Work/life balance is probably the dream of most employees. However, as more and more organizations focus on doing more work with fewer staff, the ability to incorporate sufficient personal time into an already demanding schedule has become difficult.

But how important is work/life balance?

According to a survey by the Families and Work Institute conducted ten years ago, almost two-thirds (63%) of American workers expressed a preference to reduce their working hours, compared with only 46% in a similar survey conducted five years prior to that.

Of course, this isn’t scientific, but at that rate of increase (17% every five years) then 97% of Americans today would probably like to reduce their working hours. And I’ll assume that’s as high as it goes because there is always going to be some Type A personalities out there.

That being said, what are some of the things to look at when thinking about work/life balance and the impact on your organization and employees?

Well, first, technological changes over the past twenty-five years have really altered the way we do work. Telecommuting is much more conducive to many more jobs than ever before: call center representatives, engineers, insurance agents, accountants, and many others.

Next, telecommuting options increase the employability of marginalized groups, such as mothers and fathers with small children, the handicapped and people living in remote areas.

Another work/life consideration might be flexible work hours such as a compressed work week or job sharing. The most common compressed work week structure is the 4/10 schedule or working four ten-hour days per week, while job sharing is merely splitting one job between two equally capable employees.

In an effort to balance work and personal life many employees have other family members they need to take into consideration. So offering on-site child care or child care and eldercare referrals is a welcome perk.

A final work/life consideration might be company leave options. Along with holiday pay and the standard vacation and sick leave or the combined personal time off (PTO) where vacation time and sick leave are lumped into a single pool, other time off might include maternity and parental leave or sabbaticals.

The important thing is to remember that happy employees will perform better than those that are disgruntled and stressed. There will be lower rates of absenteeism, higher rates of productivity and retention, and improved customer service.

Don’t believe work/life balance is important?

Then you’ve never heard of Google voted number one on Forbes list of Top 100 Companies to work for in 2007.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 7th, 2007 at 10:30 am and is filed under Job Satisfaction. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments. You can comment below, or link to this permanent URL from your own site. Your comments will appear immediately, but I reserve the right to delete innapropriate comments.