From heart scans to home office.
My journey to a better work-life balance.
As a young lad living in the North East, my late teens and early twenties were mostly spent working in a grim call centre by day and trying to dance the floors of Liquid/Diva by night. For anyone reading that doesn't know what Liquid or Diva is, I am slightly envious of your young age but you should really be envious of me; because those were the nights. Think Ibiza but a little colder and cheaper drinks; it was as good as it sounds.
Anyway, moving on from nightclubbing and alcopops; at 26, I decided to uproot my life and go back to university a second time. This time to take it seriously and study something that would make people think I was ‘grown up’ and ‘responsible’. Diagnostic Radiography, for those who don’t know what that is; it’s the lovely staff in a hospital that move your broken ankle around and cause you insufferable pain, just so they can take a photo of it. That's the Radiography crew. That makes Radiographers sound so cruel; we aren’t really. We just lack patience on a Saturday night when everyone has been punching windows, breaking fingers and we’re on the back of a 15 hour shift. It’s not that fun at all and the empathetic-healthcare-worker mask soon slips off.
Fast forward six years, I battled the pandemic on the ‘front line’ working in my local hospital; Sunderland Royal. I then spent two years in Hammersmith Hospital Cardiac Centre, one of the busiest heart centres in London. And now, I’m working at the most prestigious private hospital in Singapore. Yes, a Mackem that hardly speaks English properly is being trusted to scan hearts in the depths of South East Asia, surrounded by people who haven’t got a clue what he’s saying; colleagues and patients alike. It’s truly astounding. But lucky for me, I am very good at it.
Radiography is a career that can take you far and wide, see the world, meet all walks of life but doing it all whilst working long, unsociable hours. Combine that with the fact I’m not getting paid anywhere near Zuckerberg or Bezos, I felt like something had to give and I needed a significantly better work life balance.
Since I was old enough to work (legally) - apart from my paper round - I have always worked in a clothes shop, in a call centre, in a hospital. It sounds so glam when you put them all together like that. I think since the pandemic and the global shift away from only working in a physical building, I have always had it in the back of my mind that working from home (or anywhere in the world) is something that I’d be attracted to. I think being so far away from this concept all of my working life, the freedom to work from anywhere that has a good internet connection has always sounded like a dream to me. I mean working from a Greggs cafe and being able to smell steak bakes and sausage and bean melts all day? What's not to like?
But that truly wasn’t what attracted me to remote working. It was actually sausage rolls. Joking, I was attracted to having more control over my life, more control over my work life balance, being able to feel like work did not dictate every facet of my life. If that sounds a little extreme, it is. Working in Singapore has opened my world to a whole other experience of personal and professional cultures. Just for context, I currently work 6 days a week, every week. Sunday is my day of rest, just like the good Lord would ask for. It has allowed me to realise that although we are not treated like kings and queens in the UK, we are most certainly protected by laws that protect us as employees. We love to complain as British Citizens, we complain a lot; and mainly about the weather and the price of Greggs going up. But I have experienced that here in Singapore, you have fewer rights as an employee. If your boss wants you to stay after work for a 2 hour meeting, you will and you won’t get paid for it. If someone calls in sick, your duty gets changed to an unsociable late finish tomorrow. Did you have plans? Tickets to a show that cost you a fortune? Doesn't matter, your ‘professional duty’ needs to be upheld. Like you are an esteemed royal scribe that owes his life to the crown that saved his life and gave him a job. But in fact you are a healthcare worker that got clapped to work whilst everyone else got pissed in their gardens. Heroes though! Crack on, thank you so much.
If you can sense bitterness, I couldn't argue with that; nor would I want to. But I do know that I am ready to release the shackles, enjoy some healthy balance in my life with my new Wife, and pursue something that excites me. And what better place to do it than Bali: the digital nomad capital of the world. With white sandy beaches, worldly sunsets, cheap food, cheaper beer and hideous traffic jams. Sounds like a step up from the covid ward and wearing plastic bin bags of PPE for hours on end.
However, aside from the sandy beaches and endless avocado on toast (sourdough always), the shift to remote working comes with its own challenges and worries that I am currently navigating every day, as I work my notice period and look ahead to another career move to another country. Working for a salary and a guaranteed payday each month is all I have ever known, so now not knowing exactly where my next cheque will come from is quite the anxiety crippling, apocalyptic realisation. Is my Greggs reward card going dormant because I can’t buy a chicken bake everyday. Who am I kidding? I’ll be living in Bali; they don't have Greggs, devastated. I don’t even like avocados. This blog isn't about Greggs, I'm sorry.
The global shift from working in an office to working from home, remotely, freelance, whatever the change may be; it is significant and it shouldn't be underestimated that it really can feel like a leap of faith. According to ONS statistics, pre pandemic only 4.7% of the UK worked from home. Post pandemic that figure rose to 46.6%, although this mass shift was ‘forced’, due to the pandemic. The ongoing benefit of working from home and having a more favourable work life balance is still present in the modern world of work. Some light to come out of a dark moment for us all.
Further statistics produced by ONS show that in light of working from home; 78% of employees report an improvement in work life balance, 52% complete work quicker and 47% report improvement in well-being. These figures cannot be argued, for those that can and want to work from home; it can benefit everyone. Some may worry it is a mass technological shift in that we are not meeting ‘face to face’, our board meetings are becoming a group teams call and our morning commute is now a longer lie in followed by a walk to the second bedroom. If you are glass half empty then you will see this change combined with the rise of AI and think the world is on the imminent collapse into a digital black hole and robots are about to rule us all. However; if you are glass half full, then you will see this as less time spent in the Tyne Tunnel traffic jams twice a day, less time stressing over a car park space and more time spent with your family. Your desk is your desk and you don’t need to hot desk with your colleagues who eat pickled onion Monster Munch over their keyboard every morning. I really can’t see how the glass can be half empty, can you?
A journey to a better work life balance may not be from heart scans to a home office for everyone, it may simply be one day less a week in the office. It may be that the commute from North to South is only every other week rather than weekly. My example is quite black to white but we can all take a note from the pre pandemic shifts and maybe realise something. We do not live to work, we live to feel a sense of purpose from enjoyment and fulfilment. We need to work to pay for life's pleasures, like white sandy beaches and Greggs sausage rolls. So find that job that gives you balance, enjoyment and fulfilment and hold its hand ever so tight.