How to Manage Employees in a High Intensity Culture?

The Life-Work Divide!
Augusto Carreira, Partner, Portugal
In spite of high-intensity environments being a real thing, we, humans, were not born for that. We are supposed to breed a family and accomplish work that, eventually, will be beneficial. Yes, but to whom? Not necessarily to my paycheck. All of this at the expense of a real life.
Work turns into a mere instrument of survival, not a meaningful way to fulfill and dignify a life.
And, at home, we are supposed to nurture a relationship and grow children that, eventually, will be able to repeat the cycle. All of this under increasing pressure.

The only serious approach is the REVEALING one. It is risky and the career seeker will avoid it. But the few that wish to dignify their lives will abide by it. At the end of the day, we will sin and will, on occasion, be hypocrites, passing and accepting and telling / imposing that to our employees. It is quite demanding to try to find the best ways to "fill the quota" and help our people (and ourselves) to live meaningful lives. No clear cut solution.

The Reality of Life...
cole, linden, Business School Marketer
It depends upon age, interests and other responsibilities. Younger employees with no family responsibilities are more willing to accept and embrace pressure, while later in life you get wiser. On their deathbed, how many will wish they had spent more time in the office?
Equally, if you are in business, hoping to start a business, or have (for whatever reason) either a need for income, or a wish to be distracted, you may be keen to accept greater workloads.
Fortunately we are all different, and as times pass and our needs change, so do our priorities.

Managing Employees in a High Intensity Culture is a Strange View
Jobson, Consultant, Australia
In this post modern era, people with talent, capacity, courage and integrity will generally succeed in the long term. These "options" above read in a similar fashion to survival tips in a lifeboat. In the end - life is inherently about choice. When we give that up, a sort of self imposed slavery arises. Ideal workers?

Managing or Mentoring?
Tully Lee, Other, Australia
The three options of employee behavior is a simplistic view, but mostly appropriate. As a manager, we are in a position to mentor the balance. I agree with @Jobson that talent, capacity, and integrity are important for success. If we as managers display these, we build capabilities in our people.

Finding Work/Life Balance is not Easy
Gandhi Heryanto, Management Consultant, Indonesia
Creating a balance between work and life is a fallacy. English poet and philosopher David Whyte aptly calls "work/life balance" a "phrase that often becomes a lash with which we punish ourselves" and offers an emboldening a way out of this cultural trap.
Whyte says that work, like marriage, is a place you can lose yourself more easily perhaps than finding yourself. It is a place full of powerful undercurrents, a place to find our selves, but also, a place to drown, losing all sense of our own voice, our own contribution and conversation.
Good work like a good marriage needs a dedication to something larger than our own detailed, everyday needs; good work asks for promises to something imagined or intuited that is larger than our present understanding of it. More about David White on work/life balance you can read here.

High Intensity or High Lack of Planning
Maria Lairet, Coach, Venezuela
It's true that business is very complex nowadays, so companies who want to be successful need to value their employees, and carry out the requiered planning. If companies don't take the time to do the kick off work of strategic planning, developing the strategies, the structure, systems and processes they will build a culture of emergency where employees are burned out. A high demanding professional employee won't stay in such a company, and this company will not thrive in our global world.

How to Change a Culture of Work Presenteeism?
Chloe Xu, Other, Australia
A research indicates that if employees feel free to draw some lines between their professional and personal lives, organizations will benefit from greater engagement, more-open relationships, and more paths to success.

Here are some measures managers can implement to decrease work presenteeism at their team level, creating a richer definition of what is an ‘ideal worker’ without sacrificing high performance.

• DEVELOP YOUR OWN MULTIFACETED IDENTITY. Instead of accepting the ideal-worker norms blindly, people in leadership position can cultivate their own non-work identities deliberately. As managers become more resilient, they may learn that also employees whose lives are better balanced create value for the organization.
• MINIMIZE TIME-BASED REWARDS. People who choose a passing strategy do so in part because it’s common to evaluate how much people work (or seem to), rather than the quality of their output. Valuing work-time over work-product is an easy trap to fall into, especially for professionals, whose knowledge-based work is difficult to evaluate. Therefore, managers are encouraged to reduce the incentives for passing (and the costs of revealing that) and evaluate people’s performance based on their measurable actual results rather than hours invested.
• PROTECT EMPLOYEES’ PERSONAL LIVES. Don’t leave it to your employees to set boundaries between their work and non-work lives, even though it is often with the best intentions. Managers can institute required vacations, regular leaves, and reasonable work hours for all employees. Making an organizational commitment to avoid excessive workloads and extreme working hours will help employees engage with other parts of themselves.

As a manager, what additional steps did you take to change or diminish an 'always available' culture in workplace? What were the results?

Sources: Reid, E. & Ramarajan, L., June 2016, Managing the High Intensity Workplace, Harvard Business Review USA.

Work-Life Balance
Andrew Craig, Manager, Australia
I have worked in a number of organisations where early start, late finish, and weekend working were a cultural norm. It's not new, it was certaily around in the 90s when I took my first leadership role.
I did observe that these additional hours at the management level were more work socialising than necessarily getting work done. I suspect the work socialising was to cement the "Accepting" culture of the management team, rather than achieve business gains.
Leaders can help by setting the example by leaving the office at a reasonable hour for example (even if it means them taking the work home). This then sets up a cultural norm for others to follow.