Staying Sane While Balancing Family and Work

From my own experience, and through my regular whinges and ‘get it off my shoulder’ talks with friends, many parents find the delicate balancing act of meeting the demands of family and work creates a lot of stress and pain for most of us. Your work environment if your lucky can be flexible and understanding, however, in many cases is rigid and inflexible. This is not so much to do with the policies of the organization, but the discretion of your direct supervisor.

 If your manager is understanding and sympathetic to providing a flexible work environment your life becomes a lot easier. However, if they are not tolerant or unwilling to provide any flexibility then life can be very difficult and feels like you are forever treading over eggshells.  One can only hope that if anything good can come out of the recent pandemic situation and the forced working from home situation is that it will demonstrate that not only can people work from home, but can be more productive when they don’t have the stresses of travel. With the use of technology such as Skype or Teams, there is very little that cannot be achieved remotely. The biggest limitation impacting work from home is not the technology, but the outdated thinking of business leaders who feel that it is necessary to have people physically present for them to perform their work. A rather unfortunate situation, since when people are not motivated a physical presence is very unlikely to make them work any harder or feel any more motivated. I would also suggest that this has more to do with trust and the belief that unless you can see the employee you have no idea that they are working. Clearly, a ridiculous view, because in many cases as many people know physical presence in no way translates to increased productivity.

This ongoing balancing act between work and family is made all the more difficult by some, if not more inflexible employers who show little to no understanding for people with family commitments. This is comparable to treating people like robots with no biological needs who should work without breaks for long hours. The counterargument from employers is that they are not there to provide community service but to get work done. Thus, their role is to provide the bare minimum in flexibility. But such thinking is usually a one-way street,  although they are not prepared to offer flexibility to their workers in many cases they like to have flexibility. Increased flexibility across the board creates trust and loyalty in businesses. It is only through the development of that trust that you can fully maximize the full potential that people have to offer. Another benefit, though it appears rarely considered is the clear benefits of reduced costs for employers – lower electricity bills, reduced office space rental costs. Over the longer term the reduced use of office space through offering staff the opportunity to work, for example, 50% of working from home at any one time can result in huge savings costs. Not to mention the cost to employees in terms of time savings, and actual dollars by saving money on things like transport.

Some of the discussion against working from home relates to the potential for less collaboration. However, from my and many of my friend’s experiences, there is a big difference between collaboration which is working together to achieve an outcome, versus pure and simple disruption by idle small talk. In most cases what is referred to as collaboration is nothing more than distracting small talk that adds zero value, and in fact, hinders productivity. However, for many people, it is difficult to work from home regularly, for example, if you work in the hospitality industry, or need to be face to face with customers. In such cases, employers should offer flexibility to start or finish later on some days to do those special errands or activities that we all need to do.

Not surprisingly, many businesses are now embracing flexible working arrangements, having realized the significant benefits to both the business and their employees. There are a plethora of survey results that show time and time again that the overwhelming majority of people prefer to work from home. Of those that do wish to work in the office, they only want to attend the office around two to three times per week. With companies like Fujitsu reducing their office space by around fifty percent and giving their employees excellent work from home flexibility. Other industries such as Google, and PayPal are also providing great work-life balance flexibility.

Lack of flexibility in the workplace can be a costly exercise for organizations and is associated with high staff turnover. These costs start to add up from the moment the company commences the recruitment process. Once someone is hired there is a cost in terms of reduced productivity plus additional costs to train someone, which can take up to six months and in many cases long before they are fully productive. High staff turnover can also lead to a decay of the culture of the organization, in which existing staff begin to experience feelings of disillusionment, some of which feel this way as they are tired of regularly training people, just to see them leave within a short time. In addition, the overpowering negativity in the existing culture does not take long to take its toll on the existing employees and before long the organization’s churn rate starts to increase. A cohesive and supportive culture that respects the individual and offers flexibility will in turn instill loyalty and improve productivity. Whilst, an inflexible work environment will result in higher sick leave, lack of loyalty, and increased turnover. This inflexibility will also impact the organization’s customer relationships. As many organizations have discovered, to have happy customers you need to first have happy employees.

Despite many government initiatives to achieve flexibility, there is a real stigma attached to people trying to balance work and family commitments. In some quarters there is still a perception that unless you are staying back late most days you are not contributing enough. This is despite research that shows that people are the least productive when they are working excessive hours. Many organizations which deal with people in high-risk safety environments have introduced fatigue scores that measure the impact of how alert you are, which has wide-reaching implications if you are working in safety-critical environments. Research has also shown that our mental faculties, especially in the areas of logic and creativity rapidly decline as we get tired.

There are volumes of anecdotal evidence that confirms the bleedingly obvious for some, that the unfair treatment of people who are trying to balance family and career continues to occur unabated. The types of pressure people are put under range from unfavorable performance reviews to unfair treatment including being passed over for any promotions. This treatment of course can be cloaked in a range of ways to justify the actual reason the decision was made. A lot more training is necessary to highlight the benefits of flexibility to both the organization and its employees. Time and time again very capable people are not given the promotion simply because they require occasional flexibility at work. One would think the benefit of the organization would be considered over and above any other agenda, however, in some cases, this is not the case.

Of course, the employer can make your life easier, or make your life difficult. It is a rare employer that offers the flexibility to allow you to manage your family commitments instead of adding to your stress levels. The nights of sleep deprivation due to staying up all night looking after a sick family member or young kids also doesn’t help when you need to go to work the next morning to finish an important assignment. No wonder so many people struggle, and some give up altogether and either parent quits work as the stress and issues it causes are all too much. However, simply quitting work may not be an option for many people, with financial commitments and mortgages and rental payments, etc to consider.

If you are struggling with your work-life balance below are some suggestions which hopefully will make your life a bit easier.

• Speak to your employer and see if you can change your working hours, for instance, either start earlier or later to enable you to manage your life. For some couples the ability to start early for one; and for the other person to start late may be helpful if you need to pick up or drop off the kids at school.
• You could also look at your work ethic, do you need to work back late every single day? If this is your life then you may need to consider finding another job.
• Another option is to have some days in which you can work from home, which will save you on travel time, and give you some flexibility to look after the kids at home or juggle other commitments you have.
• Working fewer hours is another option, of course, this will impact your income, and in some cases, you just end up doing the same amount of work crammed into fewer days, and end up with a pay cut as well.
• Sometimes a helping hand from a close friend can also help in pickups or drop-offs at school etc. This is a great option, and with a bit of planning your efforts could be reduced and it can be a win-win for both parties.