Our team recently discussed Apple TV’s thriller series, “Severance,” starring Adam Scott and Patricia Arquette. If you haven’t seen the show, here’s the elevator pitch: “Mark [Adam Scott’s character] leads a team of office workers whose memories have been surgically divided between their work and personal lives; when a mysterious colleague appears outside of work, it begins a journey to discover the truth about their jobs.”
Without giving too much away, the main characters choose elective surgery to sever their brain into two distinct lives — a work life and a home life. At the office, they have no memory of anything personal: whether they’re married, have kids, enjoy baseball games, or prefer beer over wine. Once they leave the office, their memories return — but they have no recollection of their work lives, their co-workers, or anything that happened on the job.
Here’s the trailer:
Whether this sounds appealing or down right terrifying, in our real, non-TV lives, the fact is we bring our WHOLE selves to work. We don’t get to choose what we remember or don’t, and this is a key factor companies need to consider related to their cultures.
What Work-Life Balance Used To Be
According to Business News Daily, “Work-life balance is the state of equilibrium where a person equally prioritizes the demands of one’s career and the demands of one’s personal life.” In other words, work-life balance used to mean balancing the time we spend at work with the time we spend at home.
Many companies embody the notion that work is only a place to work and home is a place to do everything else. In these environments, management encourages people to keep their personal information private, check emotions at the door, and essentially pretend there is nothing more important in their lives than the job at hand.
Here, managers lead in a way that ignores what might be going on in an employee’s personal life — having a baby, getting married, getting divorced, or dealing with aging parents, just to name a few. Companies measure work performance strictly by results, not collaboration, innovation, or employee satisfaction. The supposed benefit is that people will be more productive and less distracted.
Today, there is plenty of evidence that this way of thinking isn’t in everyone’s best interests.
Our Whole Worlds at Work
The pandemic’s forced-work-from-home period gave us an intimate peek into the personal lives of employees and co-workers. For the first time, we realized people have toddlers and teenagers, roommates, elderly parents, pets, messy apartments, beautiful houses, unfinished basements, and more. There are countless memes about funny things that happened during those first few weeks of Zoom meetings.
This insight should change the way we see each other at work.
Today, we bring our whole world — not just our whole selves — to work. This includes our families, home environments, and anything else that can add to or subtract from our work day, whether our company likes it or not. We can’t simply sever ties between the various roles we play because our worlds are more integrated than ever. And we can use this to our advantage.
The Benefit of Bringing Our Whole Selves to Work
As we return to the office, we have a newfound appreciation for the home lives of the people we work with. As leaders, we can bring more compassion, understanding, and empathy. It doesn’t mean we stop holding workers accountable for delivering what the company pays them to do. Instead, it allows managers to lead in more effective, motivating ways — taking the whole employee into account to maximize their productivity and satisfaction.
For example, knowing an employee has a newborn might lend itself to scheduling meetings at certain times during the day. Giving workers flexibility to attend their kids’ games or practices — and finish work later at night — can help them feel seen and valued. Overall, allowing for more choice about when and where to work leads to happier employees.
Work-Play Balance
As experts in fun, we know there is an even more effective way to lead fully integrated lives: finding the balance between work and play. We need to intentionally set aside time for play alongside work for health benefits, mental breaks, and pure enjoyment.
It might feel daunting to introduce this in a workplace setting, but we promise this isn’t a scary concept. We work with clients who already understand the benefit of maintaining a healthy culture. That’s why they hire us to infuse fun and break up the monotony of day-to-day work.
We help balance how we play at work and work at play.
A Human-Centric Approach
More companies are starting to embrace the benefits of treating employees as whole people — people with families, hobbies, and passions outside of the job. When we get to know each other as humans first and workers second, good things happen. We tend to collaborate more, become more innovative, and be more productive. This is why we’re so passionate about Team Connecting.
If you’re wondering how to create more human-centric interactions that help your team with work-life integration and work-play balance, we can help. We produce professionally-hosted events designed to bring people together through FUN!
Let us know what you’re looking for, and we’ll do the rest!
