Is There Life After Work?

AT an office party in 2005, one of my colleagues asked my then husband what I did on weekends. She knew me as someone with great intensity and energy. “Does she kayak, go rock climbing and then run a half marathon?” she joked. No, he answered simply, “she sleeps.” And that was true. When I wasn’t catching up on work, I spent my weekends recharging my batteries for the coming week. Work always came first, before my family, friends and marriage — which ended just a few years later.

In recent weeks I have been following with interest the escalating debate about work-life balance and the varying positions of Facebook’s Sheryl Sandberg, Marissa Mayer of Yahoo and the academic Anne-Marie Slaughter, among others. Since I resigned my position as chief financial officer of Lehman Brothers in 2008, amid mounting chaos and a cloud of public humiliation only months before the company went bankrupt, I have had ample time to reflect on the decisions I made in balancing (or failing to balance) my job with the rest of my life. The fact that I call it “the rest of my life” gives you an indication where work stood in the pecking order.

I don’t have children, so it might seem that my story lacks relevance to the work-life balance debate. Like everyone, though, I did have relationships — a spouse, friends and family — and none of them got the best version of me. They got what was left over.

I didn’t start out with the goal of devoting all of myself to my job. It crept in over time. Each year that went by, slight modifications became the new normal. First I spent a half-hour on Sunday organizing my e-mail, to-do list and calendar to make Monday morning easier. Then I was working a few hours on Sunday, then all day. My boundaries slipped away until work was all that was left.

Inevitably, when I left my job, it devastated me. I couldn’t just rally and move on. I did not know how to value who I was versus what I did. What I did was who I was.

I have spent several years now living a different version of my life, where I try to apply my energy to my new husband, Anthony, and the people whom I love and care about. But I can’t make up for lost time. Most important, although I now have stepchildren, I missed having a child of my own. I am 47 years old, and Anthony and I have been trying in vitro fertilization for several years. We are still hoping.

Sometimes young women tell me they admire what I’ve done. As they see it, I worked hard for 20 years and can now spend the next 20 focused on other things. But that is not balance. I do not wish that for anyone. Even at the best times in my career, I was never deluded into thinking I had achieved any sort of rational allocation between my life at work and my life outside.

I have often wondered whether I would have been asked to be C.F.O. if I had not worked the way that I did. Until recently, I thought my singular focus on my career was the most powerful ingredient in my success. But I am beginning to realize that I sold myself short. I was talented, intelligent and energetic. It didn’t have to be so extreme. Besides, there were diminishing returns to that kind of labor.

I didn’t have to be on my BlackBerry from my first moment in the morning to my last moment at night. I didn’t have to eat the majority of my meals at my desk. I didn’t have to fly overnight to a meeting in Europe on my birthday. I now believe that I could have made it to a similar place with at least some better version of a personal life. Not without sacrifice — I don’t think I could have “had it all” — but with somewhat more harmony.

I have also wondered where I would be today if Lehman Brothers hadn’t collapsed. In 2007, I did start to have my doubts about the way I was living my life. Or not really living it. But I felt locked in to my career. I had just been asked to be C.F.O. I had a responsibility. Without the crisis, I may never have been strong enough to step away. Perhaps I needed what felt at the time like some of the worst experiences in my life to come to a place where I could be grateful for the life I had. I had to learn to begin to appreciate what was left.

At the end of the day, that is the best guidance I can give. Whatever valuable advice I have about managing a career, I am only now learning how to manage a life.

Erin Callan is the former chief financial officer of Lehman Brothers.

Sunday Review

By ERIN CALLAN

Published: March 9, 2013

Stop treating HR as event organisers!

My message to Corporate Management & Companies:

Stop making HR plan the company picnic, holiday or birthday parties!

HR is not the activities planner, nor is it a concierge or event organizer.

They do not have to be a party-pooper, but HR has actual responsibilities and meaningful things to do.
Companies have to begin looking at HR as a real job.

Unfortunately, until someone else handles the social secretary duties, HR will never be taken seriously...

Why Being a Recruiter Rocks!

I love being a recruiter.
Seriously, I think it’s the best job in the world.
Yet 80% of people who enter this industry, fail in the first 2 years, leave, and are never sighted again.
And it’s true, it is tough being a recruiter. And I believe in the modern era it’s getting even harder. During the downturn it got even worse. We all worked harder and harder, and earned less and less.
On top of that, our customers seem to resent us more than ever, as can be seen in my recent blog, ‘God I hate recruiters’.
Ironically there is a fate worse than being amongst the 80% of recruiters who fail. Yes, being an average, mediocre, ploddy recruiter who survives is real purgatory. Why? Because this job is too hard, has too many disappointments, not to be great at it. You have to be a great recruiter to reap the rewards that make it all worthwhile.
So for the top 5%, the cream, recruiting is the coolest job in the world.
Here’s why:

• Recruiting is a win/win/win: Unlike most commercial transactions, recruiting is not a win/lose scenario. If I sell you a car I aim for the highest price, you push for the lowest. One of us will feel we ‘won’, the other a bit despondent that we ‘lost’. But in the perfect recruitment scenario everybody wins. Happy client, happy candidate, happy you. This is not as trivial as it seems. There is something intensely rewarding about doing a job where everyone is grateful, everyone is excited with the outcome… and then you get paid as well!
• 

  By: Kiva Dang
  You create great outcomes: Maybe the coolest thing about being a recruiter is that this is a job where you actually make good things happen. The candidate is reluctant to go on an interview, but through your influencing skills they reluctantly go along, do fantastically well, love the job, and get hired! The client won’t see your top talent because of something they spotted in the resume, but you persist, explaining the person is better than the paper, the client relents and your talent gets the job, gets promoted and in time becomes your client!  For me, when I recruited, this was the real buzz. Making things happen. Controlling the process. I would crack open a beer on Friday and reflect. That would NOT have happened if I had not seen the opportunity and influenced the outcome. Beyond cool.
• It actually matters: And of course that leads us to another reason why recruiting rocks. What we do actually matters. I mean it really matters. Recruiters get a horrific rap sometimes, and often it’s deserved but hey, at the end of the day, we find people jobs! And that’s a good thing right? Something to be proud of. It makes an impact. We change people’s lives. We solve companies staffing issues. We help people further their career ambitions. Fantastic!
• It’s measurable: One of the beautiful things about our business is that it is so measurable. This does not suit everybody I know, but in recruiting there is nowhere to hide, and I like that. If you have the right temperament, you will thrive in this competitive environment, love the fact that you can measure yourself against your competitors and colleagues, and revel in the transparency of fee-tables and pay-by-results. Truly in our business, you eat what you kill.
• You can own your market: If you have longevity, if you maintain integrity, if you deliver service and outcomes that your customers want… you can elevate yourself to a true trusted advisor, and then recruitment becomes a beautiful, beautiful thing.  All your work is exclusive, all your candidates come via referrals and commendations, clients treat you with respect, seek your advice, bring you into the tent . You actually ‘own’ your patch and that is a wonderful place to be!

Yes it’s true. Recruiting rocks. When it all boils down, what all of us want from a great job is just two things. Fun & money. And if you’re a great recruiter you’ll get lots of both. The fun of winning, the fun of finding people jobs, the fun of working in a job that actually counts. And money? I don’t mean how much you earn, although of course that is important. I mean working in a job where you get a great return on your efforts. That is where it is at!
So if you are having a down day. Never forget: fun and money.
Recruitment rocks!

by Greg Savage from the Undercover Recruiter

Want happier employees - feed them :)

Want happier employees - feed them

Polish Labour Law - Parent Employees on longer maternity leaves

New Labour Law regulations, effective from September 2013 will make the maternity leave twice as long as it's been up to date.
The government is proud of its great idea of making it more 'attractive' to become a parent, in reality, it makes it worse.
First of all, it's not because of the fact that the current maternity is too short that women don't want to have children! - It is for fear that they won't have a job to come back to after the maternity leave. The old classic is that once you are back, you find out that your position has been taken over by your very best colleague whose manager, up to that day, were you. So what that you are protected and cannot be fired - you lost your position, your career has gone to a dead end...
The government by making it also available for 'dad employees' to take the 'one year maternity leave' exchangeable with 'mom employees' messes with the Polish social satndards. It will not work fo men in Poland to stay at home - for only 80% of their salary if they decide 2 weeks in advance before the delivery - it is not 'popular' and it;s certainly not a common practice to do so. This is not Sweden or Norway.
In view of the planned regulations it will make the situation of women on the market even worse. The recruiter having to choose between a man and a woman will have no doubts - one year of paid vacation is not appealing to any employer.

HR person, take off your mask!

Lots of HR people walk on eggshells these days.
They wear a mask.
They bury who they really are.
They’re not authentic.
They’re uncomfortable revealing parts of themselves they’d love to share with others.
The try to fit in rather than stand out.
They do this because they believe their organizations don’t really value their uniqueness.
Or, they fear they’ll get biased treatment.
And in many cases, they’re right.
However, the key to excelling, impressing and inspiring others as an HR professional lies in your ability to bring your “whole” self to work.

 That means feeling comfortable talking about that pick-up basketball game you played in the inner city on weekends instead of golf.
It means being comfortable sharing your activities in the Gay Pride events in your town.
It means speaking up and taking a stand — when no one else will — if your HR experience tells you that the brand new performance appraisal changes are just too complex and won’t work,
I will make no pretense that any of this is easy to do or will be embraced with open arms by everyone.
But you know in your heart who you are, what you believe and what’s true to you.
So act accordingly.
You cannot bury who you really are if you want to truly impress other people in HR.

If the face you always show your colleagues, your clients and your boss is a mask, one of these days there will be nothing beneath it.
That’s because when you spend too much time “shape shifting” to adapt to everyone else’s perception of you…or who everyone else wants you to be… you eventually forget who you really are.
So, don’t be a shape shifter.
Stop hiding behind a mask.
Be yourself.

After Allan Collins

Valentine's Day at the office: how not to celebrate V-Day at work

How not to celebrate V-Day at work :)