Balance

What is balance?

Balance means recognizing the need for harmony between work, family, and personal life. We all play many roles—worker, parent, partner, and more. These roles can be rewarding and help us use our strengths, but they can also compete with each other. When that happens, it can create stress, conflict, or a sense of being overloaded.

An organization with good balance can state:

  • Workers are strongly encouraged to take their entitled breaks (lunchtime, sick time, vacation time, earned days off, parental leave, etc.).
  • Workers can reasonably meet the demands of personal life and work.
  • It promotes work-life balance.
  • Workers can talk to their supervisors when they are having trouble keeping balance between their personal life and work.
  • Workers have energy left at the end of most workdays for their personal life.

Why is balance important?

When the need for work-life balance is recognized, workers feel valued and happier, both at work and at home.

Understanding the importance of work-life balance requires greater workplace flexibility. This flexibility helps minimize conflict by allowing workers to carry out necessary daily tasks. Balance enhances well-being, reduces stress and the possibility that home issues will spill over into work, or vice-versa. This protects physical and psychological health by allowing staff to maintain their concentration, confidence and accountability at work. This translates into enhanced worker commitment, job satisfaction and work performance.

Job stress is on the rise, and workers with higher levels of job stress are more likely to be dissatisfied with work and be absent – either physically or mentally. A primary source of stress is conflict between work and family roles. Health and well-being are undermined when work-family conflict occurs. This imbalance can lead to constant fatigue, bad temper and inability to progress. In turn, this can lead to more stress-related illnesses, such as higher cholesterol, depressive symptoms and overall decreased health. For organizations, the impact includes increased costs due to benefit payouts, absenteeism, disability and turnover.

Frequently Asked Questions

  • Have management support and model positive work-life balance.
  • Provide opportunities that promote health and balance (on-site gym/fitness facilities, personal time off, options for unpaid leaves, flexible work schedules, etc.).
  • Offer supports (appropriate technology and resources) for staff who work from home/off-site.
  • Provide information on creating and sustaining a balanced approach to work and personal life demands (enhanced resiliency, coping and problem-solving skills, etc.).
  • Train leaders to support both themselves and their team in managing work-life demands.
  • Provide educational opportunities (internal and external) on non-job-related topics (such as attending “lunch-and-learn” sessions on childcare or eldercare issues).
  • Ensure staff is aware of the importance of balance to overall health and productivity.
  • Provide staff with easy access to organizational and community resources (programs and tools) that support work-life balance.
  • Support staff who wish to share non-work-related accomplishments (birth of children, milestone birthdays and anniversaries, achieving lifelong goals).
  • Provide flexible work arrangements, where possible (compressed work schedules, work from home, virtual conferencing, part-time work, contract opportunities, job sharing, etc.).
  • Provide appropriate support for shift workers (limit split shifts, provide advance notice of shift changes, allow shift trading. etc.).
  • Offer personal and family support for both child and elder care (comprehensive benefits, daycare, fitness facility access, health education, family responsibility leave, etc.).
  • Assess staff feelings on the value of benefits when making decisions on these programs (offer flexible/opt-out options).
  • Offer opportunities to earn time off during peak work periods (for use during low workload demand periods).
  • Encourage use of allocated time off.
  • Develop and share guidelines around communication, and availability (email, phone, etc.) during off-work periods and have leaders model this approach.

Action

Next steps: Helping employees achieve an adequate balance

▸ Objective

A work environment that recognizes the need for balance between the demands of work, family and personal life.

▸ Benefits
  • Greater staff satisfaction and morale
  • Reduced staff stress and burnout
  • Enhanced performance and productivity
  • Reduced absenteeism and disability
▸ Reflection Questions
  • Do issues related to workers’ work-life balance pose a greater risk to specific groups of workers (new workers, certain jobs, shift workers, young workers, etc.)?
  • What are your workplace’s strengths in terms of work-life balance (what do you do well and what should you continue doing)?
  • What could your workplace do to improve in this area (what could you do more of and what could you do less of)?