Work addicts' detox a corporate responsibility

I AM amused by people who ask how many hours a week people in corporate life typically work. The answer is that corporates have no idea.

I AM amused by people who ask how many hours a week people in corporate life typically work. The answer is that corporates have no idea.

They don't count hours. What would be the point? Hours worked do not translate into remuneration; results translate into remuneration.

Yes, corporate jobs come with what is commonly regarded as high remuneration, but such jobs also demand more than their fair pound of flesh in return.

Anyone at the top of their corporate careers between the ages of 45 and 55 would have no idea how many hours they work a week and this is partly because they are not involved in nine-to-five, Monday-to-Friday occupations.

From my observation, high-end corporate work is all pervasive to the extent that there is no separation between work and leisure.

Corporates at the uppermost level socialise with other corporates at dinners, openings, unveilings, events and conferences.

At this level, work is configured outside traditional hours so that what might otherwise be regarded as free time is soaked up.

Going to the football? Great. Get the corporate box and entertain clients. Wife (or spouse) in need of a bit of a break? No worries. Sign up for a conference in Port Douglas and spend the weekend socialising with other corporates.

At your kid's ballet or school play? Damn. You have to suffer through two hours of other people's no-talent kids' performances before your gifted -- gifted, I tell you -- child performs. No worries. Scroll through the BlackBerry or iPhone while you wait; might as well use the down-time.

Particularly high-flying corporates are ready to hit the messages button the minute their plane lands. That way they can listen to messages before the plane docks at the aerobridge. Others conduct full-on work conversations while shuffling along the aisles waiting to get off the plane.

Weekends for corporates, when not directly involved in corporate activity, is often spent physically recovering from the previous week's lack of sleep. Or it can mean doing nothing to off-set the fury of the previous week's activity.

This can upset partners and spouses who not unreasonably would prefer to "do stuff" on a weekend.

But to the corporate's way of thinking if a function or commitment is not work-related then what's the point.

Here is a world of serious workplace addiction.

Interstate on business and staying at a swish five-star hotel? Wake up at 3am and immediately click into work mode? Check the time by looking at your iPhone? While you're there, why not see what emails might have come in from overseas offices? And why not answer one or two emails while you're there?

Modern corporate life is not merely a job -- it is a way of life. Corporates are never not working. Every waking hour is spent either allocated to work, recovering from work or thinking about work -- even if only in a subliminal way.

Life at the top and for those wanting to get to the top is all consuming. While many might dismiss this assessment as a lifestyle that applies to a select few, I suspect that it in fact applies to far more than many might care to admit.

I have yet to meet and "get to know the lifestyle" of anyone at the uppermost level of corporate Australia whose life is not totally enmeshed with the corporation: lives, wives, kids, friends, holidays are intertwined to such an extent that it is hard to separate them.

In many corporations, the people at the top have known one another and their spouses and children for more than 25 years.

While all of this might be shocking to some, it also presents a picture of real concern. What we have is a generation of corporates in their mid- to late-50s who will soon leave the workforce. How is it possible to go cold turkey from full-on corporate life to a life of retirement in a year?

What is required for those near the top of corporate Australia is a program of work detoxification. (The uppermost don't need or want detox; they carry on with public company directorships.)

Some people have so intertwined their lives with the corporation in pursuit of its commercial interests that I think it behoves the corporation to put them through a program of work detoxification.

Just as drug addicts go to a detox clinic, work-addicted 50-something corporates need to be trained how to live in the real world.

Just as corporations proudly outline corporate social responsibility programs in annual reports, I'd like to see corporate employee responsibility programs.

These would be designed to teach corporates how to reset goals, how to make friends outside work, how to speak to people who are not subordinates, how to value work that does not have a commercial outcome and how to be happy outside the corporation.

What we're doing at the moment is cruel: we're releasing fully domesticated corporates into the retirement jungle.

They haven't a hope of surviving.

My idea of corporate employee responsibility programs offers a way for work-addicted corporates to adjust to the real world.

Bernard Salt is a KPMG Partner; Facebook.com/BernardSalt

Demographer; twitter.com/bernardsalt