As the world contemplates how work will look after Covid, many believe that hybrid work will play a crucial role.  A common feature of hybrid work is that our schedules are somewhat more irregular than the 9-5 existence that typifies office-based work.

While this autonomy over our schedules can have advantages, it can also blur the boundaries between our personal and professional lives, and research from Cornell University highlights how harmful this can be for both employer and employee alike.

“Even if you’re still working 40 hours a week, you’re working during time that you’ve mentally encoded as time off, or as time that should be for a vacation, and that can make you feel suddenly that your work is less enjoyable,” the researchers explain.

Irregular hours

The researchers wanted to understand what impact it was having when we work nontraditional hours in terms of our motivation and overall job satisfaction levels.  For instance, in one experiment, the researchers asked volunteers from among the Cornell student body how they felt about working in the library on President’s Day.  Half of the students were reminded that it was a federal holiday, with the remainder not.  The intrinsic motivation of the students was then gauged to understand whether they found their work to be engaging, enjoyable, and interesting.

The results revealed that those students who were reminded that they were working on a holiday found their work about 15% less enjoyable.  A second study then produced similar findings, with a calendar reminder on a federal holiday sufficient to alter people’s perception of work enjoyment on those days by up to 9%, even when the tasks themselves were similar as any other day.

The researchers believe that these findings could be caused by our notion of having a form of collective time off, whereby we’re not only relaxing ourselves but can also do so with friends and family as they are also enjoying time off.

“The real benefit of time off on the weekend or on holidays is that it’s not just that I have time off, but my family and friends have time off, too,” they explain. “And so one thing that we suggest for managers is, can you create a ‘weekend shift’ so people feel like they’re in it together with other people?”

The findings are interesting, not least because there is a growing appreciation of the need to strike a balance between our personal and professional lives.  The results of the study highlight how difficult this can be to achieve when workers feel pressured to commit to striking the right balance.

“It’s hard sometimes for workers who aren’t in a position of power, whereas I think managers have the responsibility to create that environment for their employees,” the authors conclude. “I do think people are becoming more aware of the importance of that, and shaping their jobs and their life choices to allow for it.”