Employee Choices: Work Tasks, Life Balance, Career Portfolios, Gigs, Other Side Hustles

Workers have not only different choices to improve their positions, but more than before.  Beyond the permanent possibility of just changing jobs, there are others with various merits and considerations.

One is during business hours, the idea that people should “Learn to Say “No” to Extra Work” (Jane Wells, Jane Wells Bulletin, August 29^th).  It is geared toward women, with the author claiming that they get most of the unrewarding assignments.  Whether or not that is true, the issue is real.  Most cubicle-job workers have opportunities to take on and decline tasks, more than many realize.  Suggestions the author cited from a book on this subject were not to accept assignments that cannot lead to promotions, not to join a “board or committee (At Least Not Long-Term),” not to respond at all to emails offering such tasks, and, when such is offered at a meeting, to “mimic the behavior of… colleagues who have no plan to raise their hands by shuffling papers, getting up to leave, refusing to make eye contact.”  Anyone who sees themselves doing the opposites of these should consider changing tactics.  The challenge is that career-strong assignments are often not easy to identify or, especially, to obtain.

An old expression brought to the fore by our chaotic remote-work situation is the subject of “Work-life balance matters to employees – how to find out if it matters to a company” (Lee Hafner, Employee Benefits, January 5).  Per a FlexJobs career services manager, one way is to ask, at interview time, “What would a typical work week look like?”  Another to ask is “how employees are encouraged to have a work-life balance.”  Job seekers should also determine if the company has “a strong onboarding plan.”  All valuable, but it is necessary for everyone to know specifically what “work-life balance” means personally to them.

In Yahoo News on January 3^rd, Scott Sonenshein told us that “Americans are taking more control over their work lives – because they have to.”  As the author put it, “the pandemic accelerated a development that began years ago when workers realized they needed to take on more responsibility for directing their careers,” which led to “career portfolioing,” or assembling and maintaining multiple income.  sources.  That is nothing new in, to name two countries, Iceland and the Bahamas, but it is not traditionally American.  The largest advantage beyond sheer money is that “when facing difficult times at one job, people can turn to other parts of their career portfolio for security and stability.”  If, indeed, you see “a future in which uncertainty is too high to rely on a single institution to fulfill basic needs,” expanding into a portfolio may be for you.

One common addition to such income groupings comes with its own hazards.  To deal with them, Lee Hafner’s May 25^th Benefits News piece, “4 ways gig workers can protect themselves from scams and lawsuits,” may help.  His suggestions are to “choose the right insurance,” as gig workers are legally vulnerable independent contractors, “consult an insurance expert” especially one on the kind of gig work you want to do, “invest in strong cybersecurity” to avoid being responsible for stolen material, and “make a contract, check it twice,” with emphasis on minimizing liability.  These precautions may be more valuable for tasks like the wood drilling pictured with the article than for others, but are worthy of consideration.

Finally, another old thing is becoming new to some in “Beyond ‘Quiet Quitting’: Another Workplace Trend is Making Employers Even Angrier” (Veronika Bondarenko, The Street, May 30^th).  According to “a wide-scale study conducted by consulting firm Deloitte, 46% of polled Generation Z workers and 37% of millennials said that they worked a second part-time or even full-time job in tandem to their main work.”  Not all of these were related to their primary field, as “some of the most popular side hustles include selling online products, delivering food orders or working for a ride-share company and writing marketing materials.”  Per related Bankrate research, such endeavors are “often a way for low-earning employees to keep up with the cost of living,” with the money it brings in “essential.”  Working two jobs to make ends meet is nothing new, and employers, if it does not involve using company resources, should tolerate it.  Or they could just pay more.  As coarse as that seems, it would alleviate or totally remove many of the issues here.  Choices on these issues are not, after all, always made by workers.