Being seen as an exemplary worker automatically translates, in our minds, as an advantage: it helps you progress in your career, reinforces your reputation within the company and can open the way to new opportunities. But it can also corrode a personal life.
This week, the talk about the phenomenon of job creep: the gradual expansion of job requirements beyond the formal job description.
The process tends to take place without much fanfare. When someone starts a new position, they focus on contractually defined tasks. But some employees, over time, take on more responsibilities, often on their own initiative.
In one project, for example: the worker starts answering emails at night, after the children go to bed, despite having promised himself he would never do that. But the gesture, even if the worker doesn’t realize it, sends a signal to colleagues and the organization: the person is available out of hours. And so work “annexes” small portions of private life.
The extra effort might even be worth it (sometimes it’s not worth it). The problem arises when growth stops being perceived as a choice and begins to impact well-being, personal relationships and the ability to live outside of work.
Fast Company identifies a key moment in this process: the so-called crossover joltswhich are personal life events that function as a reality shock and reveal to what extent the work took up more space than previously thought. It could be an absence at an important family moment, the feeling of constant exhaustion when arriving home, or facing the inability to maintain valued habits and relationships.
But after all, what is this trend due to? The answer to this question lies, in part, in the way companies reward behavior that goes beyond obligation. Fast Company talks about “organizational citizenship”developed in organizational psychology, to describe this set of voluntary acts that are not included in the formal job description, but that benefit the company: helping colleagues, staying late, arriving early or participating in optional meetings. These gestures are associated with commitment, loyalty and team spirit.
And don’t forget the relationship between happiness and productivity at work. For a long time, people sought to understand whether happier workers produced more — and the answer proved to be less linear than previously supposed.
In many functions, job satisfaction does not change performance on core tasks, because this performance depends on external factors and more rigid processes. A worker on an assembly line, for example, cannot speed up production just because he is satisfied, nor can he slow it down much when he is unhappy.
It was in this context that researcher Dennis Organ proposed a different reading: perhaps job satisfaction is not reflected so much in fundamental tasks, but rather in the predisposition to adopt extra behaviors. Satisfied workers will be more willing to do more than is required of them. Later studies ended up supporting this idea. Companies that invest in their workers tend to generate greater satisfaction, which, in turn, increases the likelihood that these workers will reciprocate with organizational citizenship behaviors.
But this is a “double-edged sword”. It can bring recognition and professional success, but it also has costs. As they require extra energy, they often leave workers more exhausted.
It remains for everyone to stop and reflect: Is the job taking up too much time? Experts propose a simple strategy: do regular check-ins with your work. Every six months, for example, the worker can monitor in detail for a week how he distributes his time inside and outside of work, comparing this reality with the ideal week he would like to live and identifying where work began to invade the rest of his life.
