When Tragedy Strikes

It's been a rough couple of weeks for the folks on my team. Over the course of the last two weeks:

1. One person had a sibling that died after a fairly short battle with cancer;
2. One person's spouse was diagnosed with a fatal form of cancer;
3. One person was diagnosed with skin cancer; and
4. One person began rehab for a knee injury.

This nearly half of my staff. 

What do all of these things have in common? Besides the fact that they all lead to major stress. They all require my folks to be away from work so they can deal with their personal issues (and rightfully so).

In most departments, if this happened to your staff, you would likely be in a "world of hurt". There would be much gnashing of teeth while you as a manager tried to figure out how you're going to cover for your people. How are you going to get anything done? Work is going to start piling up and everyone outside your department is going to be looking at you to "solve" their problem. Are the beads of sweat starting to form on your forehead yet? Does the thought of having this happen to you having you reaching for the nearest antacid?

Not in my case. Once again, the power of ROWE shines through. I don't have to sweat a perfect storm like the one above, even though I've been living through it for more than a week. Why? Because despite all these events occurring in my staff members' lives, they are still getting the work done. Not because I'm standing over them brandishing a whip (I'd probably hurt myself if I actually tried that). They do it because it's what they want to do. Maybe they need a distraction from the reality of what's happening in their personal lives. Maybe they just want to do something they feel they have control over. 

It doesn't really matter. The bottom line is: they are happy, or at least as happy as you can be when you've been suckered-punched by life. Even if they decided they needed to do nothing for a week, that would be fine too. They know they can take the time if they feel they need it.

Oh, and productivity hasn't been affected throughout all of this. I'm not getting any complaints from other departments about lack of service or attention to detail. In fact, as far as everyone outside my department is concerned, it's business as usual.

And the most humbling part of all this? During our weekly one-on-one meeting, the person whose spouse is about to start six months of chemo actually thanked me for being able to have the freedom to do what was necessary without any feelings of guilt about the job. I didn't know what to say. I still don't.

Except maybe this: this is how work should be. This is true work/life balance. This is the way everyone's job should be. This is a ROWE and I'm damn proud that this is how things are for the people that work for me.