A salaried driver and a salaried employee have each sold 40 hours to the employer. No more.
Namely, I meet from time to time with responsible managers who are constantly available through all possible channels, in the evenings, during holidays and on weekends. Also, when training managers, I always have to remind myself that if you can’t be in the training session without answering the team’s calls and running to rescue them in between, then something is wrong with your management and you need to focus more on the training day.
The excuse in such a situation is: “But I am responsible as a manager.” I understand this perfectly, but I also see the consequences of this approach almost every day – burnout symptoms, corporate anxiety, health problems and breakdowns in relationships.
As adults, the choice is always ours. Every choice has different outcomes, but the choice to work overtime is ours too. All of our choices are the result of stories told in our heads. But those stories can be changed.
The fact is that a salaried worker has sold his time for 40 hours a week. The law does not allow for more time to be sold. Whether it should be that much at all is a separate issue, but anything over that limit is voluntary work. You can choose how you use your free time – at work or at home. Either choice is the right one, it’s just that the results are different.
If you want to volunteer, do it consciously. But don’t call it a sense of responsibility, loyalty or commitment when in fact it feeds collective fatigue and constant anxiety.
And here’s an important truth we too rarely remind ourselves:
nothing happens if you only work during working hours. Work gets done. Things move on. The world doesn’t collapse if you don’t answer your evening text or open emails when you’re on holiday. Stories of the end of the world are only in our own heads, as is the illusion of control over life.
The manager who can afford to stop working alongside the working hours is, in fact, the one whose team learns to do the same, and we all live in a much less annoying world.
