Disclaimer

Before you start reading, I have to make a disclaimer that this is an article from my research and personal point-of-view on current work culture at multinational corporations (MNC). If it does not reflect your view, please write me a comment below. I would love to hear your thoughts.

Morning at Work
Let me share with you a typical day at MNC. You will reach early in the morning and enjoy a “coffee time” with your colleagues or in front of your computer on social media sites to energize and start your work engine. Next, you decide what to do based on urgency, priority, interest, personal preference and most importantly, by corporate political games. The playing field of the corporate political battle is a chapter of its own and will not be the focus of this article.

Lunch Hours

By late morning, you are finally ready to work. If there are no immediate interferences from your colleagues (via chitchat & questions through Skype or in person) or bosses, you will be able to focus on work for an hour or 1.5 hours. Before you know, it’s lunchtime. Depending on the location of your office, available transportation, crowd and planned workload of the day, the lunch plan discussion can last from 5 min to 30 min or more. After lunch, it is not an uncommon practice for employees to do some shopping nearby too. While not often, it does happen from time to time.

Afternoon at Work

After returning to the office, it’s time to replenish your cup of beverage to “get ready” for your second half of the workday. Nevertheless, hey, you will most likely experience some informal chitchat at the pantry too. Who knows? It might be another 10, 20 or even 30 min. Looking at the clock, it is 2 pm. Time to get some solid work done. However, what to focus on – is there any “real” work to be done? If not, this is when you will consciously and intentionally “create” work without realizing the value or necessity of it. Don’t get me wrong; these are good initiatives. The choice is between creating work, spending time on different social media or continue the chatting with your colleagues until action hits your desk.

Diagnosis
My apologies to use paragraphs of dialogue to illustrate the concept of “stand-by” resources. In case you are wondering, these phenotypes have been described by other authors, and commentary sites as well. I merely want to enrich the content and share my voice on this issue.

In term of value, which is better? Outsourcing versus ready-trained staff for Just-in-time receiving of the work. The question is how many of these tasks require immediate attention. In the social aspects, why are we keeping adults in defined areas with restricted working boundaries? Is this fair to either the company or us?

Is this the so-called digital lifestyle that we are living under? Or is the full potential of digital work-life yet to be unravelled?

Something for all of us to think about.