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Work life family balance

30 March 2009

One of the key aspects of my business coaching and executive mentoring is helping directors and managers with their Work Life or Work Family balance, which often is non-existent. This article is all about how to change your perspectives about how you run your life and consists of four easy tips on balancing ones life around family and work to ensure a better quality of life and success. It talks about what it means to different people, how people deal with the challenge in different ways and how you use your time at work and at home…

After reading this tip sheet, you will:

have a very good idea of what areas to think about regarding work and family responsibilities
be able to create a structure of what you need to concentrate on
realise how important it is be good at managing your time at work and home
have an understanding about how you can grow more confident in saying No to people’s requests
• see how other people deal with their balancing their energy and time
• grow more confident

Work Life - Family balance tips

1. Work Family balance means very different things to different people. If you look at the DTI website, it's all about how you structure your life at work :–

flexi-time,
staggered hours,
time off in lieu,
compressed working hours,
shift swapping,
annualised hours,
job-sharing,
term-time working,
working from home,
tele-working,
breaks from work, etc.

To others it is about improving their family and social life, as this is where they have too much stress and their life is out of control :–

managing expectations around working 9 till 5 and homemaking 6 till 11
to clean or not to clean
stress from going to work not recognized at home
homemaking is not recognized as a job by one’s partner
stress from children – stress from partner - stress from parents and in-laws
balancing finance and credit cards
if have finance permits is there energy for socializing
balancing office space and hours when partner works from home
keeping up with the image or the Jones’s
children peer pressure
managing the Delia complex
health and sleep issues
post natal challenges

2. Everybody thinks their work-life balance differently, so don't be fooled by what appears to work for somebody else because ......

first of all you don't know that they do have their life in balance
secondly one person's balance is another person's hell hole
thirdly don't believe everything you read about how to get your life in balance.... only you can tell you what you need to do to get your life in order ... outsiders like me can only facilitate and help you find what you need to do
finally most people do not have the courage to admit to anybody, least of all to themselves, that they don't have control over their work and life ie. they brag about stress, they talk big about the pressure, they boast about their full diary and all the meetings they attend, they talk avidly about the miles they drive, etc.

3. As a result of working with a great number of people - entrepreneurs, business owners, directors and managers - it is not just about the structure of work, it is also about how one structures, organises or how one is able to live and relax outside of the workplace. Obviously one side of the equation is about reducing stress at work, but the other side of the equation is what goes on outside of work, as this for some people is far more stressful than work. see the above list

4. Some of the outcomes of poor work-life balance or the individual can be discovered in terms of re-occurring poor health - migraines, ongoing colds and sore throats, emotional ups and downs and changes in weigh. For a company it can be identified by lack of motivation, decreased job efficiency, increase Labour turnover, time off work, petty misunderstandings, emotional upsets, etc.

Whatever your Work-Family Balance challenge is, I can help .. ring me