Dr. Dale Whelehan

You know, it suggests to people that you must be somewhat vulnerable to say that, actually, I know that I've reached my limit and that if I go beyond this, I'm going to shoot myself in the foot for the next day or the day after.

So you are going against the cultural tide, I suppose, but for the better.

Absolutely.

I mean, there is that famous quote of Dublin being closer to Boston than Berlin.

You know, our culture is much more influenced by... Well, we've invited it in, haven't we?

We have, absolutely.

And it plays a disproportionate level of influence on how we think about work in Ireland.

And there is, you know, working time regulation, the right to disconnect, flexible working policies, all these sort of things are coming down the pipeline.

And we're seeing that happen in more of Central European countries as well.

And so I think there is a there's always a tension to figure out how do you spark innovation and, you know, business entrepreneurship while also protecting, you know, time and not viewing it as something that is inherently a left wing or right wing issue.

Actually, when people feel happy and healthy and they have time, they actually are productive.

It's not either or.

Yeah, we do.

Like, it is serving no one.

By being on all the time, not only are we increasing our own stress, our burnout, we are less present in all the parts of our lives, work and non-work.

We might think we have this endless capacity to continue to perform, but actually, by always being on, we're getting diminished returns.

Well, again, these are all about conversations of negotiation, though.

So the workday in and of itself, the nine to five.

is not in existence in the way that we thought about it six, seven years ago.

So what I'm calling for is more explicit conversations around time in the workplace, thinking about it from the different stakeholder groups.