End of life regrets? I'm having them now
Bruce Daisley
LinkedIn Top Voice on Work & Workplace Culture, 2x Sunday Times Bestseller, ex-tech firm VP
The Pandemic brought forward an end-of-life reappraisal
You’ll possibly be familiar with the?the Harvard Study of Adult Development, a research investigation into human wellbeing that has been running since 1938. The survey has delivered vast insights into the secrets of living a long, healthy life. It does so by taking a cohort of teenagers and following them until they die. The original sample of participants blended contrasting groups together, a cohort of Harvard undergraduates (incidentally including a young John F Kennedy in their ranks) was surveyed along with under-privileged Boston teenagers. The survey is still continuing today, the sample including descendants of the original participants.
If you’ve heard of the survey you’ll be familiar with its conclusion, that the engine of health and longevity was friendship. ‘Happiness is love. Full stop,’ was the TL:DR summarised by the founder of the project.
Or as Robert Waldinger, who?runs the study today describes it:
"the healthiest are the people who have more social connections and warmer social connections. Connections of all kinds—not just intimate partners, but friends and work colleagues and casual relationships."
What brought this to mind was an interview with Waldinger that I was listening to this week. Waldinger explained the insight they gained about life from the qualitative interviews they conducted. He said this:
“I will say that when we asked people in our study when they were in their 80s to look back, we said, “What are your biggest regrets?” Many of the men — and remember, in that generation, it was primarily the men who worked outside the home—many of them said, “I wish I hadn’t devoted so much time to work and achievement. I wish I had spent more time with the people I care about.”
What was telling about that is that it has resonance with a lot of the workplace conversations that we’ve witnessed over the last two years, as we’ve returned to a post Pandemic.?We’re seeing huge increases in men choosing to become stay-at-home dads?- a group that has swelled by a third since the Pandemic.
The critical challenge here is that the rumble of a RTO (return to the office) movement is building up a serious head of steam. This week another CEO said the majority of his employees needed to be back in the office full-time, the boss of JPMorgan adding that?remote work is good for women but not for managers or ‘young kids’. No doubt it was meant differently to the way it came out. I hope so.
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We’ve always known that employers enter into a trade-off battle with the talent they hire. Lavishly-paid professions like management consultancy or finance tend to demand long, relentless days in return for their generous remuneration. We’re heading to a position that is evolved a couple of steps from where we were at the start of the Pandemic, but with many of the same characteristics. Jobs that want part of your soul have gone back to demanding part of your soul.
New data this week says that the average worker saves?72 minutes a day when working from home. Of this they tend to spend half an hour working more, and the remainder benefitting their personal life. Firms who demand a full-time return to the office are asking their employees to forget the glimpse of a better life they saw, and to make a call that they may regret on their deathbeds.
Read more:?Friendship is good for us.
Summary:
Media Strategy. Client lead. I help brands to grow, evolve and challenge (Agency & Client-side) //health & behaviour change//Government// FMCG. Available in February 2025 for long-term projects and permanent roles.
2 年I think it pays back both ways ,employers are having to re-shape what that value looks like for an employee in terms of the time and quality they get back into their life, in a post-pandemic period the expectations have changed and employers need to be mindful that these are things that may help people to work better and in a more productive way as individuals. Would love to see more insights around retention & satisfaction where companies have embraced hybrid models.
Chair, Non-Executive, Mentor & Strategic Advisor. Chartered FCIPD. Certified Chair. Remuneration Committee Chair: Strategy, Business Transformation, Commercial, Governance, People
2 年Yes and No. The reality is that those at work in the UK keep the ship of state afloat. Taxes pay for public services. It can’t all be paid for by borrowing. There’s a skills shortage and over a million unfilled jobs. We need more not fewer workers is I’m afraid our reality. Only the few can afford to retire early and most will need to work much longer in this generation than the last ones did. So, what’s needed actually is more employers being more flexible about how and where work is done and more employers looking beyond their previous norms and being more inclusive when looking to attract people into work. It also needs more employers looking to provide work that’s meaningful and engaging to those they employ which they could do more of if they took engagement seriously. And then fewer people might want to retire…..
An employment tax specialist, and RSM's national lead on CIS, with over 25 years of experience, who helps employers understand and manage tax risks
2 年Interesting article Bruce and as you say, certainly resonates with discussions on hybrid working and workplaces.
Realtor Associate @ Next Trend Realty LLC | HAR REALTOR, IRS Tax Preparer
2 年Thanks for sharing.
Founder, CEO @ Ideas for Leaders | Publisher | Champion of Followership and Middle Managers | Leadership Development
2 年An important idea that needs to be more widely understood - as with so much about how work and lives interact, and can be improved on both sides. The best leaders need to attend to this issue continuously. As it happens, the forthcoming issue of Developing Leaders Quarterly is focusing on the Quest for Purpose - it will be out at the end of the month!