Schedule Control or Robots?
March 26th, 2008 by Cali & Jody
We’ve written about the challenges and limitations of the Family Medical Leave Act before, but a statistic from this piece really got us scared. Apparently, 44 million Americans provide unpaid assistance to an adult. We can only imagine that this number is going to skyrocket as Baby Boomers enter retirement and semi-retirement in the coming years.
The FMLA requires covered employers to grant eligible employees “up to a total of 12 workweeks of unpaid leave during any 12-month period.” For starters the logistics of this law don’t make any sense for long-term caregivers, who may not need workweeks off, but an hour here or two hours there over several years. Even more bothersome are the outdated assumptions about work that the FMLA buys into, even down to the term “medical leave”.
The phrase “medical leave” assumes that if you aren’t physically in the office, then you can’t contribute. This doesn’t make sense in today’s economy. For example, let’s say you need to pick up some medication for your mom at 3:00 on a Tuesday. If you are available via cell phone or e-mail, then are you suddenly “on leave” because you’re out of the office for an hour?
Let’s take it a step further. Imagine you are completely caught up on work, delivering results, and in general, getting it done, and you’re NOT available for two or three hours because you’re helping your mom. Does this momentary gap in availability take away your accomplishments?
As we’ve noted before, we will be forced to rethink these attitudes about work as the Boomers age and the Millennials continue entering the workforce. Different cultures are going to find different solutions. In Japan, worries over how to take care of an aging population has raised the possibility of using robots as caretakers. Maybe it would be easier to just let people run their own lives.
Some of this depends upon how it is implemented. I’ve worked with an employee who had a non-medical FMLA done with pre-determined hours off by month depending upon what was needed. And, of course, we modified this as needed during the week.
But, methinks this is the exception and not the rule. It’s a tough balance.
It occurs to me that the reason why the workforce doesn’t get ROWE is that it is introduced too late in their enculturation process. You need to start looking at distributed education (K-12) and begin promoting a Results-Only Education Environment (ROEE) — Curriki, DSpace, Global University Project (GLOSAS), etc. All those rural school districts which complain they can’t find quality teachers (to relocate to their geo-position) need take note when the best qualified teacher on the planet can syndicate her|his content for every classroom.
I observed that often bosses are okay with their employees leaving for an hour or two, but it’s sometimes the co-workers who will make stupid comments (usually the ones who “spend” 8 hours at the office and then leave no matter what).
As you say, you’re available if you answer your cell while picking up medication. But you’re not available if you’re at the office attending back-to-back meetings or finishing an urgent project while your phone goes straight to voice mail.
How about sending the robots to do your errands with your cell phone so you can stay at the office and concentrate on important things like checking scores?