4 ms·

It'd be nice if they had defined what it means to separate personal and work lives. Like, don't check email after work hours? Or, don't be personal friends wit

by nend 5y ago

It'd be nice if they had defined what it means to separate personal and work lives. Like, don't check email after work hours? Or, don't be personal friends with coworkers? Or don't discuss personal plans during work small talk? There's a lot of different ways to "separate personal and work lives", and there's a lot of different interpretations between how blurry that line can be before you have a separation or don't have separation.

cbhl 5y ago
I believe that "there is a clear boundary between my career and my non-work roles" was literally the prompt text, where folks rated it on a scale from "Strongly Disagree" to "Strongly Agree". At Google's scale, individuals have different preferences for all of these things. Some people don't want to read email after they leave the office at 5pm. Other people leave at 3pm to pick up kids, but sign back on from 7pm to 11pm to address stuff. Others will work whatever hours M-F but won't respond to emails on the weekend. Someone else works with a team across an ocean, and so they check email Sunday through Thursdays or Tuesday through Saturday. It's not one size fits all; it's about creating a work environment where folks feel comfortable talking about enabling flexibility without creating expectations of being always-on.
atomicnumber3 5y ago
The main model I use is strict firewalling: no personal stuff on the work laptop, no work stuff on the personal laptop. No personal stuff during work time, no work stuff during personal time. I then poke a very well chosen set of holes in the firewall: some coworkers get added on signal on my personal phone. Some personal tasks that are time sensitive happen during work time. ...sometimes pages happen during personal time. This makes sure that for the most part, stuff stays where it's supposed to be. But when exceptions are made, they're very high leverage.

by nend 5y ago

cbhl 5y ago

I believe that "there is a clear boundary between my career and my non-work roles" was literally the prompt text, where folks rated it on a scale from "Strongly Disagree" to "Strongly Agree". At Google's scale, individuals have different preferences for all of these things. Some people don't want to read email after they leave the office at 5pm. Other people leave at 3pm to pick up kids, but sign back on from 7pm to 11pm to address stuff. Others will work whatever hours M-F but won't respond to emails on the weekend. Someone else works with a team across an ocean, and so they check email Sunday through Thursdays or Tuesday through Saturday. It's not one size fits all; it's about creating a work environment where folks feel comfortable talking about enabling flexibility without creating expectations of being always-on.

atomicnumber3 5y ago

The main model I use is strict firewalling: no personal stuff on the work laptop, no work stuff on the personal laptop. No personal stuff during work time, no work stuff during personal time. I then poke a very well chosen set of holes in the firewall: some coworkers get added on signal on my personal phone. Some personal tasks that are time sensitive happen during work time. ...sometimes pages happen during personal time. This makes sure that for the most part, stuff stays where it's supposed to be. But when exceptions are made, they're very high leverage.