Neither works, hence the huge draw of working from home.
My interpretation: The "Chief People Officer" at Walmart doesn't want to be responsible for making sure that the people who work at Walmart have a good work life balance.
Does anyone know if Walmart pays more than its competitors?
Whether “work life balance” ever meant “fixed work life balance”? For some I imagine. Integration makes it clearer that it’s specifically not that.
(None of this means you should assign “too much” time to work, nor should employers violate labor laws to require you to work without being compensated).
What is her compensation ratio vs the minimum paid employee?
Are exempt employees compensated (stock?) in some capacity for being available at any time?
How do you monitor that managers are being good role models and/or helping to set boundaries? Without a company plan/objective, the only people holding the company to account is the individual, and they only power they have at the end of the day is to leave.
We all had to quietly nod in agreement in those meetings and then literally everyone else openly talked about work life balance regularly. Being on the hiring team in that company quite, quite often the phrase comes up in interviews. Even our head of HR, thankfully, wouldn’t regurgitate the weird language around that to potential hires asking about work life balance.
Ultimately, executives are just humans. Humans have flaws and sometimes those flaws materialize in pedantic phraseology. People hope their execs are these perfect all-knowing individuals and that’s just never the case. It’s a combination of _some_ amount of competency and a whole lot of luck that put them there in all cases.
But simply calling it "harmony" doesn't magically make those tradeoffs go away.
You want to make buckets loads of money and tell other people what to do? Then you need some empathy for workers who aren't stakeholders making peanuts compared to you. That is the most basic of basic requirement to be in such a position of privilege.
It isn't "just human" to be a slave driver. It is criminally inhumane. I can only hope these people will face some kind of karmic justice for their gross inhumane negligence.
I would understand if she was running a huge charity; she would feel that interrupting family time is a sacrifice she makes to improve the world. But, Walmart is just a mechanism to extract value from customers.
Technically, you're correct. But I believe that a different phenomenon is at play here. That is psychologically, the more money you have, the less likely you're to be satisfied with what you already have, regardless of what use you have for it. (Meaning, the richer you are, the greedier you become.)
This may be not be entirely correct at the lower end - there may be an inflection point below which you're too poor to be satisfied with what you have. But the craving is almost always increasing at large wealth levels.
I imagine it’s common amongst high achiever, type A personalities that may end up in executive roles.
Did the mantra change again? Wasn't it called 'hustle culture' previously?
> For some, the term can mean not working nights, ... While this divide may give you a sense of happiness and fulfillment, it isn’t always realistic
Actually, it can be anything from 'mandatory' to 'completely impossible' depending upon who sets the limits.
> “I’ve never believed in the term work-life balance,” says Morris, ... “I call it work-life integration."
I admire the rich people for their ability to cook up intelligent-sounding alternative terms on a dime! However, based on the elaboration of the concept, 'work-life disintegration' sounds more appropriate.
> When Morris is visiting family, for example, her main focus is on them. But if there’s something at work that needs her attention, she won’t wait until she’s back in the office to do so.
What an inspirational example! I will remember that for the day when my compensation also justifies such dedication.
> Morris’ insight comes as young professionals are demanding more out of work, ... Along with an inadequate salary and burnout, lack of work-life balance is one of the top reasons why Gen Zers would quit a job
Hmm. Sounds more like Morris' demands vs Gen Zers insights. I mean, how can someone think about jumping back into work at midnight when they are constantly worried about paying their rents and transportation costs?
> The pursuit of work-life balance can also cause mental distress
As opposed to?
Option A: Working unpaid/unlimited extra time
Option B: Being on call 24x7
Option C: Being on text with boss during your child's football match
Option D: Any arbitrary combination of the above
> We hear these things from others, [like] trust in the process [and] balance is so important, we need more balance, it’s the ultimate goal
> It ends up being very frustrating and can lead to anxiety, because we’re constantly feeling like we’re not in balance.
So you become distressed by aspiring to be peaceful and satisfied? Is that like being sad because you want to be happy?
Forgive me for being cynical. It's completely fair for well paid (often exorbitantly) executives to have standards for their responsibilities and dedication. But when you project the same onto young employees, some thought must be given about their spare cognitive and emotional capacity after their struggles to make two ends meet. When leaders start recommending 50 year mortgages, your first priority must be to evaluate the compensation that these employees are paid, as a percentage of the value that they generate, instead of peddling idealistic, if not inhuman standards using language of subtle guilt tripping. A bit of sensitivity will take you a long way in these troubled times.
So, not really focused on family then
Puff piece
whatever1•2mo ago
ncr100•2mo ago
And it's base of $250k salary plus all the bonuses, often blowing out to over $1M a year. I'd guess she's in the $5M+ range, a year.
whatever1•2mo ago
Much better position to make an informed comment about work life balance.