GUEST COLUMN
THE
BALANCE MYTH By Neal Glatt, CSP, ASM
F
or many workers, work-life balance used to be a noble goal. The idea was that if we can do our jobs well for 40 (or more) hours per week, then it would be possible to provide for a family to go back to and spend time with off-the-job. If the time was in balance, and we could not worry about the obligations of work when spending time personally, or about personal issues when at work, then things would be good. There are a number of reasons that this myth doesn’t make much sense. For one, what does “in balance” even mean? How do you know when the equation is balanced? If I miss an hour of work, do I “owe” it back to the organization? Or I work an extra few hours on a big project, am I to be compensated more for them? What if I like work so much that I want to spend more than 40 hours there – am I off-balance? Second, who can possibly separate work and life anymore? Even before COVID forced us to work from home, where my living room, clutter, and/or children are on full display for my co-workers, business cell phones meant I was expected to respond after-hours or on weekends, at least for emergencies. It seems like the line between work and life has been awful blurry ever since e-mail started showing up on cell phones. Third, when I have a real problem, it bothers me no matter what I’m supposed to be doing. When I have a big problem at work, it affects my sleep and the balance idea doesn’t work anymore. Conversely, my mom was very sick in 2010. She required many surgeries and eventually passed away in December. There were times, especially for the weeks leading up and following her funeral, that I was heavily distracted
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even when I wasn’t on bereavement leave from work. When a family member has a problem, or bills are overdue, or anything emotionally devastating is happening to us personally, we simply won’t be performing at the same level at work. So, what’s a better solution? Work-Life Integration. The idea is simple: let’s find a way for what we do at work to fit into our lives in an integrative way. Employees do their best work when the mission of an organization inspires them personally. People want to feel part of something bigger than themselves and great managers help them bridge that gap between personal and work purpose. Gallup actually reports that workgroups which are mission-driven suffer 30%–50% less accidents and have 15% to 30% less turnover. If you want to improve the personal and psychological well-being of your people (and we need to be doing so now more than ever!), introduce your organization’s mission regularly and help draw connections to individual contributions or roles. When daily tasks are connected to a higher purpose, everyone realizes more success and feels better about their chosen job. After all, we only need work-life balance if we hate our work, right?
Neal Glatt, CSP, ASM is a managing partner of GrowTheBench.com – a leading provider of affordable online education, professional development and peer networking for green industry professionals. Contact Neal via email at Neal@GrowTheBench.com.
