Most job-related happiness is controlled by the employee. There are truly toxic jobs, and you should escape those as quickly as possible. However, the smaller issues of disrespect in the workplace, while unacceptable, often occur because employees do not value themselves enough to set career boundaries.
It can be intimidating to set boundaries at your job, particularly if you are early in your financial journey and rely on that job for your financial stability. That is the time when it is the most important to set up career boundaries since what you allow and do not allow will trigger habits both on your part and the part of your coworkers and supervisors.
If you can, turn that feeling of intimidation into a fun game: I love setting career boundaries and watching supervisors squirm when they try to push them, while knowing it is my legal right to leave my job on time or ask why something is required. Know that you have rights as an employee, and act accordingly by setting boundaries from the beginning.
When: Set Boundaries Immediately
In helping folks navigate their careers, I have seen time and time again that employees who fail to set boundaries usually failed to set them in the beginning. The cumulative acceptance of operating without boundaries becomes a habit, an assumed reality. When I work with mid-career professionals in this situation, they can switch jobs to find a better environment, but they remain stressed unless they are willing to reflect on how to start actively setting boundaries themselves.
Early career professionals are more reachable, but this pervasive belief exists that we have to work extra hard initially to set a good impression. I see this perspective often when helping folks transition from their first full-time experience to their second, so I explain why that belief can not only hurt your experience at that job, it can destroy your entire career.
Why? When you work extra hours or do not value your personal life of privacy, those working around you assume one (or both) of two things:
You are the person they should ask to do the extra work because you do not value your time, personal commitments, or privacy.
You are so bad at your job that it takes you 60 hours/week to do what most do in 40 hours/week, you get lost after one week away, or you overshare your personal life.
If your employer’s perspective is that you should get all the busywork because you do not value yourself, they will tell your next employer that they can do the same on the reference call. If your employer thinks you need 50% more time to do your job, you will not even get the second job because your employer thinks you are a below-average employee.
You should set boundaries regarding your time, personal commitments, and privacy from the very beginning of your career. If you have not set boundaries so far, do so now! Yes, even if you are at the same job you have had for ten years. You should not feel a need to justify your decision, but if you do, there are tricks below for what to say to stick to your hours, take your leave/time away from the office uninterrupted, and maintain your privacy. Start setting boundaries for all these areas so you can enjoy your best career and your best life.
What: Stick to Your Hours
If you receive a salary, only work the hours in your contract. If you are hourly, make sure every hour spent working counts as a working hour. Whether salaried or hourly, only work extra hours if you receive additional money or compensatory time by working them.
This is not just important so you have a life outside of work. This is also important because if you work unpaid hours, you are decreasing your hourly wage. For example, if someone makes $100,000/year and works 48 weeks a year at 40 hours/week, their hourly wage is $52. If their coworker has the same salary, works the same number of weeks, but works 50 hours/week, their hourly wage is $41.67.
By working 50 hours/week, their hourly wage is more than $10 lower than their coworker who works 40 hours/week.
If you claim that you are only putting in extra hours to be promoted from an analyst position to senior analyst position, and then you will stop, I do not believe you. I have never met a person who made that claim who did not then work extra hours to become a consultant, then a senior consultant, then a manager, and so forth until their extra hours resulted in severe stress and health issues. Here is the other secret: The person working the most hours does not get the promotion. The person with a combination of invaluable skills and the right network does.*
The other claim I often hear is that a person is only working late because it is an emergency. I will be clear on this: A deadline is not an emergency. Emergencies are situations that directly affect life or death. For someone like me, who works at a desk, this happened once in my career when I needed to help get some multinational, non-military folks equipment quickly to not get blown up by IEDs used by a terrorist organization in a certain area. A worthy cause, for sure. However, my job involves sending similar life-saving equipment across an ocean often; I draw the line of urgency at directly affecting life or death.
In the rare event that you do encounter a true emergency, pay yourself back for the time. What does that mean? That means if I work 10 hours to make sure a case goes through in time to fund some equipment that will save lives, I then take two hours out of the next day to go to the pool and read a book.** Sometimes there are 10 hours of important things to do on one day, and that is okay if you only make yourself work six the next day. The sooner you can do this, the better it is to avoid burnout. I always pay myself back within the week. I work with some folks who make sure to pay themselves back over a pay period or a month, but beyond a month, you are probably just working too much.
Regardless of the specific parameters for scenarios where you would work extra hours, always pay yourself back. Always stick to your hours over the course of a week, paycheck, or whatever interval you decide. Working for free is only lowering your wage and devaluing your time.
What: Take Your Leave and Enjoy Off-Hours
Nothing is sadder than hearing someone take a work call from the beach, especially if the person on the phone is one of the folks that only takes one week of summer vacation and one week of holiday vacation each year. Both “take your leave” and “enjoy your off-hours” can often be narrowed down to “get off your work phone.” If you turn on your work phone while on vacation, you are doing it wrong.
Leave, vacation, sick days, PTO, or whatever days away from work are called where you work are days to be away from work. Even if you are just taking a few hours off, those are hours off from work. So stop working! The number of excuses I have heard when working with clients on career progression range from “but it is too difficult to catch up when I get back” to “I want to remain aware of the issues” or “I am the only person who knows how to do X.”
Leave is meant for you to be away from work, and your away-ness benefits your workplace in the long run. You are meant to relax, adventure, explore, and separate yourself from your workplace. This actually encourages creativity that you cannot experience without time away. If you check your email from the beach in Italy, you do not come back with the fresh eyes and new perspective that would have offered an innovative approach to your work. As the person considered my team’s innovator (and honestly, the entire directorate’s at times), I can guarantee that I came up with some of my best ideas while on a run at lunch or reading a book on the beach on one of the 30+ days of leave I took in 2022.
Enjoying your off hours is similarly tied to putting the phone down. Never, ever, ever check email after the time you are supposed to log off your work computer. Do not put your work email on your personal phone, if that is what it takes. Even if you do not have a separate phone, make yourself log into a computer to check your work email. I go so far as to use a separate browser for the work email I can access from a non-work computer, and I close that browser when work ends. If you are scrolling through work emails, you are missing out on life just to find out what Brett is thinking at 8:00 PM twelve hours early. It is not worth it, and Brett can wait.
What: Maintain as Much Privacy as You Desire
More and more companies want work to be “a family,” sometimes inadvertently shaming folks for having lives outside of their “work family.” First, work is not your family. Your family (including chosen family!) is your family. Work is work. If you would rather spend time with non-work folks, do so without feeling guilty or obligated to attend a happy hour.
We live in the city obsessed with networking, but neither of us spend time outside of work networking unless we would say yes to the event anyways. Last year, I attended one happy hour at the bar across from Nationals Park when I already had tickets to the Nationals game. Easy.
Privacy can also come into play when taking your leave or off hours. When Patrick worked for the federal government and told them he would be on leave, they asked how they would contact him in an emergency. He simply told them he would be unreachable. Patrick dealt with civil tax cases. There are no emergencies in civil tax cases. If your employer does not have a backup plan for you getting hit by a bus tomorrow, that is on them. Every employer should be able to pass the bus test. If you do not want to be contacted on vacation, you do not need to provide contact details unless you are one of the few professions that deals with true emergencies.
(Ask) Why: Require Explanations for Unnecessary Requests
In addition to setting boundaries around your time, personal commitments, and privacy, feel empowered to require justification for unnecessary requests. The popular unnecessary request of the moment is companies demanding that employees return to the office without justification. If your work has no characteristic that demands an office, then question why your employer is making you return.
My employer requires us to go in once a week to check resources that can only be accessed from the office. Since there is a necessary reason, I comply by going in for less than an hour to check and then coming back home to telework. When Patrick’s employer demanded that employees return to the office two days a week without any justification, Patrick left because there was no necessary reason. If an employer is setting requirements for immeasurable reasons (what I call “squishy” reasons), that is insufficient. Ask for the data before you comply.
Requiring explanations from your employer extends beyond work location. Ask about parental leave policies you find stingy or limiting, work schedule limitations, strange requirements for promotions, or whatever is important to your situation.
How: Commit to Yourself
Regardless of how many times I explain to folks that they are allowed to set these boundaries, many do not feel empowered to draw the line. Part of this discomfort comes from no prior experience setting a career boundary.
Start with valuing your time by sticking to your hours. If you previously stayed late often, sign up for a yoga class 30 minutes after work, or schedule a happy hour with a friend across town 45 minutes after your workday should end. Give yourself actual other obligations, and stick to them. If your supervisor asks where you are going, tell them you are going to dinner or your tennis lesson.
Over time, you will not need a formal appointment, but it is still good to have plans immediately after your workday, even if they are with yourself. Plan to run after work in the winter, where you need to go immediately because the sun sets early. Make a date with yourself to sip hot chocolate while going for a walk. Did I mention that sticking to your work hours is a lot of fun?
On vacation or in your off-hours, if you anticipate being distracted by work, do not log into your work email on your phone. For vacation, you can even go beyond and turn off your phone completely.
You can navigate privacy similarly to your workday length and schedule conflicting obligations when the company happy hour arises. The request for your contact information when on vacation is trickier. When asked, provide the information for the person or people who will cover your area of expertise while you are gone. As someone who takes a lot of leave, it is important to set up reliable coverage in advance. If you feel you are the only person who can do your job, this means teaching someone else how to cover for you now, so you can take leave in a month. There is no excuse, just prepare.
As uncomfortable as you feel when setting your first career boundary, you will feel more at peace in the long run. If work is just a thing you do while life is the priority, it is easier to let go of any stress at work and switch your focus to what is important. Set boundaries, become freer, and even enjoy a better career because you will be a better employee with more freedom.
*The balance of whether the invaluable skills or right network matters more varies from industry to industry and even position to position. If you have to figure out what to focus on first, here is one trick I have noticed: If you have invaluable skills, you will naturally attract the right network as folks come to you for help. As you help more folks, your network grows, and you gain more folks willing to advise you so they can keep coming to you for advice.
**Numbers assume a standard 40-hour work week.
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