The Staying Power Of Work-Life Balance

What does balance mean when applied to work and life?

Three factors are driving the increased attention being paid today to employee work-life balance.

The first is the shifting nature of work and the role of the workplace in the completion of work. For many in today’s value add economy, work can be conducted anywhere. This has a significant impact on work and life. For many, the work-life line becomes very blurry, very quickly. Between digital technology and the tools it brings, there is often little separation between work and life.

The second factor is the current emerging shift in the focus of worksite wellness away from employee health towards employee wellbeing. Since wellbeing is multi-dimensional, a focus on wellbeing ties directly into many aspects related to work-life balance.

Finally, the third factor relates to the increasing attention being paid to the employee experience. Given the significant association between work and life and the implications of a work-life blur, overall work-life balance becomes a critical element of the employee experience.

The concept of work-life balance can be traced back to the early 1970s. As the percentage of women increased in the workforce, they began making demands on employers to modify the work experience so they might be better able to manage both their work and home lives. As I remember it, their early efforts focused on employer support for or the provision of childcare and flexible working hours.

Over the years, I have witnessed several attempts to change the work-life balance terminology. Most notably, work-life integration and work-life fit received a lot of attention in years past. I have been known to promote work-life integration myself. Recently, an article I read promoted work-life harmony. Despite these concerted efforts, the term work-life balance appears to have staying power.

With efforts being made over the years to modify the term work-life balance to something else, this suggests that there are issues with the term. However, what are they?

Work is work and life is life and neither is likely to go away anytime soon. In fact, for most people, work is part of life. Work-life or employee experience is also a part of work.

If work and life are not likely to go away anytime soon, then that leaves us with the word balance. And I would suggest that the issues associated with the term work-life balance do in fact arise from the word balance. Just what does balance mean when applied to work and life?

For many, including myself, the first thought or image that comes to mind when we think of balance is the balance scale. A balance scale would be the type of scale held by the figure of Lady Justice. This image reflects the idea that that work and life are on the opposite sides of the scale and the scale is perfectly balanced in the middle. While this might make a great graphic, how real is it? In reality, life is never equally balanced between the various domains of life.  

More often than not, most people think of balance only in terms of time. Balance means equal time is spent at work and in life outside of work. 

The problem is that neither life nor work operates that way, especially work today. There are times when both life and work each require more time to deal with the issues at hand. This means that the time spent in each is unbalanced and therefore a problem when the balance is viewed as being time spent in each of life’s dimensions. I would suggest that viewing work-life balance through the lens of time spent in each is a sure-fire recipe for frustration and failure. So how else might we view balance?

As a construct, life is multi-dimensional. Different models depict a varying number of dimensions of life which are often represented in a wheel – The Wheel of Life. I was always taught that your Wheel of Life should be as round as possible to afford you the best and smoothest “ride.” If we are using time as the standard of measure, this would suggest that each dimension of your life should receive an equal amount of time. Again, this is just neither possible nor realistic. 

From my perspective, I would agree that life is made up of multiple dimensions. And I would agree that a “healthy” life requires effort in each of the dimensions to some degree, but certainly not equal effort. Rather than using time as the standard of measure, I would suggest that impact or outcomes are a more realistic measure of and a more realistic way to approach balance.  There is no law, which states that balance can only be measured in terms of time.

A focus on impacts or outcomes does not even imply balance. Impacts and outcomes can run the gamut from simple to complex depending upon the need or desire of the individual. In his book, Redefining Work-Life Balance: One Minute Tools to Manage Stress, Achieve More and Enjoy Life Every Day, author Jim Bird writes that the impacts or goals we strive to achieve in any of the dimensions of wellbeing should be based on either achievement or enjoyment. Bird writes, “Our achievements and enjoyments, big and small, create the meaningful and valued life we all seek.”

I have no doubt that the term work-life balance will remain the term of choice for describing how to best approach life. For the reasons already cited, this makes balance the key-word of the term work-life balance. Bird writes, “Your best work-life choices will vary over time and circumstances, often on a daily basis.” For the sake of our mental health, I would suggest that we view balance in terms of our impacts and outcomes, not time. 

Reference:
Bird, Jim. 2019.  Redefining Work-Life Balance: One Minute Tools to Manage Stress, Achieve More and Enjoy Life Every Day. Las Vegas: Lifestyle Entrepreneurs Press.