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June 19, 2007
Get a Personal Life
Companies are beginning to recognize signs of employee burnout, and, as a result, they are realizing that unless people can have balance in their lives, productivity will suffer. Because of this, many organizations are redesigning work to help encourage work-life balance. Yet only you can restore harmony to your life.
Increasingly more major corporations are encouraging employees to take their allotted personal time, and some smaller companies are increasing their vacation allotment so they can attract the best talent, as we noted this time last year.
Yet what is the point of taking your vacation time if you are working throughout your so-called vacation? How many of you are attached to your cell phone, laptop, e-mail and/or CrackBerry while on vacation? Don’t lie.
Although an “e-leash” improvement from 27 percent in 2006, 20 percent of workers say they plan to stay in touch with the office during their vacation this year, according to CareerBuilder.com’s latest annual vacation survey conducted by Harris Interactive of more than 6,800 workers.
Work can be demanding, but taking it with you simply brings stress to a new location. The problem goes beyond asking yourself whether the office will survive without you for a few days, though.
The big issue, and a common problem, is separating one’s personal life from one’s work life. In other words: work-life balance.
Work-life balance is not simply about vacation time or PTO. In fact, your best individual work-life balance likely will vary over time, even on a daily basis.
“There was a time when employees showed up for work Monday through Friday and worked eight to nine hours. The boundaries between work and home were fairly clear then,” notes MayoClinic.com. “But the world has changed, and unfortunately, the boundaries have blurred for many workers.”
As more skilled workers enter the global labor market and companies outsource or move more jobs to reduce labor costs, people feel pressured to work longer and produce more to protect their jobs.
Yet the biggest changes in the workplace over the last decade have come in employers’ attitudes toward work, family and flexibility.
A seismic shift in attitudes among top talent has been documented by numerous studies over recent years, conceding to the importance of work-life balance. The Association of Executive Search Consultants (AESC), for one, recently released results of a global survey of 138 executive recruiters that found more than eight out of 10 (85 percent) have had candidates reject a plum job offer because of work-life balance considerations.
Employers in the United States and elsewhere who want to be seen as “employers of choice” attracting the best and brightest must be far more flexible, supportive of employees’ lives outside the office. Providing a work-life balance to employees not only increases productivity and loyalty, it may also create a more ethical workplace, according to results of the recent “2007 Deloitte & Touche USA LLP Ethics & Workplace” survey.
Providing sufficient support for work-life balance can glean results for organizations, as well. As the rising organizational cost of health care drives senior management to become more proactive about employee health, many view engaging employees in improving their own lifestyle behaviors and creating a healthier workplace as key components to the solution. Consider it a health-care cost solution.
The good news for the entire workplace — employees and employers alike — is that eight out of 10 employees at Fortune magazine’s “100 Best Companies to Work For” now feel that management encourages them to balance their work lives and their personal lives — an increase of 11 percentage points from 10 years ago.
It isn’t easy to juggle the demands of both a career and a personal life, of course. Nor does work-life balance mean an equal balance, as trying to schedule an equal number of hours for each of your various work and personal activities is usually unrewarding and unrealistic. Life is, and should be, more fluid than that, we think.
For most people, it is an ongoing challenge to reduce stress and maintain harmony in key areas of life. To that end, here are some ideas to help you find the balance that is best for you, via MayoClinic.com, which is composed of the more than 2,000 physicians and scientists of the Mayo Clinic:
Keep a record.
Track everything you do for one week, including work-related and non-work-related activities. Decide what is necessary and satisfies you the most. Cut or delegate activities you don’t enjoy, don’t have time for or do only out of guilt. If you don’t have the authority to make certain decisions, talk to your supervisor.
Take advantage of your options.
Find out if your employer offers flex hours, a compressed workweek, job-sharing or telecommuting for your role. The flexibility may alleviate some of your stress and free up some time.
Manage your time, and protect your day off.
Try to schedule some of your routine chores on workdays so that your days off are more relaxing. Organize household tasks efficiently. Doing one or two loads of laundry every day rather than saving it all for your day off, and running errands in batches rather than going back and forth several times, are good places to begin. If your employer offers a course in time management, sign up for it.
Communicate clearly.
Limit time-consuming misunderstandings by communicating clearly and listening carefully. Take notes if it helps.
Nurture yourself.
Set aside time each day for something you particularly enjoy, such as exercising, practicing yoga, reading, writing or listening to music. Even taking a bubble bath can allow you to unwind after a hectic workday; if so, light those candles and break out the bubbles.
Set aside one night each week for recreation.
Take the phone off the hook, power down the computer and turn off the TV. Discover activities you can do with your partner, family or friends, such as playing golf, cycling or even ballroom dancing. Making time for activities you enjoy will rejuvenate you.
Get enough sleep.
There is nothing as stressful and potentially dangerous as working when you’re sleep-deprived. Not only is your productivity affected, but you can also make costly mistakes. You may then have to work even more hours to make up for these mistakes.
Fight the guilt.
Having a family and a job is OK — for both men and women. Remember this, and don’t feel guilty for it.
Bolster your support system.
Give yourself the gift of a trusted friend or co-worker to talk with during times of stress or hardship. Ensure you have trusted friends and relatives who can assist you when you need to work overtime or travel for your job.
Seek professional help.
Everyone needs help from time to time. If your life feels too chaotic to manage and you’re spinning your wheels worrying about it, talk with a professional such as your doctor, a psychologist or a counselor recommended by your employee assistance program (EAP).
Of course, there is no perfect one-size-fits-all balance, according to WorkLifeBalance.com. And while companies need to recognize their culpability and responsibility in helping their employees create a healthier lifestyle — which will in turn contribute to greater productivity on the job, thus benefiting both individuals and the company — balance doesn’t mean doing everything. Examine your priorities and set boundaries. Be firm in what you can and cannot do. Only you can restore balance to your lifestyle.
Earlier: Break the Habit. Take a Vacation. It’s What Bosses Now Want.
Resources
Work-Life Balance: Ways to Restore Harmony and Reduce Stress
MayoClinic.com
Firms say work-life balance boosts productivity
by Susan Fenton
Reuters, June 6, 2007
Work-life balance is the key to employee loyalty
by Paige Bowers
Atlanta Business Chronicle, Oct. 17, 2003
2007 Deloitte & Touche USA LLP Ethics & Workplace
Deloitte & Touche USA, April 16, 2007
100 Best Companies to Work For
Fortune, 2007
Work/life balance
by E.L. Berman
Engineering Management Review (IEEE), Vol. 30, Issue 4
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3 CommentsThis is a bit long but I believe it says it all. This is the commencement speech by the writer, Anna Quindlen, to the graduates at Villanova this year:
"It's a great honor for me to be the third member of my family to receive an honorary doctorate from this great university. It's an honor to follow my great Uncle Jim, who was a gifted physician, and my Uncle Jack, who is a remarkable businessman. Both of them could
have told you something important about their professions, about medicine or commerce.
I have no specialized field of interest or expertise, which puts me at a disadvantage talking to you today. I'm a novelist. My work is human nature. Real life is all I know. Don't ever confuse the two, your life and your work. The second is only part of the first.
Don't ever forget what a friend once wrote Senator Paul Tsongas when the senator decided not to run for re-election because he had been diagnosed with cancer: "No man ever said on his deathbed, 'I wish I had spent more time at the office.'"
Don't ever forget the words my father sent me on a postcard last year: "If you win the rat race, you're still a rat."
Or what John Lennon wrote before he was gunned down in the driveway of the Dakota: "Life is what happens while you are busy making other plans."
You will walk out of here this afternoon with only one thing that no one else has. There will be hundreds of people out there with your same degree; there will be thousands of people doing what you want to do for a living. But you will be the only person alive who has sole custody of
your life. Your particular life. Your entire life. Not just your life at a desk, or your life on a bus, or in a car, or at the computer. Not just the life of your mind, but the life of your heart. Not just your bank account, but your soul.
People don't talk about the soul very much anymore. It's so much easier to write a resume than to craft a spirit. But a resume is a cold comfort on a winter night, or when you're sad, or broke, or lonely, or when you've gotten back the test results and they're not so good.
Here is my resume:
I am a good mother to three children.
I have tried never to let my profession stand in the way of being a good parent.
I no longer consider myself the center of the universe.
I show up.
I listen.
I try to laugh.
I am a good friend to my husband.
I have tried to make marriage vows mean what they say.
I am a good friend to my friends and they to me.
Without them there would be nothing to say to you today, because I would be a cardboard cutout. But I call them on the phone and I meet them for lunch. I would be rotten or, at best, mediocre at my job if those other things were not true. You cannot be really first rate at your work if your work is all you are.
So here's what I wanted to tell you today:
Get a life. A real life, not a manic pursuit of the next promotion, the bigger paycheck, the larger house. Do you think you'd care so very much about those things if you blew an aneurysm one afternoon or found a lump in your breast?
Get a life in which you notice the smell of salt water pushing itself on a breeze over Seaside Heights, a life in which you stop and watch how a red-tailed hawk circles over the water or the way a baby scowls with concentration when she tries to pick up a Cheerio with her thumb and first finger.
Get a life in which you are not alone. Find people you love, and who love you. And remember that love is not leisure, it is work. Pick up the phone. Send an e-mail. Write a letter.
Get a life in which you are generous. And realize that life is the best thing ever, and that you have no business taking it for granted. Care so deeply about its goodness that you want to spread it around. Take money you would have spent on beers and give it to charity. Work in a soup kitchen. Be a big brother or sister.
All of you want to do well. But if you do not do good too, then doing well will never be enough.
It is so easy to waste our lives, our days, our hours, our minutes. It is so easy to take for granted the color of our kids' eyes, the way the melody in a symphony rises and falls and disappears and rises again. It is so easy to exist instead of live. I learned to live many years ago.
Something really, really bad happened to me, something that changed my life in ways that, if I had my druthers, it would never have been changed at all. And what I learned from it is what, today, seems to be the hardest lesson of all:
I learned to love the journey, not the destination. I learned that it is not a dress rehearsal, and that today is the only guarantee you get.
I learned to look at all the good in the world and try to give some of it back because I believed in it, completely and utterly. And I tried to do that, in part, by telling others what I had learned. By telling them this:
Consider the lilies of the field.
Look at the fuzz on a baby's ear.
Read in the backyard with the sun on your face.
Learn to be happy.
And think of life as a terminal illness, because if you do, you will live it with joy and passion as it ought to be lived."
The type of "clinical studies" referenced here are always geared to employers/employees of Fortune companies. In the real world, executives in the small to mid-size company still work very hard to protect what they have. Try to schedule "routine chores" on a work day! If you can do it without causing whispers (even on lunch time), more power to you. It is important to try to take in every one of the points made in the article.
However, it is equally important to factor in reality and put your work-life balance in the right perspective. Not all employers view work-life balance as an important aspect of life. Particularly when they expect 110%. One might say, "well find a new job". Where? And, at what salary?
June 25, 2007 10:14 AMGood article. The person managed by the society monster will always feel helpless.
October 30, 2007 10:37 PM
