National Work-Life Balance Week

By AdventureDad on October 31st, 2006 Print This Post Email This Post

This week is national work-life balance week in Denmark. For Scandinavian countries, combining work and life successfully is almost an obsession. They have long ago realized that it's possible to combine career with family and children. Alex over at Positive Sharing is posting stuff all week with a special focus on combining work and life. If you haven't checked out his site before you should browse through his many articles. His got tons on useful tips of how to make life and work more effective, fun, and meaningful. It's not wonder he calls himself CHO, "Chief Happiness Officer". His site reminds me a bit of the bright Steve Pavlina and his blog about "personal development for smart people". It seems like the question of life quality is constantly attracting more attention. Having children is the easy part, the tough part is to make time to see them and the spouse while still enjoying work and getting paid well. My multicultural life has given me a good look at how enormously difficult it is to fit all the pieces of the puzzle. Children, health, friends, and hobbies are rarely the main worries. Money and time are in my opinion the main concerns for every family. But in the end it's all about how you integrate the different pieces and what's high priority. How many of you feel like you have an employer who is supportive of family, a satisfying job which gives you a paycheck enough for all your needs, plenty of vacation (at least 5 weeks), and enough time for everyday life with spouse and children? I'm willing to bet there is plenty of room for improvement.

It's almost impossible to combine work and life successfully unless your employer and country makes it a priority. Before I had children I never thought about this kind of stuff. I thought it was stupid. But now I realize that being able to combine it all is not only difficult but it's a also a must if you want to live a happy life. In most, but not all, countries the man unfortunately works more and this means that fathers get to spend far less time with their children. I blogged earlier about the UK where a parent spends an average of 19 minutes a day with their children. I would call that a horrible integration of work and family. Parents in U.S. spend more time with their children now than earlier which I discussed here. It's mostly the women who do less housework and instead do more paid work but also spend more time with the children. But I still think the integration of work and life is incredibly poor. Living in Sweden for almost four years have given me a wake-up call over how well the work-life balance can be combined. Paid parental leave is the main ingredient but the other benefits are also incredible. Most countries could duplicate parts of the system, it's all a question about priorities. I was really happy with the following comment left one day by one of my readers while discussing family and work.

On this specific topic — I could not agree more. I think it starts with those of us who value fathers beginning the trend. At my company, I try to create benefits and flexibility that allow my employees to balance their work and home life.

I encourage my people to take time off to catch their kids’ games, doctor appointments, and performances. One of my male employees and his wife had their first child about a year ago. He was only going to take one day. I strongly encouraged him to take a week. I didn’t subtract it from his vacation time. I called it paternity leave.

My point is simple. If we don’t set the example, who will?

I think most employers misunderstand the debate regarding family and work. They seem to feel/believe that it's only a downside for the workplace. I couldn't disagree more. It's all about keeping the employees happy and motivated at work. Happier employees often equals better employees. It's very difficult to be happy at work if the family suffers greatly. If that means giving them an extra week of vacation, free lunch, or shortening the workday is irrelevant. I believe the payback will be substantial. Alex brings up an excellent example on his site of someone who did great things with the work-life balance. In this case less work equaled getting more stuff done.

I began working at my organization about a month ago. During my first ‘get to know my staff’ meeting i informed everyone that i would prefer they work no more than 40 hours per week and that everyone take a full hour lunch. My staff was so used to working long hours that they would not leave on time.
We had a big meeting last week where i used another tip from this blog and asked everyone to write all their tasks on post-it notes and hang them according to a three-point scale 1-hate it 2- it is ok 3- love it! After rearranging tasks to be better suited for their career desires people were getting things done more quickly and leaving on time.

One of my employees still felt the need to work late every day, so i started going to her every day at 5pm and asking what she was working on and offering to stay late with her to help her. I sometimes offered to take the entire responsibility off her plate (in a non-judgmental way) to ensure she could get home a a decent hour and get re-energized for the next day.

The productivity of my team has sky-rocketed lately. People come in at 8am ready to work and excited to bring ideas to me. We all leave at 5pm now as often as possible (4 out of 5 days usually) and the rest of the office seems miffed that we can ‘get away with it’. However, with priorities realigned, people more energized about their work and people with more time to appreciate friends and family our work is reaching a higher caliber and output is actually increasing.

That's what I call a win-win situation. Improving the work-life balance doesn't have to involve big projects or cost a fortune. It can be simple things which makes you more effective at work but also give you more time for family or hobbies. The difficult part is to make the employer realize the hidden potential among the employees and find a way to bring it forward.

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