Another Reminder that Flexibility Matters

We are humans still, not robots yet!

In case you're team "everyone must always be working together in an office for all time" still (which is a choice you could make...), let me encourage you to think through a scenario.

I woke up with a nasty migraine last Wednesday. We have been trading days of feeling rotten from general wintry blahs/allergies/living in modern times around here. While my migraines are much better after finishing my dissertation (clearly a link there…) I still get them from time to time. I took all the meds I could and my head got worse instead of better. I felt nauseous and gross and could not wisely accept the responsibility of driving to my yoga class, much less to our main campus an hour away had it been necessary.

Days like this for me have historically been up and down, so my head will be worse for a bit, let up some, and then usually get even worse before bed time. Clearly less than ideal, but thankfully my work is on the extreme end of flexible as an online MBA professor. The great news is that when I have moments of feeling like being at my computer and answering emails or replying to a discussion I can!

On Wednesday I had two good spans of a couple hours of feeling like I could get things done, and I also hit a wall around 3 p.m. and had to sleep for a bit to cope.

Let me put out the usual disclaimer, that obviously what I write about here does not apply to all people, in all jobs, for all time. Of course, there are jobs that demand you be in a certain place or with certain people. My own job would look very different today if I were primarily in the physical classroom. But our ongoing nonsensical debate of whether or not we should be flexible where we can must assume that truth.

Obviously, we need emergency physicians at the emergency department. But I’m just as grateful for the telemed service my employer provides where I’m assuming most doctors are working from home. Accounting for these more obvious arguments, the remaining debating seems to be focused more on not being flexible where we actually could.

If I had a more traditional, 9-5 office-based job or taught in the physical classroom, I could:

• try to power through and potentially get others sick if my migraine is indeed germ-related,

• take a sick day,

• be allowed to work from home as able.

The second option is really the best if possible - our bodies are not machines and require rest and care. But to be honest, while my headaches tend to be fairly brutal, I again, had moments where I felt like knocking a few things out. (And I can trust myself to make a good choice there mostly!)

What I cannot understand is why we continue to push people to the brink with option 1 (it’s like we learned nothing at all about germs circa 2020…). Our American “pull yourself up by your bootstraps” culture is especially bad about this (and my disgust at that trope deserves its own post). But we do continue to place value on the pushing through and never slowing down aspects of being an employee. It’s really not a good look in 2025 and I encourage you to spend some time reflecting on where you might be doing this as employee or expecting it as employer.

Here are two publications where I touch on some of these important ideas and what we know to be true from research:

• Huxford Davis, B. (2023). What about our personhood? COVID-19 and the elusive search for work-life balance. In L. W. Watson (Ed.), Exploring personhood in contemporary times: From leadership to philosophy. Information Age Publishing. Available here

• Huxford Davis, B. (2022). Ethical management in these unprecedented times: COVID-19, gender, remote work, and the search for employee work-life balance. In C. Patton & E. Egel (Eds.), Ethical implications of COVID-19 management: Evaluating the aftershock. Ethics International Press. Available here

And here are some other posts you might find interesting from my archives: