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The 24/7 office – Are you ready for it?  (View Comments)

Diptarup Chakraborti is principal research analyst for Gartner. He has over 12 years of experience in marketing, advertising and marketing intelligence, of which the last 8 years have been within the IT industry.

Posted On Monday, December 14, 2009 at 11:06:53 AM

It’s 9 am on a busy Monday. You have just started another day, expected to be full of emails, replies to messages, phone calls, meetings and critical decisions. Its 6 pm and time you call an end to a day which has been busy and exhausting. But wait a minute, is the day truly over? What about the conference call with your team in US at 9 pm? Oh yes, you intend to do that from home. And the flurry of emails that are surely going to hit your inbox from now to snooze time? No worries, the Blackberry should answer  that question. Welcome to the real corporate world. Work today is a 24/7 phenomenon and it stops only when you are fast asleep and sometimes even not then.

With the improvement of communication technology and lowering of their rates the way we interact with our office has completely changed. In fact, the definition of office itself has changed. One can now work from office, home, hotel or even while on vacation. All one needs is a laptop with decent internet connectivity. The above paradigm is also what allows or should I say forces senior and even middle management professionals to be accessible any time of the day. Let’s examine a hypothetical scenario. There is an important sales deal that is in the pipeline which you are leading in India. However, since you are working for a large MNC, your boss in Singapore and his boss sitting in Sydney are both very keen to keep tabs on the deal. So you wake up early in the morning before you head to the office for a conference call to discuss the strategy to acquire the customer. Once in office you are busy negotiating and discussing with your other colleagues. After a tiring and busy day it’s time for the call with the global business head sitting in US who wants to be appraised about the status. And this may not be all. You still might get pinged on instant messenger or on your blackberry which requires a lot of will power not to respond to. Seems like a situation from a sci-fi movie but its happening and more and more managers are getting addicted to this working style.

So can you deal with it?

There have been instances where people have got up in the middle of their sleep to read an email that they received. Those who have gone on vacations with their laptops have been more interested in checking their emails every morning than going for their walks on the beach. Working 24/7 can and is becoming addictive and can lead to major stress related health disorders. So here are some simple steps to deal with it. Firstly, one must learn to say no. No matter what the pressure from the boss, one should resist checking mails and definitely not respond to them after office hours. Holidays are for de-stressing and not for keeping your self updated on the going-ons in your office. Keep your smartphone and laptop at home and don’t carry your office with you to the beach resort just because it is wi-fi enabled. While eating out with your family or at dinner, it wouldn’t harm you if you if you kept your mobile phone switched off. You do that when you are in an important conference so why not while enjoying your personal time. And lastly, keep reminding yourself that no matter how important you are to the organisation, it won’t close down if you are not accessible for a few hours or even a few weeks.

With the world becoming a global office it’s easy to succumb to the pressures of a 24/7 office but only if we judiciously plan our day will we be able to deal with it.

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