Is work-life balance still relevant?

The concept of work-life balance has its detractors, who usually prefer work-life blend, fit or integration instead. It may sound like semantics, but there is an important distinction.

The objection to the concept of work-life balance is generally that work is a part of life, and that therefore the goal should be to make work more enjoyable rather than just limiting how much of it people do.

There’s something to that. Leaders should absolutely aim to make work as pleasant as possible for employees, or at least to make sure it isn’t unnecessarily unpleasant. However, we cannot use our efforts to improve the experience of work to justify pressuring people to work longer and longer hours.

Most people need other things in their lives - relaxation, leisure, hobbies, family time, alone time. This can be difficult for leaders to understand. If your work is your passion, which it often is at this level, it may seem natural that it also ought to be the passion of the people you work with, yet this is wholly unrealistic.

For the vast majority of people, work will never be a passion like golf or restoring classic cars, no matter how enjoyable you try to make it, for the simple reason that work, unlike other forms of exertion, is involuntary.

We may enjoy attending meetings or poring over marketing data, just as we may enjoy cooking dinner, doing the school run, or even washing the dishes, but no one enjoys having to do them, or even worse being told to do them, in the knowledge that they can’t refuse without facing some form of dire consequence.

For the CEO mindful of the work-life question, this means that alongside making work satisfying, it is still important to make sure it doesn’t unduly interfere with a person’s capacity to live a full life outside of their job.

Achieving that balance - and it is a balance - isn’t easy, in the heat of collective struggle that characterises dynamic businesses. That’s because leaders in such businesses tend to have a single-minded focus on a vision, and that means we often get carried away.

Yet if we take a moment to recognise that outside time is important, then we’ve already taken the most important step towards making sure that our work culture works for our employees, which ultimately benefits everyone.

5 steps for leaders to improve work-life balance

– Send clear and repeated signals that you understand that people have a life outside of work, and that you are committed to giving people good work, where they feel valued and supported.

– Role model it. Talk about the shed you’re building in the garden or the novel you’ve started reading, anything that demonstrates you have a life outside of work too.

– Stop half-jokingly asking if people are taking half days when they leave the office or log off early to pick up the kids. In the flexible working era it sends a terrible signal of mistrust.

– Think twice before pressing send. If you’re emailing on a weekend or out of hours, consider carefully if it needs an urgent response. If not, consider scheduling for the next work day.

– Ask people about their work-life balance. Either directly or - better - anonymously, so you can get some sense of how people see it on the ground. If they all think they’re overworked or struggle to shut off, then it shows you have more progress to make in improving your organisational culture, line management or job design.