A Balanced Approach to Work-Life Balance
The harsh reality is that in today’s workplace we’re more replaceable, disposable and mobile and we are likely to have a minimum of five occupational shifts during our full working career. It’s no wonder we feel under pressure all the time just to keep up. It’s hardly surprising when we live in an era where images of the time-crunched executive responding to emails in the airport departure lounge or making endless calls to the office when on holiday have become the norm that many of us feel the need to work twice as hard to impress!
So what are the consequences? Well, in many cases serious health implications and emotional exhaustion ensue as a result. The phrase “stressed out” is becoming a common part of everyone’s vocabulary these days. Once considered a problem of the Japanese workaholic or American executive, who lived in fear of being laid off, these days all professionals in the fast lane have at one time or another experienced work related stress and difficulty in balancing the work life scales.
It is fair to say however, that employers are waking up to the need to invest in the physical and mental well-being of staff, who in the era of the current ‘credit crunch’ are under more pressure to perform than ever before. They are recognising that it makes good business sense to encourage a healthier work-life balance among employees.
Many studies have found high levels of stress are often associated with conflicting demands of work and home. In many cases, even though job satisfaction may be high, a majority of workers rate balancing work and family as more important than any other employment factors.
In Northern Ireland shocking statistics show that 70,000 people in the province suffer ill-health caused or made worse by work each year at an estimated annual cost of £330 million to the economy. These alarming statistics mean that 365,000 working days are lost to work related ill-health each year, in other words 1000 workers are absent from work each day as a result!
A workforce that is out of balance, unnecessarily stressed, or disgruntled, greatly reduces full engagement with external and internal customers. Conversely, commitment to the organisation’s objectives and customers’ needs rises in direct proportion to the perception that the organisation is committed to both the work and life success of each individual.
Organisational objectives and individual work-life objectives are not “either/or” choices. It should not be “Do we get the most out of our people? Or do they have lives?” Instead it should be “The way we get the most out of our people is by encouraging each of them to have a life.”
Even as far back as 1849, physician John Ruskin advised that three things were necessary for people to be productive in their work: They must be happy at it; They must be fit for it; They must not do too much of it!
Work-Life Balance Audit
Under current legislation most employers recognise their responsibility in relation to assessment of health and safety in the use of equipment etc, however employers should be aware that Assessment of Risk also extends to the ‘Health’ of employees in terms of both their physical and mental well being. It is therefore important that any Assessment of Risk should be inclusive of the affects of stress.
Undertaking a Work-Life Balance Audit can support an organisation in developing initiatives and practices that can help resolve a number of Stress related problems and is a proactive rather than a reactive approach to the management of stress at work.
The audit tool will be designed to gather staff views on their working environment and on their personal experiences, to help your organisation understand if it is doing all that it can to support all staff to have a good work life balance. The information will help you focus on doing best what matters most to staff and provide staff with the best arrangement possible in the future. The objectives of the audit will be to:
- Understand employee awareness and perception of current available work-life balance options.
- Understand if current available work-life balance options are the right options.
- Identify appropriate improvement initiatives which could benefit overall organisational performance.
In recognising the need to support staff to achieve a good Work-Life-Balance, the data gathered will enable your organisation to target valuable resources for maximum impact, by ensuring that the Work-Life-Balance strategies and support offered is meeting staff needs, in line with business objectives.
Work-Life Balance Training
In recognition that each person is accountable for meeting and balancing all of their professional and personal obligations, to enable them to produce the results they want, Denise Cranston Consulting has developed a one day workshop, Finding Balance, to help organisations equip people with the skills to define and create their own best work-life balance. This in turn will enable staff to continuously improve their contribution to the organisation.
This workshop has been designed for senior executives and managers to help them discover what ‘balance’ means to them and how best they can achieve it. It will comprise a series of ‘Looking Back’ and ‘Looking Forward’ exercises which will help individuals put some reflective thinking time to where they are now and to where they are heading. The objective of the workshop will be to help people gain an overall perspective of their life and current situation, and to stimulate them into assessing what their life is really like and how they would really like it to be. A series of exercises will help them set personal goals and identify actions that they will take to improve the balance in their lives, and each participant will have their own work book to work through and take away with them.
Within three months of the workshop the consultant will meet with each participant individually to review and reflect on how they are implementing their work-life goals and actions.
For more information contact denise@denisecranston.com or telephone 07720 406 338