Work-Family Balance: What Does That Mean to You?
January 14, 2010 by Anthony Fasano
Filed under Work Family Balance
I have spoken in front of many different engineering societies on the topic of career development and before I speak I always try to find out from the attendees what some of their main concerns are around the topic. With regards to career development, many of the comments I received back were related to work-family balance. Most people said something to the effect of, “I would like to have more work-family balance.”
I find this to be very interesting because work-family balance may very well have a different meaning to everyone; however it seems that everyone wants it. What does work-family balance mean? Does it mean you want to be a successful professional but only work 35 to 40 hours per week? Does is mean you want to be a successful professional but only work 50 hours a week? Does it have anything to do with success? Does it have anything to do with your work hours? Maybe you want a job that you can drive to within a half an hour rather than a 75 minute commute each day. Maybe you would prefer to start work at 7 am so you can get home by 5 pm.
Taking it one step further, what can companies do to promote work-family balance or is it not their responsibility to do so?
The bottom line is this, in my opinion work family balance means that you are comfortable with the amount of time you are able to spend with your family during the work week. I ask you the following question; in order for you to no longer say “I would like to have more work-family balance” what would your career look like?
Anthony Fasano, P.E., LEED AP, CPESC, CPSWQ, CPC
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Two words: Guilt-free and Flexible.
Guilt-free: As a salaried professional, I have responsibility to my clients and company to comply with deadlines, communication with clients and co-workers, and accurate production of my product. Assuming any established minimum hours of work are met, the atmosphere at the office should allow for an employee to leave for that ball-game, sick child, ‘head clearing’ walk around the block, or whatever without guilt.
Flexible: Being able to log-in early morning or late at night to catch up on the mundane emails or schedule; being able to work from home at odd hours or weekends without needing to go into the office to get work done to account for those hours; staying home so you can take your child to the dentist without driving to the office, home, to the dentist, home, and back to the office. Actually allows for more productive time. Flexible start-times for the day.
Wow Wayne that’s a really clear definition, thanks! I agree 100% with flexibility. We need to use all of this technology to our advantage and allow for flexibility with work from home or even at other branch locations when feasible.
And as for guilt free, I know that if I work hard and meet my deadlines, I do feel guilt free on those days when I attend my daughters dance recital or just leave on time!
While I don’t have a family of my own right now, I can relate with this topic in regards to work-personal life relationship. For me the biggest thing affecting my work-personal life balance is the mental stresses of the working office.
I have worked for a company where nothing seems to be is constant and their is consistent changing or personnel and procedures. While this is expected in any company, it gets frustrating when the owners say things are getting better and we are a much better team now that we weeded out the weaklings, and then a few days later there are more personnel changes.
Along with the personnel changes, the work load is usually transferred to those that are still at the company and are expected to accomplish current tasks and new tasks with the same quality work for the same pay and within the same daily time frame.
For me, this is something that I have been struggling to overcome, as the extra stress seems to affect my mood outside of the office.
Once I start my own family, this is something I don’t want to have to deal with. Unless there are times when I work from home, I would love to be able to leave work issues at work and not worry about them when I am at home raising my kids, or trying to enjoy quality time with my family.
Thanks for your perspective William. Leaving everything at work is definitely not an easy thing to do, especially with the technology today. In my opinion it is up to the individual to decide how much “work” they want to do at home. Some feel that it is there responsibility to be available 24 hours by blackberry, some are able to come home and totally leave work behind. Personally I prefer the latter, however it is a big challenge!