BALANCING LIFE AND WORK: A WORLD VIEW
A series of articles, offering Human Resources Professionals a look at work/life balance issues worldwide. This month''s column was written by Ann Searles, President of IBT Canada/Caribbean.
A Canadian Perspective on Achieving Work/Life Balance: Where to find 8 hours a week to think
You may recently have read the article in a prominent American newspaper postulating that since Canada is not a warring nation, Canada has no history.
So maybe you think Canadians don''t have stress either, eh?
Here in the Great White North, Human Resources managers invite us to work with hundreds of clients in Canadian corporations. Our clients are people of good heart who deliver a quality product or service regardless of the hours it costs them personally.
I believe that''s because people get excited about what they do. One of my clients, an engineer, said, "if you can convince engineers that something is fun, you can get them to do anything." As a result, they are tired and wired. They have had about all the fun they can take!
Canadian Human Resources teams try non-stop to help employees find a balance between life and work. During the recession, there were not enough people to do the work because we laid off so many. During this economic recovery, there are not enough people to do the work because we laid off so many. Think about the H.R. workload for both those scenarios!
And what about employees? Boom or bust, they do the same thing: work harder, work longer and knock their lives out of balance to satisfy the demands of work.
Even when we spend more time at home, home may not be a haven of balance. If we''re not running for soccer practice, parent care or lawn maintenance, we''re running to make it home from work before the dog lets go.
When Human Resources introduces programs to foster work / life balance, they can boomerang. One company introduced a "concierge" service to do employees'' personal errands and got lambasted. Employees saw this as a way to keep them chained to their desks! Ouch.
Work-related stress affects almost 60% of Canadian workers and costs us some $20 billion per year in Canada. We have a population of 27 million people. Extrapolate that cost to the U.S. , at 270 million people, and you''d get $200 billion. You do the math on a per-person basis. It''s too scary for me.
What does stress cost our families?
One group of researchers asked children: "If you were granted one wish to change the way that your parents'' work affects your life, what would that wish be?"
When parents were asked to predict how their children would respond, 56% of them figured their children would want more time with them. Not so.
To their surprise, only about 12% of kids said they''d like to have more time with their parents. What they did want - 34% of them - was for their parents to be less tired and stressed from work. Our children have better things to do than waste their time with us on our bad hair days.
Now What?
More and more employees are asking H.R. for help to find balance. How can you provide that help? Even more critical, how are you supposed to catch and hold the best talent if word gets around (and it does) that your people are stressed to the max?
The people we coach want one thing: Productivity. Hard work means nothing to them if at the end of the day they feel they have accomplished nothing.
We see people wasting nearly 40% of their time at work simply because they have not been trained how to work. We know how to be engineers, CFO''s, lead hands and training managers, but we still have no training in the hard skills of "how to work."
Our clients tell us that their productivity would increase and their stress would abate if they had two things: power to negotiate their priorities and time to think. All the technical training in the world does not give them that.
When the day is full of crises and "A" priorities, where do you find time to think?
It''s hiding in your work processes.
At least 8 hours of thinking time a week is hiding under the clutter on your desk and computer, hiding under poor planning and negotiating skills, hiding behind an inability to say "no". Companies spend huge sums on projects - say, to install new computer systems - but don''t spend on coaching to help individuals manage workload to make the new system fit.
Perceptions are important. The more employees perceived that their employers were making efforts to alleviate stress at work, the less stressed they felt.
To raise awareness around this issue, Canada has designated October 2 to 6 as "National PEP Your Workplace Week". Our objective is to raise both employee and employer awareness of the importance of personal efficiency and productivity in the workplace (hence "PEP"). Log onto our website to download some practical tips on managing clutter, time and e-mail for greater productivity.
So do something radical tonight. Stop working. Take the time to think about how you work. Maybe, for a change, your car won''t be the last one in the parking lot.
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If you are looking for practical tips on on managing clutter, time and e-mail for greater productivity go to our web site www.ibt-pep.com