Work-life balance: more than just a place and time thing
September 20, 2008
I’ve been quite busy lately, and I think it’s been affecting my work-life balance. I’ve been working slightly longer hours, and whilst this isn’t ideal I wouldn’t say this is the main cause of the imbalance. I’m fortunate enough to work in a place where the building is opened and shut at particular times and it’s therefore not possible to be ‘at work’ excessively, and I haven’t got a blackberry or home access to the work network so I don’t suffer from the overworking issues caused by mobile technology I talked about a while back (Technology contributes to long hours syndrome: 8th May 08).
I think the real lack of work-life balance I’ve experienced lately actually relates to the stress levels experienced in work time. The increase in responsibilities and actual amount of work to do has meant that it’s become increasingly difficult to leave work at work – mentally. I’m not sleeping well and at the weekend, unless I’m actually occupying myself with things to do it’s become all too easy to start thinking about what I need to do on Monday. Just last weekend for example, I was out looking at oriental furniture with my brother for his new flat, and I couldn’t take my mind off what’s happening with what I need to speak to my boss/that manager/the recruitment consultant about. Perhaps oriental furniture is a bad example as it’s not exactly intersting enough to keep my mind occupied, but sometimes the end of the weekend comes around and I feel as though I’ve not really left the office.
I’m convinced this is a problem many people could identify with, and it’s something organisations need to seriously consider, because an overworked and stressed out workforce is anti-successful in every way. Work-life balance is now an important area of concern for employees, and many organisations are looking into a variety of ways of getting the best out of their staff whilst meeting their personal and family related needs, such as flexitime or home working,but it’s no good having these schemes in place if issues of workload, job design, support and planning leave people feeling more exhausted than ever. At the end of the day, if you can’t let go of ‘work’ when you should be in ‘life’ mode, then you’re still ‘at work’, and where’s the balance in that?
Hopefully my situation is only short term, but I imagine there’s a lot of people for whom this is not the case. Does this sound like you? Or do you know people in your organisation to whom my description above applies? What do you think should be done about it?
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