You’re kicking back a little. You’ve busted it all week to make sure you can skate out on Friday without a hitch and have a fantastic weekend.
Then he walks up to you. Puts his coffee cup on the wall of your cubicle and says it. The most dreaded words in businessdom …
‘I just sent you a meeting invite for 5 p.m. today.’ And while he blubbers an apology, the smirky smile cancels out the regret he pretends to feel and you resign to the fact your work week just got a few hours longer.
Whether you’re a full-time employee or a contractor, having meetings late on Friday is usually seen as poor business etiquette. It’s hard to get work done when everyone is eager to leave for the weekend, and a manager who schedules a meeting at that time may come off as insensitive and disconnected – not to mention less relatable.
After having my valuable family time interrupted by management that doesn’t respect boundaries, it’s been crucial for me to establish some guidelines for prioritizing my work and personal time. These guidelines help you view your time at work and at home in a way that makes it clear that no matter which “bank” the time belongs to, it cannot be replaced. You are ultimately pushed to decide which time is more important and to accept what steps you need to take if you genuinely want to find balance.
Family Time Is Inherently More Valuable Than On-The-Job Time
Even if you are a salaried employee, you can break down what your time is worth. Contractors already do this and are used to calculating an hourly rate for everything.
Most people can confirm their hourly rate by the actions that bring in or will eventually bring in revenue. This is of course valuable, but it is important to put an hourly rate on your intangibles. The intangibility of spending time with family cannot necessarily be calculated monetarily. However, you can trick yourself into thinking about an Hourly Family Rate.
This, HFR, is 5 times more valuable than an hourly rate. While constantly having to do trade-offs between high value family functions and real billable work, a person can start seeing some of the tradeoffs being made and adjust accordingly. Also having it down on paper makes a person take notice of anything that might be askew.
Set Acceptable Contact Boundaries
Everyone needs to know your contact time boundaries; Emails, texts, meetings and calls outside those boundaries do nothing but cause confusion and stress. For projects with managers who don’t seem to have a problem contacting you at all hours, as a contractor, you can alert management that contact outside regular working hours will be charged at 1.5 – 2 times the hourly rate. This will discourage impromptu Friday 5 o’clock meetings. It will also urge project managers to respect your time more.
For those working on salaried wages, it is a little trickier as you can’t necessarily inflict more cost to make your point. But what you can do is NOT check mail in off hours. If your position doesn’t require 24/7 access, don’t make yourself available. If you do, you’re setting precedent and only hurting yourself in the long run.
Set Acceptable Meeting Times
EVERYONE that has been in business for more than 3 seconds knows meetings before 9 a.m. are just asinine and anything after 4:30 is just rude.
Setting appropriate meeting times during core business hours ensures if you need to schedule someone who they could and should be there for the project’s success.
Intruding on employees’ personal time does nothing but cause animosity and disdain for a poorly run project. And for goodness sakes, don’t schedule working lunches. See Deanna Murray’s “Strategy Meetings No Longer For Angry Birds” for tips on good meetings!
While sometimes, exceptions must be made on a case-by-case basis, your productivity and happiness will go way up. Try a few of these tips; mix and match and customize them for your situation. Who knows, they just might work for you!