Work Life Balance & The Scary Printer
5 in 5 - Brave & Heart HeartBeat #145 ❤️
This week we’re taking a deep dive on what work life balance actually means in 2023, and looking at a new index that can help employees choose companies that ACTUALLY put it into practise.
Plus, Tik Tok takes one small step for teenage kind, an OG web user laments the lack of free spaces on the internet nowadays, and we ask - do Gen Z know how to use a printer? Spoiler alert – no.
Let’s get into it.
Were you forwarded this? Not a subscriber? 👉 Sign up here
#1 - Work Life Balance – Workers Decide
We know that post pandemic work life balance is a deciding factor in how people now operate in the workplace, following a period of reconsideration of how your job should work for you, and not the other way around.
A far cry from the days when corporate workers wore overworking as a badge of honour (excepting some sectors such as banking where JP Morgan and others are still pushing this mindset, and Musk who is trying and failing to do the same at Twitter). Work-life balance has almost overtaken financial stability as a priority for workers, with 90% saying it is one of the most important aspects of their work.
Possibly due to the emergence of remote work, the concept of work life balance is also changing, from the idea of spending equal time in each place to recognising the intertwined nature of the two.
Workers now want the flexibility to be able to meld work hours and personal life. For example being able to take time out in the morning to take their kids to school, or a longer break at lunch time to go for a run. Many companies are adapting to this new mindset, allowing workers to spread their hours out over the day into times that work for them, or offering hybrid work opportunities.
Going even further, workers now also often expect their employers to go further in offering support for their personal lives. This is reflected in benefits focusing on health and wellness, such as mental health support, fitness stipends, or even fertility support.
For many sectors, the ball is firmly in the employees court.
#2 - The “Flex Index” Helping Compare Companies Remote Policies
Imagine you’re looking for a flexible job with a hybrid working policy, you see the job posting that fits the bill and apply… only to find out after your interview that said “hybrid working policy” is one afternoon a week. You’ve been duped, bamboozled, taken for a ride.
Well, to avoid this very scenario, Scoop, a company which builds software to help workers plan their office days (i.e. who else will be there to set up meetings) have launched a tool which allows you to compare remote work policies from different companies and see their job postings.
So far it has categorized the policies of around 4,000 employers. You can search by city, state, industry and company size, and by type of flexible policy although not many company profiles have been verified by employers so far.
While the index is clearly aimed to be a publicity boost for Scoop’s product, it certainly could come in handy.
#3 - Tik Tok’s New Rules For Under 18s
TikTok have set a 60-minute daily screen time limit for users who are aged under 18, which if they hit, will require them to enter a passcode to continue to scroll the various nonsense the app bombards them with.
They will however be able to opt out of the measure, which seems a bit useless. However, if parents are using the Family Pairing option on the app they will be able to set screen time limits, AND access a dashboard which would give a breakdown of app usage – showing them everything their little rugrats have been looking at.
These measures, however, have been described as simply tackling the tip of the iceberg.
The Center for Countering Digital Hate recently published research showing TikTok's algorithm bombards teenagers not only with nonsense, but with harmful content. A chief executive of the CCDH, Imran Ahmed, called TikTok "the crack cocaine of algorithms.” Describing it as “the most addictive… the most dangerous and the one that needs to be dealt with most urgently."
He urges the platform to focus its efforts not just on screen time, but tackling the harmful content in its feeds to make it a safer place for kids. This comes in the wake of research from the organisation discovering that within minutes of opening a TikTok account, a 13-year-old girl using the app was receiving eating disorder and self-harm content in her feed.
So parents of under 18s, get the Family Pairing option, and get it ASAP.
#4 - The Walled Garden Rant
This article from Wired about the plague of having to log in to a website to see content reads like a rant from someone who insists “things were better back in the day”. But you know what, she’s kind of right.
Elizabeth Lopatto bemoans the fact that to access “free” content nowadays you pretty much always get asked to log in. Sure, people need to make money and times are hard, and add that to the increased data protection laws that mean advertisers need new ways to follow you around the web, and we get why. But many people, Ms Lopatto included, are just going to say no and close off the website.
The same can be said for sites asking you to open their app, and Google asking you to log in to do a search or if you want to open a link in Chrome. She says what were all thinking – “I don’t, and I can say no forever. All you’re doing is making me resent you.”
Looking back to the internet in the 90s she concludes that the desire to make every part of the web a “walled garden” that you need to trade something with the creator to enter means that we’re running out of public spaces on the internet. And that’s a crying shame.
#5 - The Tech Divide Between Office Generations
While we may assume that Gen Z are the best suited generation to the modern workplace, that’s not exactly the case. They may have grown up in the internet age and be the most comfortable generation in front of a laptop or phone screen, along with millennials, but the technology in many offices hasn’t changed in a hot minute, and it’s not always easy to figure out.
For example, in a world where you can do pretty much everything with your phone, including boarding a plane, why would you need to learn how to use a printer? A 29-year-old quoted in this article refers to seeing a printer as “uncovering an ancient artefact”. Same goes for scanners, and even the humble letter.
One manager notes their Gen Z intern had trouble mailing a letter – asking where the sticker (the stamp) went, while IT departments attest that many Gen Z workers simply close their bulky old office laptop when they leave the office – not realising this doesn’t actually turn them off.
To combat this divide, experts have created workshops which unite the generations in the office across their various technological struggles, with one of the exercises getting participants to reminisce on technological advances they remember living through – from employees who remember the first answering machines, dial up-internet, and those who’ve always experienced adult life through an iPhone.
We should see these different experiences as a strength, and not make fun of Gen Z because they don’t know how to work an office printer – those things are tricky.
Brave & Heart over and out.
Bonus
What happens when a crochet enthusiast asks Chat GPT to create some crochet patterns for them?
Find out here, spoiler alert, cursed images ahead.
To find out more on how you can retain your top talent, or how we can help you with digital solutions to your business and marketing challenges, check out our case studies.