Last week, US law firm Weil Gotshal & Manges issued an email to all staff concerning its new email policy. The email embraced the idea of ‘work/ life balance’, declaring that forthwith, no emails were to be sent between 11pm and 6am. The email concluded: “We are proud to be taking a leadership role in caring about our colleagues’ quality of life.”
The less cynical lawyers at Weil Gotshal rejoiced – could this really be true? Unfortunately, it wasn’t. It was an April Fools’ Day joke. After admitting as much the firm apologised to staff for the insensitive prank.
Personally I’ll admit I am a bit sick of hearing about ‘work/ life balance’. I don’t believe in the concept. Our lives are built around many different facets – from self, to family, to friends, to career, to community, to spirituality and so forth. It is not possible to perfectly ‘balance’ all of these many elements.
Despite this, many employers bandy the phrase ‘work/ life balance’ around as if it were a tangible benefit – ‘come and work with us, we offer a great work/ life balance!’ Do they even understand what work/ life balance means? Do they think that one size fits all? How do they think work/ life balance even plays out? At least these employers are trying to say and do the right thing. These employers at least recognise that their staff would like to have a better quality of life which includes a lot more than just working.
There are other employers who think the concept of ‘work/ life balance’ is irrelevant. Not because it is impossible to ‘balance’ everything, but because they genuinely don’t care whether their staff have a life as long as they work hard and get results. It’s not heartening but at least it’s honest.
Weil Gotshal & Manges fit into a different class. An employer willing to play with the minds of their staff by dangling the carrot of a life outside work only to cruelly declare that ‘work/ life balance’ is a joke. I wonder how many of their employees were laughing?