Work and life truly is a balancing act

ORGANISATIONS want the best employees — hardworking, motivated individuals who go above and beyond expectations to enhance organisational productivity.

An imbalance, however, between work and personal life can result in a build-up of stress and anxiety for employees and the risk that organisations may lose their best talent.

It seems that Australian companies are struggling when it comes to building and maintaining healthy work-life balance.

Australia is ranked 27 out of 35 OECD countries in terms of work-life balance, according to a 2017 Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (AIHW) report.

The average working Australian has only 3.5 hours per day of discretionary time (AIHW 2017), when work and travel time is taken into consideration.

Australian employees work more than 50 hours per week, which means that an average full-time employee is working six hours of overtime per week, often unpaid.

This can result in increased absenteeism, decreased productivity, loss of talented employees and decrease in employee commitment towards their organisation.

However, some cities in Australia are encouraging work-life balance in their organisations.

The Gold Coast is one such city. According to the Queensland Public Sector Inclusion and Diversity Strategy (2015 — 2020), Gold Coast companies in general are much better at encouraging flexible workplace arrangements that foster or support employees in achieving an appropriate work-life balance.

Moreover, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics (2016-17), 62 per cent of employees on the Gold Coast are generally happy, satisfied and not stressed.

It appears many companies in our city are incorporating work-life balance strategies to retain staff and help them feel satisfied with their job, facilitating flexible working arrangements to suit employees’ lifestyles. In turn, staff are generally happy to work hard, as long as they can also play hard and relax.

It is encouraging to see Coast companies starting to promote a healthy work-life balance, however this is not yet the case for all Australian companies. In fact, Australia lags behind many other countries.

Australian companies should ideally add value to their businesses through focusing not only on cost and productivity but also the work-life balance of their employees, to ensure employees feel valued and, thus, contribute their best.

If organisations want to retain their best employees, they need to become an employer of choice — an organisation structured and managed to provide effective work-life balance for its employees.

IT APPEARS MANY COMPANIES IN OUR CITY ARE INCORPORATING WORKLIFE BALANCE STRATEGIES TO RETAIN STAFF AND HELP THEM FEEL SATISFIED ...