TILL GADGET DO US PART
Do your friends and family members crib about your being constantly hooked to your blackberry and laptop? You may be headed towards a tumultuous relationship, says Lisa Mary Thomson
THERE’S an anecdote about a middle-aged professional who sat his son down to break the bitter news that he and wife were going through a divorce. After a few minutes of explaining the details to his son, the father was left dumbfounded when the young man perked up “This is the first time Dad you’re actually talking and listening to me, without your phone or your laptop in tow.”
While it may not be exactly be a punishable offence to check e-mails via the phone or to spend some time after dinner finishing work on a laptop, it’s a visible addiction that professionals in India are fast falling prey to. Ergo, the men and women fidgeting with their phones, answering emails or taking calls - be it in a social gathering like a wedding or under the table during a private dinner. While being wired to the office on a 24/7 basis may bring the next promotion closer, it’s often at the cost of family and relationships.
Ask any psychologist or corporate counselor and they’d probably point out the increase in the number of those whose obsession with their black-beauties has led to ugly confrontations. In the rare occasion, even divorce. According to Monica Chib, senior consultant psychiatrist at the Indraprastha Apollo Hospital, technologically charged couples have far less time for each other which has definitely had an impact on closeness and physical intimacy. Most often, because they are just too tired at the end of a long day to cater to the needs of a partner.
The problem is even more acute in the case of those who work in firms where the parent company or clients are overseas. It isn’t uncommon for employees to return home and then shut themselves in a room for hours to attend to conference calls. “These conference calls are often at “overseas office hours” which means that they will have to attend to it in their personal time. This has a negative impact on family life and members are beginning to drift apart,” points out Ranjana Rawat, regional manager-north of 1to1help.net which offers counseling and employee assistance programmes to organizations.
While children who grow up in such families tend to be extremely independent, experts feel that they lack bonding skills and find it difficult to develop a level of closeness with people. In extreme cases, they have made unsuitable alliances in the attempt to find some affection.
However, for a larger number of young families where both spouses lead extremely high powered lives, partners have come to the terms with the fact that their marriage is simply a convenient arrangement. “So while neither may be able to spare each other time for months on end, it’s convenient to have a husband or a wife who they can take to a social do,” says Dr. Chib. Those who work in sectors with long work hours face the added challenge of having to explain their closeness with colleagues to spouses who feel threatened by the level of intimacy. Experts feel that this insecurity has broken up many a marriage.
But if the men have come to terms easily with working long hours or into the night, for the women, it’s often meant dealing with a sack-load of frustration and guilt. On one hand, they feel that if their jobs that require putting in extra-hours, their spouses should understand it and if necessary, just call for home-delivery for dinner. On the other hand, there is also the guilt associated with the fact that they are letting their family down.
Human resource experts, though, believe that it’s more a question of discipline given that devices like laptops and Blackberry’s have given employees a great deal of flexibility. Says Surbhi Mathur Gandhi, general manager, permanent staffing at TeamLease services, “While handing over a device like a laptop or a Blackberry comes with the expectation that the individual will be available for any situation, optimal utilization is the prerogative of the individual.”
Though company culture and the demands of customers account for some amount of an employee’s addiction to devices, Pramod Sadarjoshi, executive director of human resources at IDBI Bank feel that individuals always have the option of declaring themselves off-limits without having to face recrimination by their employers. Sadarjoshi feels that as long as an individual has a genuine reason and has a credible reputation; it isn’t difficult to negotiate for some time off. He even insists that employees of the bank compulsorily take a few days off to rejuvenate and spend some time with their families.
Bangalore-based Anand Halankar, who was young Blackberry user, when he worked for an organization in Dubai, feels that an individual always has the option of replying to e-mails only if they are urgent. While the tendency is generally to respond to at least some mails to prevent them from piling up, Halankar says that in the two and a half years that he used it, it never affected his personal life. He adds that more people in India tend to work after work hours in comparison with Dubai where people took their after work time and holidays very seriously.
Closer home too, both individuals and corporates have increasingly begun touting the need for work-life balance as a priority issue. Infosys, for instance, has a Health Assessment and Life Enrichment (HALE) plan with a hotline aimed at helping individuals balance their professional lives with the personal. Other companies have chosen to have flexi-time or work-from-home options, childcare facilities at the workplace, concierge services for employees, periodic social gettogethers and so on. Employees too seem to be placing more value on companies which allow them to strike the balances. Anuradha Oza, senior associate of the human capital team at the consultancy Mercer feels that while remuneration is a key factor, work-life balance has also become a primary driver influencing people in favour of certain jobs. In fact, Oza recollects a time in the US when Blackberry addicts were referred to as ‘Crackberry’ addicts.
The bottomline, however, seems to be the need for individual discipline with technology and the attempt ‘to be present entirely when you are present’. Frenny Bawa, VP-India of Research In Motion which offers the Blackberry smartphones, can vouch for this. In her view, her much-maligned product allows people to drive greater productivity out of their time. For Frenny herself, who had begun to visit the office on a Sunday night to deal with the barrage of mail that would be awaiting her on a Monday morning, her Blackberry has been as a great way to get ahead of the curve without being chained to her desk. So after all, this may just be a question of personal choice.
lisa.thomson@timesgroup.com
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