Work-life balance - The general consciousness
The science is conclusive, the findings widespread, work life balance is a winning mindset. Science puts out that a company with employees who have balanced lives yield a healthier financial return than companies with a culture of little to no work-life balance. Despite the conclusive data, most companies still hold to thinking that work-life balance is simply not a priority due to the demands of business or simply prefer to continue doing things the old-fashioned way.
Work-life balance and life-balance, before moving on, I wish to distinguish between the two. ‘Work-Life balance’ is the idea of dedicating time & energy for work on a daily basis and dedicating time and energy for life, before or after work, on a daily basis, achieving some sort of balance between the two. Whereas ‘life balance’ are elements of living, outside of work, that a human being must have to lead a fulfilling and balanced life. E.g., physical movement (sports), family time, time with friends (social life), spiritual time, time to grow(self-improvement), time for hobbies, time to help others, and time to rest & rejuvenate and more.
The logic is simple, employees that have life-balance outside of work do better at work. i.e., they would at work be more energetic, more creative, more productive, less complacent, and overall, in a better mood which would also positively impact work relationships, which in turn has a positive impact on the culture at work, which all in turn impact business growth. Of course, there are other factors that contribute to growth but in this article, I discuss only the perspective of work-life balance and life-balance.
For an employee to be able to have life-balance outside of work, time, amongst other things, is one of the key resources required. One of the ways that this finite resource is furnished is through work-life balance. e.g., always leaving work on time that one can utilize what remains of the day to invest in life -balance, (although it is worthy to mention that leaving work on time but stressed and depleted of energy would inhibit the ability to invest in life-balance, and I will come to this later).
However, most organizations still cling to unreasonable and outdated thinking. Such as, and not limited to:
Most employers still believe that the aforementioned examples and other outdated thinking is the road to career growth, and they set expectations accordingly. The question these outdated thinkers either do not consider or worse yet, just do not care about is, at what cost does this mentality come to the employee & the business? ?Plenty are the direct and indirect consequences and costs of this mentality at work. They include but are not limited to; burnout, decline in quality of work, decline in creativity, stress, decline in temperament, retention, wrongful terminations, negative employee experience, negative customer experience, an increase in human error rates, unhealthy culture, and finally, reduced profitability. Furthermore, the negative impacts spills over to life after work in that the employee is drained of physical energy, mental energy and most importantly, time, to focus on life balance. Do you see the vicious cycle being created? Knowing or unknowingly, a brutal cycle is born! The effects of a sub optimum life at home impacts work and a suboptimum life at work impacts home. The two cannot be separated.
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Multiple studies are finding that work related stress and burn out is now a leading cause of health issues, issues that some say even surpassing those caused by smoking. Can we all not relate, one way or another, on the effects of burnout and stress at work or at the very least know someone who is miserable because of this?
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Now we must ask, how can a company systematically, and through clear policies, combat the outdated mentality of no work-life balance? Here are but a few simple and maybe unconventional examples that would counter the unwanted mindset…
Companies that advocate ‘work life balance’ through words only or writings on the wall will find the approach ineffective and run the risk of looking hypocritical to its employees. Unless the writings on the wall are supplemented with policies and practices linked to financial consequences and public recognition schemes that serve to enforcing what is preached.
It is true, like almost everything, implementing work-life balance policies and building a culture around it has a price tag that a company carries. Which is why, In the short term, it is much more attractive to shareholders to overwork and not compensate employees for overworking, burn them out then replace them with fresh blood who come in full of energy who are ready to be overworked. A very short-sighted approach that is actually bad for business in the medium to long term.
It becomes a thing of beauty when work life balance is the status quo at a business, yet also it is highly likely for a business to comes across periods of pressure due to either external or internal circumstances when the business would need people to give more time and energy. This could happen periodically, and it would be totally fine for the business to ask people to give extra time and energy during these periods, provided that the business compensates for this extra effort, one way or another, both financially and non-financially. E.g., flex ours, more vacation time, overtime, etc. Again, this is a cost to the business, a cost that will yield a significant ROI in the long term. Keeping in mind that if a company faces multiple unplanned crunch time or crisis periods, then there might be a general issue with strategy and planning that needs to be addressed. Crunch times should be few and far in between.
As much as I tried, I cannot think of a business that would not be able to allow for work- life balance due to the nature and unique operational demands of that business. Whatever the line of work, it is usually a matter of resource allocation in a way that allows for a work life balance. Which again brings us to the matter of cost. As such, a business should plan its numbers considering work life balance. ?Many will say that this is a ‘rosy picture’ not reflective of life in business and its demands. They will say that the norm is overworking, burning people out then replacing them. But just because this is the norm today neither makes it right, acceptable, or unchangeable. It boils down to mindset.
Yes, in most cases, every action or policy needed to make work-life balance reality has a price tag that does not look attractive to business owners when compared to savings gained when applying the unwritten policy of ‘over work, burnout then replace with fresh & energetic blood’, a very shortsighted unwritten policy with disastrous long term financial and nonfinancial implications. Things could be working fine for the shareholders with this short-term strategy, they might say “we are growing”, but how different would growth look like If they invest in the long term rather than the short term?
To conclude, I encourage leaders to adopt practices that positively impact society as a whole. Work-life balance is just one of these practices. It is a practice that yields a WIN- WIN -WIN. A win for the employee, a win for the customer and a win for shareholders, in the long term.