By Nilesh Bhagat, CHRP

People have this whole work/life balance thing all wrong.

I’d like to argue that there exist two concepts for ‘balance’ – one is dichotomous, while the other is continuous. For illustration purposes, I’m going to split a composite workplace into two demographics: on one side are the Net Generationals (those born between 1977 and 1996), and on the other are the Boomer +’s (those who have perfected organizational efficiencies over the last several decades).

For the Boomer +’s, the idea of work/life balance is dichotomous. One works hard and efficiently between the hours of 9am and 5pm as their ‘work self’, then punches out and shifts to their more leisurely (and in most ways, more comfortable) ‘personal self’. Work and life are two different things; one goes to work, and then offsets this pressure with personal endeavors which act to attenuate workplace stressors – through things like relaxation and ‘leisure activities’. There is work and then there is life.

I think times have changed. Speaking for the Net Generation, work/life balance has a new meaning. In fact, it may have no meaning; work and life are continuous with one another. Work is no different from any other passion a Net Gener has, in that it is as wholly entertaining, interesting and immersing as any other stream of tasks. To give an example, I enjoy all things hockey at all times during the day. I don’t split my interest to hockey during a specific time of day or week. In the same way, I’m lucky to have a job, for which I don’t feel temporally obliged to. I have integrated work to life, just as I have integrated hockey to life.

I’ll make my case further with three recent and strong forms of thinking that I believe have come together to shape the latest generation’s minds:

Daniel Pink, in Drive, describes what he calls the ‘Sawyer Effect’: the perceived notion of turning work into play in the pursuit of intrinsic satisfaction and flow states. This idea is built upon the notion that we, as humans, are fundamentally able to perform nearly any task – whether at ‘work’ or at play – at a high level, so long as we perceive the task to be rewarding.

David Rock describes human motivation (the neurological level, specifically) as being driven by one of two types of stimulus responses: toward or away. Toward responses are those which reinforce feelings of reward through the release of feel-good neuro-chemicals. Away responses do the opposite: they create feelings of avoidance and create negative stress (and release ‘negative’ chemicals through the brain, like cortisol). The continued experience of one type of response over another reinforces our general perceptions and tendencies.

Don Tapscott has convincingly shown that the demographic born between 1977 and 1996 have a differing set of values than the generations preceding. This means that the worldviews of the ‘Net Generation’ – the demographic currently flooding our workplaces – are vastly different than those of the previous era. The Net Generation values Entertainment, Collaboration, Speed and Freedom – all of which call for a more fluid approach to ‘work’, and all of which speak to a more internally satisfying and integrated approach to life.

Here’s my challenge to those who seek to define ‘work/life balance’: given that our perception of work can be altered (Pink) and reinforced (Rock), could it be that the notion of ‘work/life’ is perceived differently now as compared to previous times (Tapscott)?

Nilesh Bhagat, CHRP, is a rewards coordinator with Best Buy Canada. Nilesh graduated from Simon Fraser University with a Bachelor’s degree in Business Administration, First Class Honours. He majored in Human Resources Management and tacked on an extended minor in Psychology. He’s a self-confessed nerd (the first step is admitting), likes to read, loves hockey and is struggling with the complexities of learning the game of golf.