The Work Balancing Act: How to get it right?

If you do a search on Google for work/life balance you will find over 180 000 results. It's the most talked about, written about, blogged about the topic -in fact- Hollywood has even made some movies about it. It's an undeniable fact that when it comes to the workplace many of us are struggling to juggle the demands of work, home, and family interests.

The recent announcement by Vodafone Group about their unusual new maternity policy made headlines around the world. To the surprise of many, they will institute a new maternity policy offering at least 16 weeks of paid maternity leave to its staff across the globe, regardless of the country they work in. After new mothers return to work, they only have to work 30 hours per week for the first 6 months to get their full-time salaries.

Companies are realizing more and more that employees are the lifeblood of the organization and their health should be a priority for any business. The health and wellbeing of employees are of the utmost importance for the performance and productivity of staff and companies are using this as a competitive edge in attracting and keeping the right talent. There, however, continues to be discussions about how companies can do more for their employees, especially with the Millennium generation slowly becoming the biggest percentage of employees in the workforce. 

The reality is that technology has blended everything together and where it used to be work and life it's now all mixed together. That balancing act becomes more difficult each day, trying to find just the right equilibrium in your life between work and personal, family and friends, diet and exercise, and even when job hunting. Where do you start?

Defining success
One of the biggest reasons why work-life balance is such a talked-about topic is that there is no magic process that solves the problem. The truth is that balance has a different definition for every individual depending on your reality, work responsibilities, and home life. In order to start understanding how to get that delicate balance back into our lives, it's important to define what success means to you.

Boundaries
The demands at work often push you to blur the boundaries of work and life. Before you know it you've stayed late at the office or taken work home because you just haven't managed to finish it all. If you really want to get back the balance in your life, you need to set strict boundaries. It's important to work smarter and set specific time-out in your schedule for priority tasks but also to spend with your family without any interruptions.

Being dedicated and ambitious is admirable, but allowing work to define your self-worth and identity is dangerous.

Avoid negative people
Negative people around you can just suck your energy and waste your time. They slow you down and prevent you from achieving your goals. It will serve you well to identify negative people early on in your work relationships and to avoid them whenever possible.

Meetings: The black hole of time
One of the biggest time-wasters at work is unnecessary or unproductive meetings. Before accepting an invite to a meeting, be sure to ask yourself if you really need to be there?

Meetings and collaboration are critical to most organizations, but the vast majority of meetings you attend on a regular basis are too long, unfocused, unnecessary, or otherwise wasting your time. It's important to evaluate how many of these meetings really help you to get the job done at the end of the day.

It's a juggling act, it will continue to be so, to find the right balance between work, and your personal life could mean that you need to make some changes. You might even consider a new job that will understand your family demands better. Avoid being stuck out of balance and in the same old routine, you need to decide what will work for you and then make it happen. 

Communicate Recruitment is a recruitment agency with specialist consultants that will assist you in finding the right new job to accommodate all your responsibilities. We can assist you to find new Finance jobs, IT jobs, Engineering jobs, Freight jobs, or Supply Chain jobs. Check out our vacancy page and apply now!

Image Credit: FreeDigitalPhotos.net by Stuart Miles