When Personal and Work Life Merge

I have discussed in previous blogs the issue of the business world and the personal world merging in the workplace. I said that through the 1970's, there were several expectations at work that were referred to at that time as being a "professional." One was that you keep your personal life and problems at home, and when you are at work, you work with no personal distractions. Another was that everyone who was above your pay grade was referred to as Mr. or Ms. _______ and not by their first names at the workplace. This kept a more formal atmosphere at work and delineated job titles. People at the same job level were informal with each other, but no one ever referred to their bosses by their first name. Dress codes were enforced, there were no casual days and any requests for time off were put in writing, not requested in the break room or hallway.

Wow, have things changed in 2010. One manager I know has put it this way, "Starting professionals these days believe that work is interfering with their personal texting, cellphone calls and computer surfing. When I ask them to work on projects, they actually shrug as if irritated by me. They act like my teenagers at home when I ask them to do a chore."

What has happened to the workplace?

My belief is that once we lowered the standards of physical/verbal decorum in the workplace, making it look and feel the same as it is at home, the employee's psyche registers that similarity as a sufficient equivalence, and starts to act, feel and express themselves the same in the workplace as they would at home. The problem with this is that now the employee's psyche begins to see the boss as Mom/Dad, co-workers as their siblings, and believes that any personal issues or feelings are both appropriate to express here and should be your problem as well. With no psychological separation between workplace and home employees feel entitled to act any way they want and vent any emotion as they want. Because this attitude has been around for a while I get a lot of clients who regularly ask me, "Why do I have to treat them any differently if they are having relationship problems or something, and why do I have to deal with their home problems at work anyway? Just do your job for God's sake, I'm your boss not your Mother!"

One client recently discussed how an employee found out that her husband was having an affair and now felt entitled to leave early every day, come in late and let deadlines slide because, "I'm going through a tough time, you know." My client felt unable to put her foot down because of the new belief that we have to be hypersensitive to everyone's needs and therefore cannot ask them to do their job if they are going through a rough time. There is a big difference between letting someone take the rest of the day off on a particularly difficult day and maybe a few personal days following, and expecting shortened work days for weeks on end.

I am not going to offer solutions to this issue at this time, but I would love to hear from other managers and hear their stories relating to this problem. It is a very real issue that is getting out of hand in the modern workplace, and it all started with making the workplace physically and psychologically more informal.