14 : Work/Life Balance
This article addresses work/life balance issues for both the employed and the self-employed.
Contents
1. Work/Life Balance – introduction
2. Symptoms
3. Suggestions
4. Creating the motivation to change
5. A Client’s Work/Life Balance Story
1. Work/Life Balance – introduction
Since the last Exploring the Edge newsletter, my partner and I have been on holiday in my camper van. Our southernmost stop was the WOMAD festival in Reading and I did wonder if any of ‘my readers’ were there too.
Another stop was to visit friends with an organic smallholding and B&B near Machynlleth in North Wales. They also have a camping field and there were a couple camping with their small children – but I never saw the mother (a lawyer I believe) without a ‘phone to her ear. So I decided the next article would be on Work/Life Balance – but not in the sense of balancing the baby with one hand and the ‘phone with the other.
The definition below is from The Work Foundation (formerly The Industrial Society). It can be applied equally well to an organisation with thousands of employees or an organisation of one. Self-employed people theoretically have much more control and choice – but it doesn’t always feel that way in practice.
“Work-life balance is about people having a measure of control over when, where and how they work. It is achieved when an individual’s right to a fulfilled life inside and outside paid work is accepted and respected as the norm, to the mutual benefit of the individual, the organisation and society.”
So it’s not just about working fewer hours and having more time for other things – although in Britain’s ‘long hours’ culture that’s obviously part of it. It’s about people being happy and fulfilled in all areas of their life including work.
Some people work long hours because they have to – some because they want to – but the latter choice may nevertheless be having a negative impact on their relationships and their family, their health, or on their development as a ‘rounded’ human being.
2. What are the symptoms of a work/life imbalance?
Do you :
- wonder who the small people are who seem to be living in the same house as you? (They do look vaguely familiar).
- dream about how it will be when you retire in (10? 20? 30?) years time and can do the things you really want to do?
- feel guilty if you take time out for yourself because there’s always something else you should be doing (housework, DIY, the garden (if it’s a chore rather than a pleasure), being a taxi service for the kids ……)
- even if you love working long hours, have a partner, children, family, friends that are unhappy that they don’t get to see you more?
- have no topic of conversation, or interests, other than your work?
- have stress-related health problems? (maybe you don’t realise they are stress-related?)
- regularly work evenings and weekends?
If you are employed do you :
- feel that you have to be seen working longer hours than you are paid for, or else you won’t be seen as sufficiently committed and so won’t progress in your career?
- frequently take work home with you?
- find that by the time you get home you are too tired to do anything but slump?
- have a job where you care about your clients but where you have too little time and too few resources and feel personally responsible for making things work – even when they are unworkable?
If you are self-employed do you :
- always feel that no matter how much you do you should be doing more because no matter how well you are doing this month you may not have enough work/business next month (or the month after or ….)?
- have a successful business built on working long hours and feel that if you don’t carry on doing what you’ve always done you’ll be less successful?
- have a less successful business than you want and believe that the only route to success is to work even longer hours than you already are?
These are just some of the indications that your work and the rest of your life may not be in balance – and there are a great many things that you can do to improve the situation.
3. Suggestions
If you are employed by an organisation :
If you want to remain in your current job, there are a number of things you can do.
a) Organisations who know that improving their employees’ work-life balance makes sense for everybody have implemented a whole range of options including :
Flexible working patterns eg flexitime, compressed working week ( 9 day fortnight),
part-time working, job sharing, annualised hours, teleworking or home working, term-time working
Leave options eg statutory minimum re holidays, maternal & parental leave, time off for dependents; paid paternity leave; career breaks for carers; study leave; leave in lieu of pay or other benefits
And some have been even more creative schemes. For instance, at Barclays Contact Centre in Cheshire they have a Concierge service. The offices are outside the town centre and staff tend to be rushing into town in their lunch hour. Now they have a concierge who makes a daily trip to do shopping, pick up dry cleaning, take shoes to the menders etc.
You can find out about the options offered by your organisation and work out
what would work for you and why. Make a case that highlights the benefits to the organisation as well as to you. If there aren’t any options, go to this link to discover whether you have a legal right to ask for flexitime.
b) Make some radical decisions (maybe just one at a time), implement them and see what happens – which may well be very different from what you anticipate
eg
- believe that if you can’t get through your work in your contracted hours it’s because you are being given too much work – not because you are incompetent, not working hard enough etc
- only work the hours you are paid to work (“Work expands to fit the time available”).
- never take work home
- say “no” more often, even to your boss
If you’re self-employed :
For many self-employed people the main issue is knowing when to stop. You don’t have ‘contracted hours’. You don’t have job security.. You can’t decide to take a ‘duvet day’ and still get paid. You don’t get paid holidays. These factors can lead to your life being driven by fear – fear of failing, fear of not being able to pay the mortgage and support your family.
At the same time you may well love what you do. It’s not just your work, it’s your passion. It’s you work, your hobby, your personal development. You may love the buzz and the adrenaline high. But if you are not at the same time looking after the other parts of your life there may be a price to pay in the future.
You are your most important resource. In many cases you are the business. Keeping going until you burn out and break down is not good asset management!
The big question is – How much is enough?
As a self-employed person it’s usually pretty hopeless to ‘wait’ until you have done all you can/’should’ and have some spare time for yourself. There is always something else you could be doing for the business.
Here are some tips.
- Most radical tip : Decide how many hours a week you want to work – and stick to it. Work expands to fit the time available. Don’t work longer – work smarter.
- Don’t wait until you have time for other, ‘less important’, area of your life.
- Decide what you want to make time for and block the time out in your diary.
- They are appointments with yourself, or your partner or children, and you treat them as though they were appointments with your most important prospective client ie you keep them.
- Decide on a way of signalling to yourself that it’s time to ‘switch off’ and stop work. This is especially important if you work from home. It might just be switching off the computer or changing your clothes.
- Let an answer ‘phone take messages out of work hours. You still have choice about when you return the call, but it doesn’t crash right into the middle of meal times or time with your family or friends.
Employed or self-employed :
What I haven’t addressed in this article are all the conventional time management and workload management techniques and approaches. They certainly have a role to play – but they won’t make a huge difference unless your mindset also changes.
4. Creating the Motivation to Change
Being unhappy with the situation as it is can be a powerful motivation to create some changes.
An even more powerful motivation is to have a vision of how you would like things to be if you do change them. Being pulled forward by what you want is more motivating than just trying to escape from what you have.
If you were spending less time working – what would you like to be spending that time doing instead?
Start by drawing a circle. The area of the circle represents your total waking hours per week. Then turn your circle into a Pie Chart. The example below is a very rough one for me. I’ve included time with my partner and my interests such as reading in Leisure but you can split it up any way you like.
Then do a second Pie Chart that represents how you’d like it to be in order to feel that you had a better balance between work and other areas of your life. (Mine would be the same – except I’d like Household Chores to be 0%!. The secret here is to be both realistic (ie don’t do it on the basis of winning the lottery and never having to work again) and, at the same time, to assume that you can make significant changes even if you aren’t yet sure exactly how.
Is there some area of your life you would like to have more time for?
Do you know what you would be using that time for if you had it?
If the answer is yes – start now.
Programme in some time every week for that activity (or non-activity).
Trust that the work will still get done.
5) A Client’s Work/Life Balance Story
Nick is a successful chartered surveyor, running his own one-man business. He built his business up by working very long hours and by being constantly available to clients and potential clients, even in the evenings and at weekends. He always had his mobile with him.
At the time he started working with me he was putting in a 14 hour day and worked every week-end . He was upset if he wasn’t at his desk before 7.00am and felt that he had “skived” if he went home before 9:00pm. He felt permanently tired, had no time for social friends, had lost any sense of joie de vivre and felt guilty if he tried to take time away from the business for fun or family or anything else.
He feared that if he didn’t carry on doing everything the way he had always done it he’d get fewer clients, have unhappier clients and make less money. For Nick, giving excellent service and really caring about his clients are core values – and he found it hard to believe that he could work less hours, have more fun and still achieve his business objectives.
Nick now normally works only a 8am -5pm day and no weekends. His business is doing as well as ever.
Nick is a wonderful example of how easy it is to get stuck into a rigid and limiting perspective (“If I don’t carry on working as I always have I will become less successful”). However, he had the courage to challenge himself, explore new approaches, think about what was really important to him in his life – in addition to his work - and try new things. And he’s reaping the benefits in all areas of his life.
Are you open to the possibility that there could be a better way?
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