As my understanding about this goes, Work-life balance refers to the concept of properly prioritizing work-life like job,career,goals,ambition and achievements and Personnel life like health,family,pleasures,spirituality etc. I think that a proper balance between work-life and personnel-life plays a key role in achieving success. I believe that if an individual is happy in his/her personnel life, then they can work peacefully and pay more attention in his work-life. I honestly do not think of any one any disadvantage with having a proper balance between work-life and personnel-life. I encourage someone to enlighten me if there are any.
Well,that was a good introduction to our topic my Kumar.
In my opinion, the two most essential elements of success for any person are PASSION AND PLANNING.Without these two elements, a person will not be able to succeed in his/her work and I believe that they both go side by side.If there is proper planning and no passion the result of the task we perform will not be satisfactory and same is the reverse case.It is easy to say these words but when the time comes to implement this we may face few problems.One of the most important reason for this is that most of the people are not able to balance both their professional and personal life properly at the same time.I can give you myself as an example.I am a full time student and last semester I was doing my internship and also I was enrolled as a full time student.Initially I found it hard to manage all the things because I love to hang out with friends and enjoy but I eventually ended up sleeping for less amount of time.I was not able do my work properly without a proper sleep so I found myself exhausted by the end of the day.But later I analyzed myself and started to plan properly and my passion to perform well has helped me grow as a better individual.This is just a small example and this is how I got to know the importance of work life balance.Work life balance is all about balancing your professional and personal life in a proper way.
Now I want to bring out the topic on the ways to balance them.People adopt different methods for balancing their work life and personal life.These days the employers are also giving much importance for work life balance of their employees.I came across this article while finding the ways to balance work life successful.I learnt to implement them in my day to day life and I hope it will be useful to you too!! Here is the link.Go through it and shoot out your comments on the other ways for work life balance.
Well,according to me work life balance does not mean an equal balance.Trying to schedule an equal number of hours for each of your various work and personal activities is usually unrewarding and unrealistic.The right balance for you today will probably be different for you tomorrow. The right balance for you when you are single will be different when you marry, or if you have children; when you start a new career versus when you are nearing retirement.The best work-life balance is different for each of us because we all have different priorities and different lives.
However, at the core of an effective work-life balance definition are two key everyday concepts that are relevant to each of us. They are daily Achievement and Enjoyment, ideas almost deceptive in their simplicity.Engraining a fuller meaning of these two concepts takes us most of the way to defining a positive Work-Life Balance.At work you can create your own best Work-Life Balance by making sure you not only Achieve, but also reflect the joy of the job, and the joy of life, every day. If nobody pats you on the back today, pat yourself on the back. And help others to do the same.When you do, when you are a person that not only gets things done, but also enjoys the doing, it attracts people to you. They want you on their team and they want to be on your team.
To summarize:
1)Work life balance is different for each and every individual. 2)Seek help - Speak with your manager, use available tools, and/or outside resources about work life balance. 3)Determine your priorities and what matters most to you. 4)Protect your private time, plan fun and relaxation!
A simple google search on the term “Work-Life Balance” will bring more than 15 million results and everybody from Mayo Clinic to WebMD has recommendation on how to achieve Work-Life Balance. Clearly it’s an important and relevant topic to discuss and at its core the term means achieving balance between one’s professional and personal life; to simplify it further - when at work do work and when not at work, live life. So why achieving work-life balance is such a challenge and why there are so many training institutions and how-to articles and books on the topic?
Businesses have become fast-paced, competitive and global and with the advent of technology and recent downturn the line between work and life has become blurry. There is no clear distinction as to when one stops working. For example if you are product manager in States and have customers in Europe and Asia, due to time zone you might be dealing with Europe in the morning and Asia in the evening. With a Laptop (or smart phone) and Wi-Fi one can pretty much work or be expected to work from wherever and whenever. With the downturn more and more people are putting in longer hours at work, sometimes without choice and other times due to ambition to grow professionally or to manage the increasing workload. It has become ever more important to avoid burn-out, get some R&R and perform at your best. The definition of R&R for each individual will be unique - movie night with family, reading to child before sleep, weekly game of soft-ball with friends, date night etc.
It is evident that work-life balance is important from employee’s perspective but it is equally important for the employer as well. If the company is seeking to recruit and retain best employees and keep morale and productivity at the highest level, it is in their best interest to provide an environment that allows work-life balance. Few things such as having an on-site work-out facility, day-care facility, flex-time, encouraging car-pooling, maternity/ paternity leave are few examples that company’s do to make employees feel less overwhelmed and loyal.
Clearly, the term work-life balance is very broad and each company and individual’s situation is unique. But if company wants to be competitive and profitable they need to cater to their employees work-life balance needs. Likewise if the employees feel they have work-life balance there is high probability they will be loyal to the company and be efficient and productive at work.
I encourage you to post “tricks and tips” you use to achieve work-life balance and also what programs your employer offers for you to achieve it.
I have not read any material on this subject outside of what my classes have discussed over the last several year. However, I from what I have seen in the work place the work-life balance has a massive impact on individuals enjoyment of both work and their personal lives. Some people can spend vast amounts of time at the workplace and enjoy themselves because they bring their personal life and work life together, allowing them to both socialize and work over a long period of time. This can be positive or negative, primarily dependent on the level of self control and the ability to focus when necessary.
Others completely block out social activity in the workplace and look forward to getting together with friends in order to enjoy themselves. This can cause stress and in the workplace.
While my experience is limited, it seems that a good balance is to embrace those you work with and find a way to enjoy yourself while spending time with them. It is also important to maintain a separate and stable life outside of work in order to experience variety.
I agree with Sanjay that work-life balance is not only important for the employee, but for the employer as well. With an increasingly competitive market, employers are looking to hire and retain dedicated employees and more and more employees are placing higher emphasis on work-life balance. I would like to offer my personal experience as a great example of a company that encourages its employees to maintain a healthy balance between work and personal life. My company offers a “9/80” flex schedule where employees work 9 hours a day and have the privilege to take every alternate Friday off. With this day off I am able to run errands, set doctor’s appointments, volunteer at a local company or even go on a small road trip. I think this is an excellent way my company encourages employees to dedicate time to their families and personal life outside of work. The 9/80 schedule majorly influences my satisfaction with my job. I feel that I am more dedicated and more loyal to my employer than any other employer I have worked for. My coworkers and I often joke about how “spoiled” we have become with this schedule. I believe American lives have become more and more busy. With us running between work, soccer practices, graduate classes, the gym, and dentists’ offices, I firmly believe it’s important for employers to understand the increasing pressure we all feel from our lives. My flex schedule has increased my productivity and happiness at work while also allowing me to keep my personal life intact.
I would like to add that a good work-life balance policy is not only beneficial to the employees but also to the company that supports such policy. One of the biggest benefits that we see in my department, where employees travel up to 60% of the time, is that a good work-life balance policy helps lower turnover in what is a very specialized practice. The company makes a sizable investment training and certifying employees so high turnovers driven by the pressures of elevated travel time requirements end up costing the company a lot of money in re-training and re-certifying employees. By having a generous work-life balance policy to make up for strenuous travel requirements, not only are the employees being taken care of but the company is also reducing its cost by lowering turnover on what could be a high turnover department in the absence of good work-life balance policies.
Balancing work and our personal lives has become harder and seems to be getting tougher to handle over the years. I agree with Linsy on how companies and our employers need to understand the increase in pressure in our lives and it's causes on our work. I know that most companies offer flex schedules and those who don't should adopt this policy as I believe that it helps the employees become more efficient. Balancing work and life is also a big responsibility of each individual as we choose to bring work home and work long hours; if we plan and set goals and work towards achieving those goals in a timely manner, we would hopefully be able to enjoy the time away from work. It's more easier said than done but definitely not impossible. Employees tend to usually digress from their work because of distractions (whether they are checking personal emails, making personal calls, logging on to facebook, chatting on aol, yahoo, chatting away with co-workers, etc.). If we try to eliminate the amount of time we spend on these distractions at work and use that time to work, we may be able to achieve more. This will increase our time off as hopefully we won't be bringing work home or staying late to finish a project. Employers can offer stress management programs (since most of the stress occurs from work), flexible working hours, set maximum number of working hours, and force employees to take their vacation leave as some don't. As individuals, we can learn to manage out time so that we leave work at the workplace, observe our habits at work for a time period to evaluate where unnecessary time is spent and improve on it, and take advantage of our vacation time and flex schedules offered by the company.
I completely agree that flex time is a great way for employers to help their employees maintain a better work-life balance. Having a good work-life balance can definitely make employees more satisfied with their jobs.
In Dr. Rockett's Power and Politics class, we learned about gender and politics in the workplace this week. I learned that it is a lot tougher for women to maintain a proper work-life balance than it is for men. For example, in the article "Where are the Women?" by Linda Tischler, the reason why women are far less likely to hold executive positions in business is examined.
In fact, the reason why many women aren't in positions of power is not because they can't handle the stress, rather, it's because they CHOOSE not to handle it. The article gave examples of women who reached executive positions of power but stepped down from those positions in order to pursue a career with a better work-life balance for them.
Women, more often than men, feel the need to manage their time between work and their families. Men, on the other hand, have been shown to do whatever it takes to advance in their careers, sometimes at the detriment to their families. Many women would opt not to take a promotion if it would have any negative effects on their family life. Men compete harder than women by putting in more hours, being willing to relocate, etc., and that is why they're more often the managers running businesses.
My question is, should men and women be treated differently with regards to a work-life balance? Should employers take into consideration the fact that women are often running a family while doing their job?
My personal opinion is no, women should not be given special treatment. If a woman really WANTS to put in the late, long hours and wants to compete for advancement in her career, she can. Yet many women choose to have the work-life balance that suits them, and they are completely satisfied with their decisions.
@Stacey, I am on the same page with you in that men should not be treated differently than women with regards to work-life balance. However, I believe it's a case by case situation that depends on how lenient/understanding your supervisor or company is. There are so many different family situations and living arrangements that it would be very hard to favor one sex over the other.
The working world is unfortunately, a pretty cut throat environment and in most cases if you want to succeed, you need to make sacrifices. Most of the time these sacrifices impact your work-life balance.
The engineering company I use to work for did a 4.5 day work week where we would get half days on friday. I haven't worked in a 4/80 schedule like Linsy but I really enjoyed the half days on friday. When there was a holiday, they would have us work a full friday the week before so we could have the following friday or monday off to make it a 4 day weekend. I enjoyed this flexibility very much as did most of the employees. It would be very hard for me to go back to a traditional work schedule.
I think everyone wants work life balance. But this ideal life sometimes can’t be achieved in modern business environment. I believe most of people even left their office and they would should check e mail or reply mail at home and do their job after children went to bed. So, in my viewpoint, technology does give us more convenience, but in contrast, we do stick in the work. I remember my father would be free and stay with our family after left office ten years ago, but now, even he almost retire in these couple years, he still check mail or makes some phone call after dinner. I think he put more time into his work than before. And, business today does require rapid response and this also disrupts work life balance. It’s sad, I don’t think what we can do to change current trend. Because it’s a high competitive time, everybody does this and we have to do it. Or if competitors do rapid response or immediately service, for survive, we have to catch up with them. All these events do damage the balance. And I believe in the future, the work life unbalance would be even worse.
I don't see a difference in the male and females in our workforce as far as different treatment. I have been fortunate to never had that concern. I work in the hospital industry as a nursing director and it is a 24/7 job. My required hours are M-F 8-5 but I am always to be available for the doctors, staff and patients. My work life balance was thrown for a loop when I became the director. For the first 15 years of my career I was a shift worker. WOW!! What a change I had in my life once i became an M-F person. It is all about perspective, balance and time management.
Posting so far at the bottom of this topic, I'm sure there are several overlapping facts, statements and comments, I don't have time to read them all, but would like to put my two cents in on this topic anyways.
First of all as one of the posts stated above, Work-life balance on the internet is a busy topic for many doctors and psychiatrists seeking for answers to help people separate home and work life. Speaking from personal experience, I have a hard time with this myself, as much of my work is done on the computer and much of it is done at home. In a world where more than 60% of US households have personal computers, drawing the line between work, play, and family time can be very difficult. Also making this task much more daunting is the many social networking sites that are available, so not only are we carrying over work in to our home/personal life with smartphones and ultra portable computers to easily respond to work emails, but we are socializing more at work with sites like facebook and twitter. This topic is a fine line between work-life balance and technology in the work place.
I personally have to make my self get off the computer and the phone and enjoy my personal time spiritually and with my family. It has almost become second nature for me to check my email and Facebook to see if there are job alerts or emails about a school project. It makes me wonder what I ever did before all this technology and communication was so readily available. I have even had work clients for my freelance job, that I have never met before. Since I work from home, there are a number of times where this freelance home job has taken away from my family, and with the gas prices and economy doing so bad, more people are working from home, so its no wonder that this has become such a huge issue. So remember that work can wait because if you aren't fulfilled in all areas of your life, none of them will flow well together.
Sorry if some of this feels a bit confusing, the end of the semester has my brain running on fumes.
An ideal balance between work and personal life comes about only when we are ready to leave everything related to work at the workplace and transform into a parent/spouse/friend at home. But ideally, how often can we achieve this. Though most of us really want to do so,but in today's world we often have to bring work home.
Constantly worrying about finishing up stuff that is due the next day for work literally throws off the balance between work and personal life. Personally speaking, I work in the software industry where it is not always possible to maintain a steady balance between work and life outside work. Often I have had to put off outings with my toddler because of 'some things that need to be taken care of immediately'. Even though each of us would love to have a balance in our lives, it really depends on the kind of job that we are in that allows us to achieve this balance.
Even if we do have a balance, many a times, it is not possible to have a steady balance. For instance, having an evening planned out with my friends and family might result in making up that lost time through the late hours in the night to finish some incomplete tasks due at work the following day.
My point is, we can try to achieve a good work life balance but circumstances do not always permit us to do so.
Believe it or not, there is actually legislation being considered that would reward employers for creating a better work/life balance in their workplace. The House Committee on Education and Labor held a subcommittee hearing in March 2010 on the Work-Life Balance Award Act (H.R. 4855) that would establish an award for employers that develop and implement work-life balance policies that are defined in the bill as workplace practices “designed to enable employees to achieve a satisfactory work-life balance.”
The measure, which was introduced by Rep. Lynn Woolsey (D-Calif.) and Rep. George Miller (D-Calif.), would direct the Department of Labor (DOL) to create a work-life balance advisory board to develop criteria that employers would need to meet in order to qualify and apply for the award.
“This legislation comes at a critical time. Women now make up half of America’s workforce, and their incomes are increasingly important to families’ economic survival,” testified witness Portia Wu, vice president of the National Partnership for Women & Families. “Working men are also investing more time in child care. And many more Americans are assuming eldercare responsibilities — a trend that will intensify as our country’s population ages.”
“Workers should not have to choose between work and family,” said Woolsey, the chair of the subcommittee. “The Work-Life Balance Award will send a clear message to employers that the federal government recognizes companies that develop family-friendly policies for their workers. In fact, providing work-life benefits has been shown to increase retention, decrease absenteeism and increase productivity.”
According to the Committee on Education and Labor, the Work-Life Balance Award Act would be given to employers with exemplary work-life workforce policies and practices. These practices include, but are not limited to: paid sick leave to care for oneself or a sick family member and for the birth or adoption of a child, time off to attend children’s extracurricular activities and school conferences, telecommuting and job-sharing.
Any public or private employer of any size is eligible for the award, as long as they comply with federal and state labor and employment laws.
@ richard this is great info! I look forward to researching in order to suggest to my employer! I personally find work/life balance extremely difficult. I have tried different strategies to get a better grasp but have yet to find the one that works for me. As a mom, full time employee and part time graduate student, my time is always stretched thin. All 3 of these roles are a high priority for me but 2 definitely take precedence. I, like Swetha, constantly find myself sleep deprived in order to accomplish all that is required of me. I do have a few rules I try to adhere to in order to have somewhat of a grip on things. Since I work full time, the time I have with my 2 year old is of upmost importance so I do not work when I am spending time with him (well not on my laptop at least, I may, however answer occasional emails from my phone). I leave work at 5 every day so that I can get every minute in with him & my husband before bed. But once they are asleep my work laptop is on usually for several hours.
Another reason for my late night hours is time zone differences. With customers and vendors overseas, the only times I can communicate with them is during my bedtime hours.
School work, unfortunately, comes after family and work. It takes place on those rare nights that I do not have pressing work obligations (like tonight).
I didn't realize there were so many tips out there though on this topic so I do plan on looking into them before the summer session starts!
As my understanding about this goes, Work-life balance refers to the concept of properly prioritizing work-life like job,career,goals,ambition and achievements and Personnel life like health,family,pleasures,spirituality etc. I think that a proper balance between work-life and personnel-life plays a key role in achieving success. I believe that if an individual is happy in his/her personnel life, then they can work peacefully and pay more attention in his work-life. I honestly do not think of any one any disadvantage with having a proper balance between work-life and personnel-life. I encourage someone to enlighten me if there are any.
ReplyDeleteWell,that was a good introduction to our topic my Kumar.
ReplyDeleteIn my opinion, the two most essential elements of success for any person are PASSION AND PLANNING.Without these two elements, a person will not be able to succeed in his/her work and I believe that they both go side by side.If there is proper planning and no passion the result of the task we perform will not be satisfactory and same is the reverse case.It is easy to say these words but when the time comes to implement this we may face few problems.One of the most important reason for this is that most of the people are not able to balance both their professional and personal life properly at the same time.I can give you myself as an example.I am a full time student and last semester I was doing my internship and also I was enrolled as a full time student.Initially I found it hard to manage all the things because I love to hang out with friends and enjoy but I eventually ended up sleeping for less amount of time.I was not able do my work properly without a proper sleep so I found myself exhausted by the end of the day.But later I analyzed myself and started to plan properly and my passion to perform well has helped me grow as a better individual.This is just a small example and this is how I got to know the importance of work life balance.Work life balance is all about balancing your professional and personal life in a proper way.
Now I want to bring out the topic on the ways to balance them.People adopt different methods for balancing their work life and personal life.These days the employers are also giving much importance for work life balance of their employees.I came across this article while finding the ways to balance work life successful.I learnt to implement them in my day to day life and I hope it will be useful to you too!!
Here is the link.Go through it and shoot out your comments on the other ways for work life balance.
http://www.cioinsight.com/c/a/Workplace/10-Principles-WorkLife-Balance-301326/
Well,according to me work life balance does not mean an equal balance.Trying to schedule an equal number of hours for each of your various work and personal activities is usually unrewarding and unrealistic.The right balance for you today will probably be different for you tomorrow. The right balance for you when you are single will be different when you marry, or if you have children; when you start a new career versus when you are nearing retirement.The best work-life balance is different for each of us because we all have different priorities and different lives.
ReplyDeleteHowever, at the core of an effective work-life balance definition are two key everyday concepts that are relevant to each of us. They are daily Achievement and Enjoyment, ideas almost deceptive in their simplicity.Engraining a fuller meaning of these two concepts takes us most of the way to defining a positive Work-Life Balance.At work you can create your own best Work-Life Balance by making sure you not only Achieve, but also reflect the joy of the job, and the joy of life, every day. If nobody pats you on the back today, pat yourself on the back. And help others to do the same.When you do, when you are a person that not only gets things done, but also enjoys the doing, it attracts people to you. They want you on their team and they want to be on your team.
To summarize:
1)Work life balance is different for each and every individual.
2)Seek help - Speak with your manager, use available tools, and/or outside resources about work life balance.
3)Determine your priorities and what matters most to you.
4)Protect your private time, plan fun and relaxation!
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteA simple google search on the term “Work-Life Balance” will bring more than 15 million results and everybody from Mayo Clinic to WebMD has recommendation on how to achieve Work-Life Balance. Clearly it’s an important and relevant topic to discuss and at its core the term means achieving balance between one’s professional and personal life; to simplify it further - when at work do work and when not at work, live life. So why achieving work-life balance is such a challenge and why there are so many training institutions and how-to articles and books on the topic?
ReplyDeleteBusinesses have become fast-paced, competitive and global and with the advent of technology and recent downturn the line between work and life has become blurry. There is no clear distinction as to when one stops working. For example if you are product manager in States and have customers in Europe and Asia, due to time zone you might be dealing with Europe in the morning and Asia in the evening. With a Laptop (or smart phone) and Wi-Fi one can pretty much work or be expected to work from wherever and whenever. With the downturn more and more people are putting in longer hours at work, sometimes without choice and other times due to ambition to grow professionally or to manage the increasing workload. It has become ever more important to avoid burn-out, get some R&R and perform at your best. The definition of R&R for each individual will be unique - movie night with family, reading to child before sleep, weekly game of soft-ball with friends, date night etc.
It is evident that work-life balance is important from employee’s perspective but it is equally important for the employer as well. If the company is seeking to recruit and retain best employees and keep morale and productivity at the highest level, it is in their best interest to provide an environment that allows work-life balance. Few things such as having an on-site work-out facility, day-care facility, flex-time, encouraging car-pooling, maternity/ paternity leave are few examples that company’s do to make employees feel less overwhelmed and loyal.
Clearly, the term work-life balance is very broad and each company and individual’s situation is unique. But if company wants to be competitive and profitable they need to cater to their employees work-life balance needs. Likewise if the employees feel they have work-life balance there is high probability they will be loyal to the company and be efficient and productive at work.
I encourage you to post “tricks and tips” you use to achieve work-life balance and also what programs your employer offers for you to achieve it.
I have not read any material on this subject outside of what my classes have discussed over the last several year. However, I from what I have seen in the work place the work-life balance has a massive impact on individuals enjoyment of both work and their personal lives. Some people can spend vast amounts of time at the workplace and enjoy themselves because they bring their personal life and work life together, allowing them to both socialize and work over a long period of time. This can be positive or negative, primarily dependent on the level of self control and the ability to focus when necessary.
ReplyDeleteOthers completely block out social activity in the workplace and look forward to getting together with friends in order to enjoy themselves. This can cause stress and in the workplace.
While my experience is limited, it seems that a good balance is to embrace those you work with and find a way to enjoy yourself while spending time with them. It is also important to maintain a separate and stable life outside of work in order to experience variety.
I agree with Sanjay that work-life balance is not only important for the employee, but for the employer as well. With an increasingly competitive market, employers are looking to hire and retain dedicated employees and more and more employees are placing higher emphasis on work-life balance. I would like to offer my personal experience as a great example of a company that encourages its employees to maintain a healthy balance between work and personal life.
ReplyDeleteMy company offers a “9/80” flex schedule where employees work 9 hours a day and have the privilege to take every alternate Friday off. With this day off I am able to run errands, set doctor’s appointments, volunteer at a local company or even go on a small road trip. I think this is an excellent way my company encourages employees to dedicate time to their families and personal life outside of work.
The 9/80 schedule majorly influences my satisfaction with my job. I feel that I am more dedicated and more loyal to my employer than any other employer I have worked for. My coworkers and I often joke about how “spoiled” we have become with this schedule.
I believe American lives have become more and more busy. With us running between work, soccer practices, graduate classes, the gym, and dentists’ offices, I firmly believe it’s important for employers to understand the increasing pressure we all feel from our lives. My flex schedule has increased my productivity and happiness at work while also allowing me to keep my personal life intact.
I would like to add that a good work-life balance policy is not only beneficial to the employees but also to the company that supports such policy. One of the biggest benefits that we see in my department, where employees travel up to 60% of the time, is that a good work-life balance policy helps lower turnover in what is a very specialized practice. The company makes a sizable investment training and certifying employees so high turnovers driven by the pressures of elevated travel time requirements end up costing the company a lot of money in re-training and re-certifying employees. By having a generous work-life balance policy to make up for strenuous travel requirements, not only are the employees being taken care of but the company is also reducing its cost by lowering turnover on what could be a high turnover department in the absence of good work-life balance policies.
ReplyDeleteBalancing work and our personal lives has become harder and seems to be getting tougher to handle over the years. I agree with Linsy on how companies and our employers need to understand the increase in pressure in our lives and it's causes on our work. I know that most companies offer flex schedules and those who don't should adopt this policy as I believe that it helps the employees become more efficient.
ReplyDeleteBalancing work and life is also a big responsibility of each individual as we choose to bring work home and work long hours; if we plan and set goals and work towards achieving those goals in a timely manner, we would hopefully be able to enjoy the time away from work. It's more easier said than done but definitely not impossible. Employees tend to usually digress from their work because of distractions (whether they are checking personal emails, making personal calls, logging on to facebook, chatting on aol, yahoo, chatting away with co-workers, etc.). If we try to eliminate the amount of time we spend on these distractions at work and use that time to work, we may be able to achieve more. This will increase our time off as hopefully we won't be bringing work home or staying late to finish a project.
Employers can offer stress management programs (since most of the stress occurs from work), flexible working hours, set maximum number of working hours, and force employees to take their vacation leave as some don't. As individuals, we can learn to manage out time so that we leave work at the workplace, observe our habits at work for a time period to evaluate where unnecessary time is spent and improve on it, and take advantage of our vacation time and flex schedules offered by the company.
I completely agree that flex time is a great way for employers to help their employees maintain a better work-life balance. Having a good work-life balance can definitely make employees more satisfied with their jobs.
ReplyDeleteIn Dr. Rockett's Power and Politics class, we learned about gender and politics in the workplace this week. I learned that it is a lot tougher for women to maintain a proper work-life balance than it is for men. For example, in the article "Where are the Women?" by Linda Tischler, the reason why women are far less likely to hold executive positions in business is examined.
In fact, the reason why many women aren't in positions of power is not because they can't handle the stress, rather, it's because they CHOOSE not to handle it. The article gave examples of women who reached executive positions of power but stepped down from those positions in order to pursue a career with a better work-life balance for them.
Women, more often than men, feel the need to manage their time between work and their families. Men, on the other hand, have been shown to do whatever it takes to advance in their careers, sometimes at the detriment to their families. Many women would opt not to take a promotion if it would have any negative effects on their family life. Men compete harder than women by putting in more hours, being willing to relocate, etc., and that is why they're more often the managers running businesses.
My question is, should men and women be treated differently with regards to a work-life balance? Should employers take into consideration the fact that women are often running a family while doing their job?
My personal opinion is no, women should not be given special treatment. If a woman really WANTS to put in the late, long hours and wants to compete for advancement in her career, she can. Yet many women choose to have the work-life balance that suits them, and they are completely satisfied with their decisions.
@Stacey, I am on the same page with you in that men should not be treated differently than women with regards to work-life balance. However, I believe it's a case by case situation that depends on how lenient/understanding your supervisor or company is. There are so many different family situations and living arrangements that it would be very hard to favor one sex over the other.
ReplyDeleteThe working world is unfortunately, a pretty cut throat environment and in most cases if you want to succeed, you need to make sacrifices. Most of the time these sacrifices impact your work-life balance.
The engineering company I use to work for did a 4.5 day work week where we would get half days on friday. I haven't worked in a 4/80 schedule like Linsy but I really enjoyed the half days on friday. When there was a holiday, they would have us work a full friday the week before so we could have the following friday or monday off to make it a 4 day weekend. I enjoyed this flexibility very much as did most of the employees. It would be very hard for me to go back to a traditional work schedule.
I think everyone wants work life balance. But this ideal life sometimes can’t be achieved in modern business environment. I believe most of people even left their office and they would should check e mail or reply mail at home and do their job after children went to bed. So, in my viewpoint, technology does give us more convenience, but in contrast, we do stick in the work. I remember my father would be free and stay with our family after left office ten years ago, but now, even he almost retire in these couple years, he still check mail or makes some phone call after dinner. I think he put more time into his work than before. And, business today does require rapid response and this also disrupts work life balance. It’s sad, I don’t think what we can do to change current trend. Because it’s a high competitive time, everybody does this and we have to do it. Or if competitors do rapid response or immediately service, for survive, we have to catch up with them. All these events do damage the balance. And I believe in the future, the work life unbalance would be even worse.
ReplyDeleteI don't see a difference in the male and females in our workforce as far as different treatment. I have been fortunate to never had that concern. I work in the hospital industry as a nursing director and it is a 24/7 job. My required hours are M-F 8-5 but I am always to be available for the doctors, staff and patients. My work life balance was thrown for a loop when I became the director. For the first 15 years of my career I was a shift worker. WOW!! What a change I had in my life once i became an M-F person. It is all about perspective, balance and time management.
ReplyDeletePosting so far at the bottom of this topic, I'm sure there are several overlapping facts, statements and comments, I don't have time to read them all, but would like to put my two cents in on this topic anyways.
ReplyDeleteFirst of all as one of the posts stated above, Work-life balance on the internet is a busy topic for many doctors and psychiatrists seeking for answers to help people separate home and work life.
Speaking from personal experience, I have a hard time with this myself, as much of my work is done on the computer and much of it is done at home. In a world where more than 60% of US households have personal computers, drawing the line between work, play, and family time can be very difficult. Also making this task much more daunting is the many social networking sites that are available, so not only are we carrying over work in to our home/personal life with smartphones and ultra portable computers to easily respond to work emails, but we are socializing more at work with sites like facebook and twitter. This topic is a fine line between work-life balance and technology in the work place.
I personally have to make my self get off the computer and the phone and enjoy my personal time spiritually and with my family. It has almost become second nature for me to check my email and Facebook to see if there are job alerts or emails about a school project. It makes me wonder what I ever did before all this technology and communication was so readily available. I have even had work clients for my freelance job, that I have never met before. Since I work from home, there are a number of times where this freelance home job has taken away from my family, and with the gas prices and economy doing so bad, more people are working from home, so its no wonder that this has become such a huge issue. So remember that work can wait because if you aren't fulfilled in all areas of your life, none of them will flow well together.
Sorry if some of this feels a bit confusing, the end of the semester has my brain running on fumes.
An ideal balance between work and personal life comes about only when we are ready to leave everything related to work at the workplace and transform into a parent/spouse/friend at home. But ideally, how often can we achieve this. Though most of us really want to do so,but in today's world we often have to bring work home.
ReplyDeleteConstantly worrying about finishing up stuff that is due the next day for work literally throws off the balance between work and personal life. Personally speaking, I work in the software industry where it is not always possible to maintain a steady balance between work and life outside work. Often I have had to put off outings with my toddler because of 'some things that need to be taken care of immediately'. Even though each of us would love to have a balance in our lives, it really depends on the kind of job that we are in that allows us to achieve this balance.
Even if we do have a balance, many a times, it is not possible to have a steady balance. For instance, having an evening planned out with my friends and family might result in making up that lost time through the late hours in the night to finish some incomplete tasks due at work the following day.
My point is, we can try to achieve a good work life balance but circumstances do not always permit us to do so.
Believe it or not, there is actually legislation being considered that would reward employers for creating a better work/life balance in their workplace. The House Committee on Education and Labor held a subcommittee hearing in March 2010 on the Work-Life Balance Award Act (H.R. 4855) that would establish an award for employers that develop and implement work-life balance policies that are defined in the bill as workplace practices “designed to enable employees to achieve a satisfactory work-life balance.”
ReplyDeleteThe measure, which was introduced by Rep. Lynn Woolsey (D-Calif.) and Rep. George Miller (D-Calif.), would direct the Department of Labor (DOL) to create a work-life balance advisory board to develop criteria that employers would need to meet in order to qualify and apply for the award.
“This legislation comes at a critical time. Women now make up half of America’s workforce, and their incomes are increasingly important to families’ economic survival,” testified witness Portia Wu, vice president of the National Partnership for Women & Families. “Working men are also investing more time in child care. And many more Americans are assuming eldercare responsibilities — a trend that will intensify as our country’s population ages.”
“Workers should not have to choose between work and family,” said Woolsey, the chair of the subcommittee. “The Work-Life Balance Award will send a clear message to employers that the federal government recognizes companies that develop family-friendly policies for their workers. In fact, providing work-life benefits has been shown to increase retention, decrease absenteeism and increase productivity.”
According to the Committee on Education and Labor, the Work-Life Balance Award Act would be given to employers with exemplary work-life workforce policies and practices. These practices include, but are not limited to: paid sick leave to care for oneself or a sick family member and for the birth or adoption of a child, time off to attend children’s extracurricular activities and school conferences, telecommuting and job-sharing.
Any public or private employer of any size is eligible for the award, as long as they comply with federal and state labor and employment laws.
@ richard this is great info! I look forward to researching in order to suggest to my employer!
ReplyDeleteI personally find work/life balance extremely difficult. I have tried different strategies to get a better grasp but have yet to find the one that works for me. As a mom, full time employee and part time graduate student, my time is always stretched thin. All 3 of these roles are a high priority for me but 2 definitely take precedence. I, like Swetha, constantly find myself sleep deprived in order to accomplish all that is required of me. I do have a few rules I try to adhere to in order to have somewhat of a grip on things. Since I work full time, the time I have with my 2 year old is of upmost importance so I do not work when I am spending time with him (well not on my laptop at least, I may, however answer occasional emails from my phone). I leave work at 5 every day so that I can get every minute in with him & my husband before bed. But once they are asleep my work laptop is on usually for several hours.
Another reason for my late night hours is time zone differences. With customers and vendors overseas, the only times I can communicate with them is during my bedtime hours.
School work, unfortunately, comes after family and work. It takes place on those rare nights that I do not have pressing work obligations (like tonight).
I didn't realize there were so many tips out there though on this topic so I do plan on looking into them before the summer session starts!