Other steps to take
Of course, finding that balance probably shouldn’t be something you have to do by yourself.
Research by Erin Kelly, professor of work and organisation studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, shows companies and managers can play a key role in creating a better environment for workers. For her book, Overload: How Good Jobs Went Bad and What to Do About It, she and co-author Phyllis Moen split more than 1,000 employees at a Fortune 500 company into two groups: one that worked under a management redesign and one that continued working within the existing management structure.
Under the management redesign, many steps were taken to ensure better work-life balance for workers and prevent burnout. Managers were regularly reminded to explicitly support their employees, for example, and workers were allowed to make changes, like cancelling 0900 morning meetings.All of this was done in the name of increasing job satisfaction and giving workers greater flexibility, and to assure workers that it was something management was committed to.
Unsurprisingly, Kelly and Moen found that employees in the redesign group reported less stress, less burnout, were less likely to quit their jobs and, over the next four years, were 40% less likely to quit than those who kept working under the old policies.
“Work-life balance is understood to be an individual’s response – so [people think] ‘it’s up to me to manage the craziness of my work life’,” says Kelly. But organisations need to examine the demands they’re placing on employees. “The root problem is not how the two pieces of work and life come together. It’s that we have unrealistic expectations of what we’re asked to do on the work side.”If your workplace isn’t an environment where work-life balance is possible in the first place, any strides you attempt to make toward it on a personal level will be in vain.
That’s a conversation that appears to be gathering pace since the pandemic ripped up the rule book for how we work as well as reshaped our working lives. The new prevalence of remote work, flexible work or even ‘hybrid’ working models will likely all play important roles in how we balance our professional and personal lives going forward.
And if it seems like finding that perfect balance remains elusive, the experts say that keeping some perspective can help. We’re in an era of catastrophic job loss; the pandemic alone has slashed 255 million jobs worldwide, and more jobs could be lost in the next decade as AI advances and more offices digitise. For millions of people, work is about being able to put food on the table. Talking about work-life balance “is a very privileged conversation”, says Lechner. “If we’re reflecting, maybe we should also reflect on that.”
Additional reporting by Lauren Brown
The Link LonkMarch 02, 2021 at 04:45AM
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Why it's wrong to look at work-life balance as an achievement - BBC News
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