Family support for Career Sustainability during Global Uncertainty

“Don’t make love to a body, make love to a person. Don’t talk at your children. Take their faces in your hands and talk to them” --Leo Buscaglia.

We are God’s creation on this earth and He likes us to flourish. Therefore, we need to have a family and raise children. The society also expects us to be a good and faithful husband and wife and also be good parents to support and guide our children towards right path of respecting human values. Holy Scriptures of all religions show that getting married and having children is natural phenomena for survival of human race on this earth. Today you are a brother or a sister and later as you grow, you look for a suitable match to get married and have children. However, due to various personal considerations, some young people prefer to stay single and shirk the responsibility of raising children.

It is our responsibility to care for our family as they will standby us during any crisis. When you fall sick and get admitted in a hospital , your seniors and employer may send you “Get Well” card with bouquet of flowers but if your stay in hospital is longer, they will look for your substitute , as company wants healthy and productive employees. It is your family, relatives and nears and dears who will come to your rescue, arrange best affordable treatment and share your pains.. Likewise, if you had been caring and sharing your rise and fall with family members, they will standby you during job crisis . Hence it is essential to live as a happy family life for growth in your career.

We all know that working in old style of organizations, one could have lifetime career facilitating caring and sharing among families. It is not the case today and you may have to change your job say 5 to 7 times in your active life span. Job insecurity does lead to family disruption, and job stability lends stability to the home. Families can experience longer and happier relationships when you are not busy figuring out new ways to make a livelihood.

Impact of job loss. According to one study, divorce rates in developed countries are on the increase, where 20 % of marriages end within five years. Such trends are also coming up in developing counters in Asia as well. When there is sudden loss of job, family relationships get strained, if it is not a well knit family.

Family Management. In your exuberance for the job, you should not ignore family – parents, spouse and children as they need you and miss you when you are away. You may be required to stay late for meeting/discussions while there could be social or domestic function at home. Both organization and family are important and have their own time and space. To be successful at workplace you need peace at home else your office productivity will drop. Hence do have fun and lighter moments with your family.  To keep judicious balance between home and workplace , some important aspects are given in succeeding sections.

Keep family members informed. Do not mix family life with what happens in your workplace. You are required to maintain judicious balance between job and family. You should keep your family members informed about your job, achievements and future plan. They will appreciate how important/difficult situation you are handling and they will support you when things do not go as planned. They will feel excited about your progress and wish you lot more success. In case of any job disruption or displacement, they will be concerned and support you to sail through during stormy weather.

Family influence on your career selection .A number of factors can influence you selection and growth of your career . It depends how your family members shape your perceptions of different career options. You either get inspired by them to follow their footsteps or you do not appreciate their profession and have divergent view. These are briefly discussed below:

·   Parental Influence

Your parents have significant influence on your choice of career. It could be positive, where you feel inspired with their good career and follow them in similar or near similar career. Additionally, your parents can encourage you to study particular subjects and develop suitable skill set for picking up high –profile career.   On the other hand,  some parents could be uneducated /less educated (as in case of some Asian or African countries) where they had a low paid job or small business and were struggling to earn enough to educate their children.. Such parents will work hard and motivate you to pursue a totally different career path, which is stable and high-earning However, if your parents were workaholic, doing multiple jobs to earn more or over committed to their job/boss and could hardly spend time with you , you will look for a job where you have flexibility like telecommuting , working from home  and less travelling .

·     Spouse’s carrier.

In present days, 20% to 30% people, particularly in countries like USA, UK, France, Italy, Japan stay single at-least up to 30 years of age and some may stay single for longer period. It is true that risk profile of a single man/woman is high and he/she has freedom to move to any location within or outside the country. Here we are taking a case of married couple having young school/college going children. In this case , a working spouse will impact your career choice and performance.. One spouse may encourage the other partner to pursue a career that allows for travel, so they can both see many places in and around their country. However, another spouse may want to stay home with young children, encouraging the working spouse to aim for higher roles in a particular profession and ensure good pay package.

·   Children’s education and growth

Children also play a significant role in your selecting your career. The professional path which you took as a childless parent may change once you have children. You may opt for employment with flexible or telecommuting options, or a position that allows you part-time working.. If you are a single parent or the sole supporter of your children, you may select a job with higher insurance coverage and children education allowance or a high-earning position with limited travel requirements.

·  Care and support of elders

If you are living as joint family ( More common in Asian families) and your parents or parent-in-laws are living with you, you need to provide medical care and meet other needs of elderly or ailing relative. Therefore, you may chose job that offers elder-care reimbursement, allow work-from-home or that have dependent adult daycare as a benefit of employment.

Caring and building Trust. Caring for someone you like is easy but to make or expect someone to care for you is difficult. Therefore do not lose the one who cares for you. You are responsible to take care of your family members :

·        Caring dependent Parents. All parents feel very happy when their children are having good job and leading a quality life. They just need your happiness and love. They will be concerned if things are not going in your favour. Therefore keep parents in picture as what is happening around. Take good care of them and when needed they will always support you.

·    Caring and sharing with Spouse. He/she is very important part of your life, job and future. In India, man fondly calls his wife “Better Half”. If you are living as joint family, do maintain a fine line on what you tell your parents and what you tell to your spouse. At times, being too open and blunt can lead to rift or misunderstanding , and that can create tension in the family. Do not question each other’s earning and bank balance, instead, trust each other and support each other.

·   Love your Children. Your children are your prize –possession and their well being , proper grooming and providing quality education and support their future career is prime responsibility of every parent. They need your time to play and chat with you more than your money, toys or clothes. You must spare sometime to cheer them up, appreciate their small achievements and give them rewards as gifts. You should support their passion about choosing and leading their career. All children want love and outings with parents.

·   Close Relatives. Every one praises success story and gets closer to the winner but only few relatives may stand by when your chips are down.  Therefore maintain good relations with close relatives.

·   Holiday with family. Periodically take your time off and go out with family and enjoy your holiday. You should have a clean break away from your local surroundings and be relaxed to give maximum joy to your loved ones. While on holiday with family, do not carry your laptop and office files. This is the time to be away from daily routine, enjoy and give pleasure to the family members. You may plan to go to some beach, hill station or any resort /retreat. You may plan hiking, trekking, skiing , boating or sailing. Go to national parks to be amidst beauty of nature and enjoy water sports, waterfalls and snow clad mountains, sunrise and sunset on a beach or in a desert. While on a holiday, accommodate likes and wishes of family members, who too need a break and charge up their batteries.

Dealing with personal crisis. If you make career as you top priority, you would be honouring your professional commitments and searching for excellence. You will often make sacrifices to succeed in the workplace and put your social / family life in jeopardy. There can be other serious crisis like death, diagnose of terminal disease like cancer of a loved one, serious accident of family member  , serious financial loss, or your spouse wants separation. Such crises can happen at any time to anyone of us. Professional responsibilities like –delivering projects on time, researching and innovation for new products, or making clients delighted are very challenging tasks when a personal crisis are causing you extreme stress. You need  counselling and meditation to stay composed and focused at workplace while going through crisis in your personal life. Some of the points given below can mitigate crisis and enable early bounce back:

·   Sharing your crisis with others. By keeping tight lipped and suffer quietly, you can cause more harm to your health and capacity to work efficiently. Sharing your crisis with trustworthy person will lessen the burden from your mind. However, before divulging the details of your ongoing crises to company  HR manager,  boss, teammate, friend or family member, think about the benefits and risk of sharing your problems. Keep in mind that if you opt to share details about your personal challenges to someone, . If you opt to discuss with some reliable person ,he/she may ask you some questions before giving you advice. Be mentally ready with answers to the likely questions.

·   What and how much to share?. For successful management of crisis, you need to decide how much you should let others know. Too much discloser may cause some embarrassment to you at some stage. You should carefully decide suitable and convenient place, date , time and mode for contacting and discussing your crises.

·   Have a break. Some crisis cause grief, and sorrow and how quickly you overcome these will determine how quickly you bounce back. If you suffer a serious setback, such as death of a family member, sudden detection of serious disease like cancer to some family member or sudden loss of job , take time away from workplace to cope with such shock.

·  Don’t worry too much. They say –“Worry does not mend matters”  and too much worrying may affect your health.. Instead, plan an occasional 10-15 minutes break from you work to clear your mind and do something else. It could be just a stroll in the corridor, just whistle around and go to park to get fragrance of beautiful flowers,  see multi-coloured and spotted butterflies flying about and chirping birds.

·  Medication or yoga. You may  do short session of  meditation since this will calm you down when you are going through crisis in your family or workplace. This will help in the long run and you’ll return to workplace, fully relaxed , emotionally composed to put in your best again.

·   Self-Compassion. Remember personal crisis can throw you of balance and you may lose your focus at workplace. Take it as a temporary phase and just move on. You may reduce your pace and share with your family what is going on. Review your goal to make them more realistic and soon you will bounce back with full energy level.

·   Claim Your job Benefits. Many of us do not bother to read our appointment letter fully to understand our responsibilities ,restrictions, benefits/entitlements like - health insurance for self and dependent family members, loan/financial assistance , children education fee concessions, terms of  engagement , leave rules , study leave / sabbatical leave, counselings, or legal services. By claiming such benefits you could mitigate your  financial  crisis.

·   Counselings. Seek  expert advice and be proactive as how the company can support during  your adverse situation. You may request your boss to allow you work from home say for a short period to tide over family crisis. This way returning back to work fully re-energised will help you perform and conduct better, both at workplace and at home.

Keep in mind your family or extended family is your best bet during any type of uncertainty or crisis. Do not be alone. Care for them and they will love and care for you. Caring and sharing is the basic principle for leading a happy and supportive family life. Rest assured there will be sun shine soon and if look up there will be Rainbow.

                                                                                                Dr Sarbjit Singh