alongside household and care work was no joke — a longstanding unsaid expectation from working women.
But pause for a moment and think — we are no Doctor Strange or Scarlet Witch, jumping through multiple realities and lives. We have just one life, and our paid work is a part of it, not outside it. So, when we say ‘work-life balance’, we begin pitting our paid work against everything else.
To seek balance or harmony, that is the question.
Achieving harmony in every aspect of one’s life, including paid jobs, cannot and should not be the onus of an individual. I may choose to follow the seven steps in your article that would help me get this ‘balance’, but how much agency do I actually have to exercise these priorities? As individuals, we feel powerless within the capitalist system that is always working against us.
Today, most companies are ‘woke’ enough to know that celebrating Mental Health Day or Mental Health Month would earn them brownie points on social media. However, hostile environments that breed several mental health issues cannot get away by organising a couple of seminars as lip service. What we need are systemic changes, not quick fixes.
In their book The Myth of Work-Life Balance, Richenda Gambles, Suzan Lewis, and Rhona Rapoport highlight that if companies genuinely wish to make a difference, they need to give space to the employees to change their work practices to harmonise the different aspects of their lives satisfyingly without being penalised. We don’t need employee beds in offices, we need the agency to prioritise our lives.
But, along with company policies and strong government regulations, we also need to address the generational difference in mindsets that enables toxicity in workplaces.
People in leadership positions often belong to Generation X — a generation that grew up with the belief that long working hours yield benefits and are crucial to success. Mental health was not a part of their everyday worries.
It is important to break away from these mindsets and identify and acknowledge that the priorities of the younger generations can be different from theirs. This would not only benefit the employees but also help the companies recruit and retain motivated individuals.
So, what choice do we have?
I am not here to boast about discovering the secret to this harmony. Armed with my meds and regular therapy sessions, I have started a new job and continue to navigate life. Some days are great, others are a pain.
However, Sarah Jaffe’s incredible book Work Won’t Love You Back helped me understand that the idea is not to hate work or not enjoy it. Like other aspects of our lives, we do invest our energy, creativity, and emotions in what we do. Many of us have put tremendous effort into achieving professional expertise and training to be good in our jobs. But our job titles should never limit us.
Several countries consider it rude to ask, “What do you do?” because our occupation does not define our being. Our personalities, like our lives, have several facets, and paid work is just one of them.
So, Achilles, you don’t need to choose between the two — success and peace are not mutually exclusive. Rather, we need to define success for ourselves. It could be being on the Forbes 30 Under 30 list, vacationing yearly with friends, spending quality time with family, or reading 40 books in a year.
In a world where having time to yourself has become a luxury and paid work seems to dominate every second of our lives — let’s try to steer away from the norm. The first step towards it could just be putting an end to this love that can and will never be returned.
That abundant love in your heart belongs to your friends, family, partners, pets, and most importantly, you.
