Blogs and Articles from Third Way Forum Membrs
Sep 1, 2022
Discussion#1 How to achieve one’s ideal work/life balance or integration by gaining more control over work.
Blogs from The Third Way Working Group
- In order to define the ideal work/life balance or integration, each individual has to clarify one’s own ideal way of working. Do you work to live or live to work? Is work just a means to pay bills or a very core of your life?
- Once you clarify the purpose of your work and life, only then you can define the ideal balance between the two.
- The pandemic, war in Ukraine, inflation, the divide over social issues etc, have made many people re-access their way of life and work. It’s a time of great re-assessment.
- The ideal situation is that company leaders organize some discussion forum where individual employees can discuss their individual aspirations and goals moving forward in today’s VUCA world and then all of them together discuss and develop their collective team goal. In this way, each person’s own individual goal is linked with the company goal. As a result, people would not feel like slaves working for somebody else.
- However, as many people can not have such opportunities to think about and discuss their own goals, they just feel like they are working for the boss and feel exploited. As a means to protect themselves from further exploitation, many young people today have chosen to be quiet quitters who do only absolute minimum at work as a form of their silent rebellion and passive self-defense.
- The real sustainable motivation comes only from the inside of each individual. So ideally, each individual should decide and choose their work and do what makes them happy. Also, if there are quiet quitters, the company should talk to them and motivate them or if they are still not engaged, they should be managed out. However, in reality today in Japan, due to labor shortage, companies can not afford to let go of quiet quitters. Even if they are doing absolute minimum, it’s still better than having nobody. Also, many individual employees don’t quit the company even if they don’t like their jobs because they do not have transferrable skills and are not confident enough to leave their current company. This reality seems to be creating more and more unhealthy and disengaging work environment at so many companies.
- Once you clarify the purpose of your work and life, only then you can define the ideal balance between the two.
- The pandemic, war in Ukraine, inflation, the divide over social issues etc, have made many people re-access their way of life and work. It’s a time of great re-assessment.
- The ideal situation is that company leaders organize some discussion forum where individual employees can discuss their individual aspirations and goals moving forward in today’s VUCA world and then all of them together discuss and develop their collective team goal. In this way, each person’s own individual goal is linked with the company goal. As a result, people would not feel like slaves working for somebody else.
- However, as many people can not have such opportunities to think about and discuss their own goals, they just feel like they are working for the boss and feel exploited. As a means to protect themselves from further exploitation, many young people today have chosen to be quiet quitters who do only absolute minimum at work as a form of their silent rebellion and passive self-defense.
- The real sustainable motivation comes only from the inside of each individual. So ideally, each individual should decide and choose their work and do what makes them happy. Also, if there are quiet quitters, the company should talk to them and motivate them or if they are still not engaged, they should be managed out. However, in reality today in Japan, due to labor shortage, companies can not afford to let go of quiet quitters. Even if they are doing absolute minimum, it’s still better than having nobody. Also, many individual employees don’t quit the company even if they don’t like their jobs because they do not have transferrable skills and are not confident enough to leave their current company. This reality seems to be creating more and more unhealthy and disengaging work environment at so many companies.
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