Work-Life Balance Is Dead, DX Stays
Length:
8 min
Published:
July 28, 2022
Preface
Two thirds [1] of the global workforce have already changed jobs, or would consider it, if their employer insisted on returning to the office. The covid pandemic clearly changed how people see their work environment. Work benefits are no longer built around office perks. Nobody really cares whether you have a coffee machine or a shared PlayStation to cool off, because the people who would use them probably already have both at home.
Commutes often eat up time for no good reason, daily or weekly chores like laundry can run alongside work, and almost everyone who worked through the two pandemic years figured this out: working from home (WFH) can help you manage your time better.
The same dataset also shows the downsides of WFH. Over half of workers report poor work performance because of mental-health issues. You can put it down to several factors: isolation, blurred lines between life and work, less social contact, and even worse equipment for the job.
The blurry line between work and life is shaping up to be the next work-life balance problem, one we will need to watch. You could say our work-life balance is now fairly unbalanced. This is where Developer Experience (DX) can come to the rescue, at least for some of these workers, given that developers seem to feel the adverse effects in full force [2].
Meeting fatigue
As a developer, I can confirm that one of the most discussed issues among my colleagues is the quality and quantity of meetings. As ICSE points out, a few areas of work took a direct hit with the rise of WFH.
- The feeling of being socially connected with your team dropped sharply.
- So did the ability to brainstorm efficiently with colleagues.
- And the ease of communication got worse.
Pair that with more meetings whose quality and usefulness stay the same, and you get an unprecedented problem for productivity and for the team's ability to deliver.
What can you do about it through DX?
The first and most obvious path is to work on the quality and quantity of your scheduled meetings. Let's call these Meaningful Meetings.
To run meaningful meetings, focus on importance, length, regularity, and value. One reason meetings multiply is trust. WFH erodes trust, and meetings are a favored tool to keep at least partial hold of the reins and stay on top of everyone's progress, a false sense of control.
Signs you should not have a meeting
- Nobody joins the conversation; perhaps you invited people who are not the right group for this kind of meeting.
- The meeting was scheduled badly and, for example, breaks the developers' chain of context.
- It keeps drifting off topic, handling unrelated work or circling the same starting point; the initiator has no control over it.
- You set up the meeting just to repeat and recite information that people could have pulled from a task-management tool.
- It is a long meeting, with no breaks or one that only gets longer, when it could have been postponed and handled more efficiently.
Meetings are not the be-all and end-all, of course. Run retrospectives, listen to your developers, and improve through feedback. Move social interactions into the virtual world, like virtual beers or online LAN parties, depending on your team and what they want and need. DX is all about feelings and voicing them. The next step, naturally, is culture.
The (lack of) culture
Managers should aim to build a team culture that includes every team member, for example through one-on-ones, and that encourages social interaction. As the number of WFH workers shot up, so did the number of tools, activities, and services that work well online.
A general drop in social activity and connection between team members leads to weaker communication, less awareness of each other's work, and ultimately lower productivity.
"All work and no play does not keep the burnout away."
Keep in mind
- Think of ways to engage with your developers, and ways they can engage better with each other.
- Do not force it. Respect developers' time and base every step toward a better team culture on their wants, needs, and actual feedback.
- Underestimating the need for social interaction takes a direct toll on the health of your team and on its productivity.
In the end this is a game of psychology, and with WFH your dev team is far more likely to be spread around the world, which makes a healthy team culture much harder to build (time zones, different demographics, and so on) and culture-based meetings harder to hold.
But do not worry. Measuring your developers' personalities can help you understand their needs better. You can also take a better approach to mentoring and feedback. All of these need a developer-first, or even people-first, approach, something that pays for itself many times over.
Benefits
Whether it is full WFH or some hybrid arrangement, this new work-life imbalance has thrown the traditional benefits market off. A solid salary moved straight to the top, followed by a properly flexible schedule [1].
Does that mean we should scrap the benefit packages and just raise developer salaries? Not quite, even though cutting operating costs through remote work can technically let you pay more.
If you have been following closely, there are issues like mental health and social interaction, both historically handled through in-office benefits such as an ergonomic workplace, zen zones, attractive office design, or simply seeing your colleagues.
What you can do
- Offer WFH benefits. Those adjustable ergonomic desks you had at the office? Why not sponsor one at home, or make it an onboarding bonus to set up and improve a developer's home office?
- Focus on mental health. Offer paid therapy sessions or other ways to consult and look after mental health.
- According to NAHB [3], the pandemic raised demand for larger homes that fit a separate workspace, so offer help with relocation or assist with a mortgage.
- Set clear boundaries and offer ways to mark where work ends and life starts, through flexible hours, a 4-day week, or other ways of respecting free time.
- Among all these shifting variables, stability is a common thread, so find ways to radiate stability and encourage long-term commitment, whether through competitive salaries or a stable, transparent cash flow.
DX is all about listening and adapting to how developers feel while they work. Maybe the time has come for new benefit packages and new ways to deal with stress, miscommunication, and burnout.
Consider treating your developers' time as the most valuable resource. Maybe set up a right to disconnect, like the laws recently passed in some countries, or find ways to adjust the work to the worker instead of the other way around.
Conclusion
Developer Experience describes the positive and negative feelings developers have while working in their environment or with a given product. Now more than ever, you need to listen closely to those feelings and act on them. With work increasingly remote and social interaction virtual, feelings and feedback get lost easily.
The traditional term "work-life balance" may have died in favor of a more joined-up approach, where work seeps into life in a more flexible way. But DX is here to stay, arguably stronger than ever. Hopefully these few examples help you think about these new (and yet old) issues.
Visit the DX Knowledge Base for more interesting and creative tips on how to make your developers happy and keep your teams productive. Keep building great products that developers value, and if you need help with any of this, give us a shout.
You might also be interested in:
- What is DX and why is it worth attention?
- The ROI of investing into Developer Experience
- Work as the first line of defense against depression
Sources
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