A Case for Wholeness
Search any company on Glassdoor and you’ll find among the top reviews comments about work-life balance. As job seekers, we are conditioned to pursue only those employers who offer this benefit in spades. The cruel irony is of course that true work-life balance is often a hollow recruiting term coined by disingenuous executives to trick you into a false sense of flexibility.
Let’s break it down some. What does work-life balance really mean? Typically, it implies that you’ll be home in time for dinner and can attend your kids’ soccer game on the weekend. But the truth is that work-life balance is a veiled misnomer that lulls disgruntled job seekers into thinking they’ll “have it all.”
Within consulting and government contracting, in particular, this balance is inevitably contradicted by prescriptive corporate policies (often devised by groups divorced from the teams writing the marketing content).
Does this sound familiar? You’re a billable resource required to charge at least 40 hours per week on your contract. Sure, you get PTO -- but with a target of 1800-2000 billable hours per year, this really means you end up having to bill 45 hours on weeks you do work to make your number. You may be offered “growth opportunities” through internal firm contributions, but only above and beyond your billable hours and after you’ve completed required internal work like proposals and timesheets. Where does time for training, quiet reflection, special projects, or stretch assignments come in? After all of those other hours are accounted for first.
Quickly, an average billable consultant is working 50-60 hours per week. Many add another 10 hours per week of commuting to the tally too. So where does the “life” part come into this “balanced” equation? Late at night, when you’re tired, frustrated, and drained.
There is a different option. What if we stopped looking at work and life as a duality, as two pulls in opposition to each other? What if you simply were your whole self, all of the time? Frédéric Laloux describes this as “inviting our humanity to work.” It references the idea that when you’re at work, you’re the same person as when you’re at home. Sounds nice, but how do we ensure it isn’t just more marketing propaganda?
The death of work-life balance comes when we stop seeing ourselves as living on the weekends and adopting a professional persona Monday through Friday (which can effectively lead to wishing away five-sevenths of your life). This requires the organizations we work for to embrace the idea that we are more than our billable hours. Laloux continues, “Organizations fear that if people were to bring all of themselves to work -- their moods, quirks, and weekend clothes -- things would quickly dissolve into a mess.” I contradict these corporate fearmongers, positing that the worst case scenario is a company of people who share their passions with each other, who tell each other the truth about their feelings, who support each other through good and bad times, who laugh so genuinely their stomachs hurt.
Wholeness is more than a buzzword for RiverNorth, it’s a hard requirement that’s etched in stone. Contributions outside of billable hours are always voluntary, and because we do not have titles, there is no fear of being passed up for a promotion because of it.
We only hire people whose passions are not easily contained to weekends. We are a company of hobbyists, enthusiasts, nerds. If your only hobby is working more, you’re probably not going to fit in here. RiverNorth is made up of painters, musicians, nutrition fanatics, runners, martial artists, dreamers. We are who we are, no matter where we are (look at my fingers next time we meet: you can almost always see remnants of the pigments I chose from my last painting session).
We understand that you have other responsibilities beyond being an employee; competing priorities are part of being human. We don’t have corporate policies defining hoops through which to jump to attend to those priorities. Instead, we foster teams that trust and are accountable to each other, which means they take care of each other. You don’t need permission from anyone to do what you need to do; inform others and seek advice from those with more expertise out of respect, not obligation.
This philosophy is deeply personal for me. I am a mother with a chronically ill child who is only ever one school call away from requiring me to leave work without notice. But it doesn’t take a personal crisis to demand re-prioritization; your kid’s school play, getting home to walk your dog, or simply needing to take a relaxing bath to clear your head all count too. Whatever your competing priorities are, you should never have to justify them to anyone else.
We are founded on a set of core assumptions about how we behave, one of which is “We care about each other personally and act accordingly.” This means sharing in each others’ big moments. Most places celebrate achievements, but shy away from hardships. We laugh hard, but aren’t afraid to cry with each other too. We ask about each others’ families (and mean it), we talk about the charities we love, we have debates, we tell our co-workers when they’ve messed up, and we admit when we ourselves are wrong.
Similarly, we don’t expect our employees to mask their personalities at work. Beyond “appropriate,” our only dress policy is to be yourself. I spent years wearing the DC uniform of grey or black power suits -- and let me tell you, they aren’t that comfortable. I much prefer my 90s-era hoop earrings and ponytail to tasteful studs and a blow-out. To each their own.