Following on from her last post our original HRD Sheena McLullich writes about a topic many of us will be able to relate to. (Ed Scrivener)
Always on ….
When I went on holiday last year, I did something really radical. I left my blackberry at home. I also left my glasses in the car and had to make an undignified dash after check-in from the terminal back to the long-stay car park at Gatwick airport, but that’s another story… The blackberry was both deliberate and planned.
A couple of confessions here – firstly, I have two blackberries. One personal and one for work. I took my personal one with me as I knew I would need it to check-in for the second leg of the flights. Secondly, I am not addicted to my smartphone(s) unlike almost half of users, according to a recent Post Office survey. Some of my fellow Discuss HR writers may disagree with me on that point as, when we met up for lunch the other week, I did check my phone a few times. I was the contact point for anyone who was running late or couldn’t find the restaurant – right? But then there was that fascinating message about a car hi-jacking outside one of our offices and I was waiting for news of a legal settlement …
I resisted getting a mobile phone for some time after they first became popular (and portable!). At that time, my job involved travelling throughout Scotland visiting our other offices and various client sites, often being away from home overnight. Eventually I figured it would be easier for the kids to have one single phone number they could contact me on rather than working their way down the list of possible numbers that I’d left for them. It made life easier for me as well. I didn’t need to make sure that I had a stack of change to make a nightly call home or deduct major ‘sundry’ amounts from my hotel bills prior to submitting expenses claims.
Sometimes there were problems. I was working in New York at the same time as we were buying a house back in England. The solicitors called me one morning to say that they were ready to exchange contracts. It was 9:00 am in England – 4:00 am in New York when my mobile burst into life! The strains of my ‘Scotland the Brave’ ringtone probably disturbed quite a few residents in that particular hotel that night. I did explain to the lawyers where I was and they did apologise – and then they phoned me back half an hour later to say that they’d exchanged. I was, of course, delighted …
So, did I miss having my phone with me on holiday last year? Well, yes actually. There was a problem with an expense claim and I ended up having to call our Finance Director from the top of a mountain in Corsica – the only place I could get a signal. I didn’t have his number in my personal mobile so I had to make several calls to our various offices before I was able to track him down. However, it was the assorted reactions of people that I related this tale to that I found most interesting. Many were surprised, some incredulous, that I could even consider not taking my blackberry with me – despite the fact I was on holiday. I’d left other members of the HR team in charge during my absence, they were fully briefed on any relevant issues and they had my personal number in case of any insurmountable problems.
So why do some people find it difficult, or even impossible, to do the same? Is it fear of missing out (apparently ‘FEMO’ is a recognised social malaise in these days of 24/7 connectivity) or a mis-placed sense that our employers can’t (or shouldn’t be able to) survive without us for a few days? One Director I worked with phoned the office several times a day from his Indian Ocean ‘hideaway’ – until his girlfriend chucked the offending mobile to the bottom of the swimming pool. If you don’t find that anecdote at all funny, perhaps you too need to check your ability to switch off – or are you ‘always on’?
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Discuss HR is the HR blog written by members of Human Resources UK, the 10,000 member strong LinkedIn group dedicated to the HR professionals in the UK. Discuss HR is published twice weekly and looks to take an insightful, informative and sometimes irreverent view on the world of HR – all with the purpose of generating a discussion.
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