Do you dare to choose balance as a life priority?  According to Lisa King, OD Manager at the Common Services Agency, practical tools and more honesty can get people what they really want.

Are we fooling ourselves, do we really want worklife balance? Are we really prepared to give up the financial rewards of work for a healthier lifestyle? 

This is important question for organisations and staff. The costs of worklife imbalance are piling up. People who are exhausted can’t concentrate, don’t have creative ideas and communicate poorly. The problem is real. But even in organisations where there are flexible working solutions on offer people seem curiously reluctant to change. So how can employers help their staff to take personal health and wellbeing issues more seriously? 

The Common Services Agency (CSA) is an organisation that plays an active role in NHS Scotland by providing support and care for Scotland’s health and patient care and we have been delivering a course designed by Illumine Training called Fit for Life to help people address their worklife priorities. 

Of course the investment in such a programme as this is, itself, recognition that worklife balance is a key issue. However the focus of this programme is less on the organisation and more on helping people to see what they can do to self-manage their lives. 

The Illumine trainer who developed the programme and who then helped to train up CSA staff to deliver it was Helen Whitten. In outline she included the following themes on the programme: 

• Yourself first. The first message for anyone who wants to improve their balance is to check out what matters most to them. What and who do they really want to put first?
• Dreams. Step two is about getting out of programmed behaviour. What are the habits that drive you and how does your current life compare to the best life you could imagine?
• Simplicity. What pressures drive your time? Are they essential? What are you saying ‘yes’ and ‘no’ to?
• Stepping stones. Essentially this is about setting priorities, ensuring that the change you want is compelling and determining when to take the first step?
• Organisation. This is vital if you want control of your life. It’s not difficult but organisation requires you to be disciplined, practical and decisive.
• Team. Other people are essential for worklife balance. We can help ourselves tremendously by knowing how and when to delegate and by building up our network
• In the moment. Finally, we always have choice. We can choose our attitudes, we can choose our state, we can learn to enjoy ourselves in the ‘now’.

Now around such themes we include a variety of questionnaires, exercises and techniques and one which participants have found extremely useful is a problem solving technique that is drawn from Rational Emotive Behavioural Therapy. In brief participants are helped to:

• Identify an activating event e.g. an impossible deadline
• Identify the beliefs they hold that underlie the problem e.g. “I have to meet this deadline or I’ll be a failure”
• Look at the consequences of this belief e.g. fear
• Dispute this emotion by looking at how helpful it is to have such a belief and by constructing a more empowering alternative.  

In essence this technique encourages people to pursue excellence rather than perfection. It also helps them to see that they have more choice than they previously acknowledged and this recognition then frees them to make the changes that they want. 

However, this course is as much about generating new perspectives as new skills. A key insight is helping people to see that their personal imbalance is generated when they don’t stand up for what is important to them. We don’t pretend it is easy to challenge existing habits or working cultures but we do highlight the consequences for people when they compromise their personal values or dreams. 

In practice this means that people need to dare to tell their colleagues what they care about and in so doing challenge the view that career success is only possible by adhering to the old style corporate norms. It is only when people dare to tell the truth that they will bring their full vitality to home and work. 

Seen in this context, worklife balance is of course a message that we should all be willing to take on board. The performance issues if we don’t are compelling. Poor thinking, poor decision making, low initiative, stress. These are inevitable outcomes for managers and teams who decide to ignore worklife balance. 

But if this doesn’t motivate you enough then think about the personal costs that inevitably accompany imbalance. Employees who leave home early, arrive back late and who always have work on their mind will frequently have difficulty in their home lives. Divorce and ill health are far too common outcomes for those who prioritise work above all else. 

So this course is all about helping people to reconsider their need for balance at home and work. We don’t pretend that on a one day programme we have all the solutions but a course like this is essential. We need employees who know what their options are and who make good decisions. It may be hard for people to break their patterns but by giving them sound business reasons for change and powerful structures and techniques that support them we believe that they will be better able to make the decisions that are right for themselves and their organisation. 

Tags: Common Services Agency (CSA), Health and well-being, Well-being, Work-life Balance

This entry was posted on Saturday, August 28th, 2004 at 10:41 am and is filed under Motivate, Stress Management, Well-being. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.