You are sitting at your dinner table. Your family is around you, but your phone keeps ringing. You look between your boss’s caller ID on your phone and your families faces. Even the birds have stopped chirping as you make the choice to pick it up or not.
Sounds familiar?
This is the story of every other working man/woman out there. But should you be cursing your phone for ringing, or somebody else?
This is a question that is in every body’s mind but on nobody’s lips. So should you answer a call from your manager or work after your working hours are over? This is a pressing question, and today we attempt to find answers.
Technology is here to stay, and so are our phones. The only problem is how we let them interfere with our lives. Instead of blaming them as objects of interruption, it is about time we regulate their use and the extent of their intrusion. The dilemma of after work calls takes us to where the pressure of attending a work call after work hours stems from. Simply speaking, it stems from us.
There are some self-induced standards that prompt us to answer work calls at odd hours. If your boss is calling you late at night, it is important you ask yourself if your job description clearly stipulated that you are required to answer calls 24/7, or was it simply “implied”. If it was implied, did you clear out this ambiguity and ask for it clearly? Most probably not. These expectations become the norm if you let them happen without proper communication. We have all heard the term that we teach people how they treat you, and it is only now that most of us are getting the gist of it. If you are the kind of people who answers after work calls every time, your boss is most likely to ask you why you didn’t answer it the one time you don’t. But who set that expectation? Nobody but you. You don’t “have” to do anything unless your job description clearly states you do. You may do it because it is moral or responsible or respectful, but keep in mind that you are not obligated to do so. Your personal life is far more precious than your work life, and you do not have to sacrifice either for the other.
If you are a supervisor, leader, or manager somewhere and call your employees after their work hours only in case of emergencies, you’re fine. But it would be helpful if you pre-decide, in collaboration with your people, about what constitutes an emergency. If everything is an emergency for you, it is most probable that nothing is an emergency. Just because you think of something at 9 at night does not mean you hold the authority to call your employee at 9 as well. It is moral and respectful if you tell them in the morning, or set up a reminder if you think you might forget it.
Not all after work calls are the same as some actually prove to be a beneficial mode of accessibility. You can get off work early a day to go somewhere, and your co-workers can just ring you up if they absolutely need you. You would be allowed more flexibility in your work and location if you are flexible and responsive when needed. That doesn’t have to be every time, because not everything is an exceptional case. Flexibility is not just a perk but a requirement in today’s globalized world, and the work rules are not the way they were decades ago. So if you have a client in another time zone who wants to communicate with you, you need to be open to the possibilities.
No matter you are a supervisor or an employee, it is time to have a communication of expectations if you haven’t had it yet. Unfavorable happenings are most likely to cause a break out sooner or later, and it is best if you have a conversation before the event occurs. I am not saying the conversation would be pretty, it may be especially awkward for employees, but it is going to save you a lot of time and trouble. You can ask your manager to clarify their expectations and appropriate response time, and relay the same to your employees if you are a supervisor. You can negotiate the response time, and although you may not be completely on the same page, it would be a sign that you’re going forward.
So stop cursing your phone and trying to apply the old work rules on new technology. Communicate your expectations, do it early, and do it often. Best of luck!
