Managing work-life balance.

[christina_9]

I am a manager HR in a small organization, dealing with all employees personally. I found that many of my employees are finding it difficult to maintain work-life balance. Because of this they are already exhausted when they come to the workplace and are not productive. These work-life balance issues are hampering their productivity. I want to address this issue as soon as possible.

[Jennings]

You are certainly on the wrong forum for such advice but not wishing to miss the opportunity to put in my half cent's worth then consider this.

I would suggest that the problem is not connected to that comfortable probably academic theory of work-life balance; if what you say about the lethargy of the staff then try looking at what management is doing in creating this lack-lustre in the staff's efforts.

You mentioned one simple word that exposed the prevailing ethos within the company and that was your descriptive term 'my' when you referred to the staff (you being one of them) as 'my employees'! Tell me, do you go to bed with them? I am being sincere, get off your pedestal and start being one of the staff where you belong rather than being a 'company woman or man'!

The boss might be the owner or CEO and he will mostly likely decide on policy and create the ethos to which he is complaining but he does not work on the shopfloor so how can he (or she) possibly know the problems to enable him to manage properly. He may delegate this responsibility to someone such as yourself but what do you do as an intermediary? Do you simply reinforce his authority? Do you tell him what you think he wants to hear or do you tell him the truth? It is almost certain that if you tell him the truth you can say goodbye to promotion so you have a problem of communication, not downwards but upwards! Problems in any organisation do not start at the bottom and percolate upwards but rather the opposite; they start at the top and manifest themselves at the 'coalface' of industry or on the workfloor.

Try listening to the staff both individually and collectively (say at staff meetings) and allow them to tell you and the boss what is actually happening and create the ethos where staff can speak without fear or favour about the problems that beset them. Get them to make the decisions on the problem's resolutions; all that management is required to do is to guide them through the inevitable constraints that might affect those decisions. Do not set yourself up as an 'us' and 'them' situation which will only serve to cause social-class war. Be egalitarian at all times and ensure that supervisors and managers never raise their voices to those in subordinate levels of the management structure otherwise you might as well shoot yourself in the foot as far as production is concerned. Take an interest in the tasks that each individual is performing and let them tell you how it is done; they know better so allow them to have their say.

Finally, on arranging staff meetings, try doing so impromptu and without any angenda and do not record minutes. This avoids the disaffected from attempting to embarrass management and enables the boss to focus on what is concerning staff at that particular moment in time. The handicap about keeping minutes is that they are too often utilised as being regulatory and the cunning will hide behind them or take advantage of them. The staff need to grow with the company and require the freedom to do so and need too to feel that they are able to contribute to their own management and to the company's policies. The most important people in any organisation are the main grade staff working at the floor-level. In managing staff do not exclude other extraneous grades such as the cleaners, boilerman, and etc - they are all the company's staff and are entitled to be heard and to share in facilities.

You might attempt to suggest that this is exactly what occurs but if you do then why are the staff so apparently unhappy? When an ethos is create where staff can look forward to going to work then the organisational climate will favour and be conducive to success. People today are not peasants nor do they wish to be servile; they want to be regarded as professionals who are offering a service; even the office cleaner is a professional so never treat her (or him) otherwise.

Now that you know the possible answer to the company's problem but, have you got the temerity to tell the boss that he's got it wrong, and there lies the problem!

Happy New Year to you too!

[Wolfjk]

Hi Jennings,
Yours is a brilliant exposition of modern management Methods. However I think Cristina is talking about herself and not "her" employees. In her other post she states that she arrives at the office bow -legged from doing to many squats.
I think she needs a good rest from the Gym!
Happy New Year, Cheers Wolfjk

[stem_09]

In today’s workplace it is an issue being dealt by HR managers. Some of them are adopting policies to support work-life balance, including increased managerial workloads. It is important for employers to offer practices that appeal to all employees. The biggest obstacle to implementing good practice is in many cases the difficulty of persuading individual line managers to accept more flexible working arrangements. I came across a good site called EAP Tools which is having good resources and information on work-life balance and employees stress management issues. They distribute free workplace, health and wellness fact sheets. They have a lot of mental health topics. If you sign up on their list, you'll get them. I think every other month. They go out automatically in MS Publish, Word, and a PDF. You get rights to copy and distribute them internally.

[idgy]

I just wanted to post a message on this thread. Unfortunately, you may not like it as it does not offer you any good advice. I think this is not uncommon. Speak to anyone who has to slog nine to five to pay all their bills and rising taxes. Trying to fit in their families and responsibilities at home as well. People are rushed off their feet and have no time to themselves.

I think there is a general feeling of unrest these days. People have had enough, and rightly so. We’re slaves to the mortgages and before you know it the best years of your life have been spent sitting at a desk. You then reach the age where you are no longer any use to the system, and are treated with contempt.

As far as work is concerned, I don’t think you can make any difference. They are only working for the money. If they had more money, they wouldn’t be working for your company. The only thing you can do is try to understand their daily struggle.

[Jennings]

Idgy, being from the UK you will probably have heard of the tv programme on fashion by Trinny and Sussanah. You may recently have seen the one where the two go to work in commercial kitchens doing the same jobs as the 'dinner ladies'. One of them deplored what she found was a menial task while the other upbraided her for adopting this attitude pointing out that it is possible to enjoy any menial or manual task no matter what it was. What was seen here is the display of an attitide and attitudes can be changed.

In my close circle I rub shoulders with an associate whose attitude is such that they bring misery into their own life and into the lives of others connected to them. It is often blamed on a change of bodily chemistry which I believe is 'bull'! If one allows oneself to be miserable sure the body chemistry will change but by adopting the right attitude one can become an optimist and it can become habit forming in the same way that pessimism can become a habit.

Managing one's life may be difficult but most difficulties arise from others who are frequently incompetent at what they are doing. Irrespective of the outside stressors to one's life it still is possible to adopt a positive approach to it and make the attempt to enjoy one's lot; it is not difficult. The only person who ever told me they had a life without problems was in denial. Even the most successful of people are wrecked with insecurities. In the late 1940s the average working week was 48 hours and there was no birth control available, today it is less than 38 and women can plan their families (not to mention the domestic machinery to assist in making life easier) so what do we have to complain about?

It is all relative so forget about what is likely to happen next week or what occurred last week and seek to enjoy the moment otherwise the 'parade will pass you by' and you will be old before you know it and you will wonder what happened in your life and why you seemed to miss the enjoyment of your children growing up!

Recall the words of the poem by William Henry Davies who was a tramp? Allow me to remind you of them:

"What is this life if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare.
No time to stand beneath the boughs
And stare as long as sheep or cows.
No time to see when woods we pass,
Where squirrels hide their nuts in grass.
No time to see in broad daylight
Streams full of stars. like skies at night.
No time to turn at Beauty's glance
and whatch her feet, how they can dance.
No time to wait till her mouth can
Enrich that smile her eyes began.
A poor life this if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare".

Do you recall the lyrics of the song that goes like this:

"When I hold back a tear
to let a smile appear,
I am only painting the
clouds with sunshine".

Surely there is something to learn from those sentiments from those who went before us?

[idgy]

Yes, you are right, we should always approach everything with a good attitude and enjoy each moment. But that doesn’t mean that we have to like the system that keeps us all enslaved. All the people I work with have a good attitude and frame of mind, however they are only here for the cash. If I asked everyone what they would be doing if they had no mortgage to pay, not one of them would say sitting at a desk. You may think we are free in the West, but we are not, and this I think is the reason for people’s dissatisfaction.

People are beginning to question what life is all about and why, even with material wealth, they are still not happy. I know happiness is a state of mind, and you to go inside to find it. However, we are bombarded externally and gradually people have forgotten how to find peace inside themselves.

I should imagine in the 1940’s, most women were able to stay at home and look after their children properly. People could live on one salary. Average working week of 48 hours. Is that just with the man of the house working or both parents working? House prices were in relation to salary or else people rented. I should imagine that you are lucky enough to have paid off your mortgage or else bought a house when the prices were low. Most young couple these days have to work full time and have to put their kids into childcare. I’ve heard some first time buyers having to borrow 10 times their salary! And that is just for a first time buyers flat. You say we should have no reason to complain, so why are there so many people in their 20’s and 30’s emigrating out of the UK? Also, if we have all this machinery in our kitchens to make life easier, why do people still have less time?

I am married to a Sherpa so I spend quite a bit of time in Nepal. Life can be hard and they have less materially, but they have time. I go to a remote Sherpa village where there is no electricity and running water is collected from a tap outside. There are no toilets or bathroom, and it’s a 12 hour walk to the nearest road. They have no machinery to make life ‘easier’, but time seems to stand still. Life is simple and peaceful. Children are respectful and the elders are respected. People own their own land, grow their own food and are self sufficient. Life is simple but hard, however, they are more free than anyone here in the UK. It is such a beautiful, peaceful place and whilst there, I never want to leave and return to the UK. One day soon, I will emigrate there. We have lost so much in the West.

Here we are owned by the banks. They keep us at our desk for the best parts of our lives. Maybe we are beginning to wake up and question what really matters in life and whether we really want to spend our lives working 9 to 5 to pay the system.


‘Give me control of a nation’s money and I care not who makes it’s laws.’
Mayer Amschel Bauer Rothschild.


“Bankers own the earth; take it away from them but leave them with the power to create credit; and, with a flick of a pen, they will create enough money to buy it back again... If you want to be slaves of bankers and pay the cost of your own slavery, then let the bankers control money and control credit.”
- Sir Josiah Stamp, Director, Bank of England, 1940.

[Jennings]

Idgy, you are so right but, dare it be said, I have heard it all before and many, many, times; it is almost like a mantra to life. Shakespeare recognised that there were seven phases to life and when you have passed through most and look back (in anger if you care) you can recognise those phases and, you are currently passing through on at this moment; one that I too have been through and all my contemporaries. In the 1940s wages were considerably lower than they are today and there was no NHS nor social security only institutional clothing for the poorest and few could afford to purchase their own houses which required a 10% down payment to obtain a mortgage. The maximum mortgage then was 2.5 times one's salary and very few indeed could afford this so one was penalised by paying rent that one could hardly afford. The crime rate then was considerably lower and annual muders for the UK never exceeded 5! The UK figures today exceed 5 hundred annually and those statitistics are fiddled to appease the public. Try reading John Pilger's views, the Australian investigative journalist and especially his book 'The New World Leaders'. See also: ITV - John Pilger - Home. Whether we like the thought or otherwise we all need to be occupied and if one can enjoy what they do and earn money at the same time then happiness will prevail. My childhood was in the 1930s when gas lighting was mod cons and when some still used parifin lamps, and where there were more horses and carts (and steam traction engines) on the roads than there were automobiles and even those had parifin lamps! I still recall going to the silent movies! To get pocket money I had to forage through dustbins full of coal ash for empty jam jars, and beer bottles which, when returned one got a small rebate of cash. Another option was to collect horse's dung that lay thick in the streets to sell to gardeners. A rosey picture possibly but a damned hard life but amazingly, a happy one!

I do not know what it is like to be wealthy. Today, I cannot afford a car, nor the cost of Sky tv, nor holidays. Neither do I smoke nor drink and cannot afford to socialise and I am penalised by taxes but, I will not allow myself to be unhappy. I am in excellent health and still believe that I have a future. Enjoy what you have have; it's all relative!

Incidentally, neighbours of mine purchased a large old house which in the mid 80s no one wanted to buy. It cost £85,000 which they could barely afford. Recently, they retired and sold this old house for £1m! Are you certain that you have a genuine complaint?