Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
Hold the line
Set boundaries instead of always chasing work-life balance
I don’t seek work-life balance. That’s not because I’m some workaholic or beach bum. Rather, it’s because I think there’s something inherently wrong with the idea of work-life balance.
What is work-life balance supposed to be, anyway? Some 24hour day evenly segmented into eight hours for work, sleep and personal time? This balanced concept is unrealistic, and chasing some illusory sense of balance only leads to increasing the stress you’re supposed to be decreasing by being balanced.
Moreover, the idea of balance presumes control over our environment — that our work and life demands come in predictable patterns. But work has deadlines and families have crises, and sometimes more time is needed in one area of our life than the other.
For example, am I supposed to tell my employees during an important deadline, “Sorry, I need to go home for some ‘me time,’ ” or tell my wife, “Sorry, I can’t take our child to the hospital because I need to stay balanced for work”? No, that’s ridiculous.
Instead of having a work-life balance, I set work-life boundaries.
The concept of work-life boundaries is simple. As it says in our employee handbook, we strive to be 100 percent present at work and 100 percent present at home.
How a person pursues being 100 percent present at work and home is totally up to them. For example, Ellen Kossek, a professor at Purdue and workplace expert, suggests you could set boundaries by being a separator, an integrato or a cycler. Each is a different style of boundary setting.
The separator
A separator is someone who follows the traditional concept of work-life balance, where certain hours of the day are segmented for work and personal time. This is what I used to do. I would have a set routine for work hours and personal hours. Furthermore, I would keep my personal time work-free by putting the phone away (except for emergencies) when I was at home.
The integrator
An integrator is someone, like our executive vice president, who blends work and personal time throughout the day. In his case, he will concentrate on business for a few hours, then attend to a personal event, only to come back to the office later in the evening to get more work done. This is his way of always being 100 percent present at work or concentrating 100 percent on personal time.
The cycler
Finally, a person could be a cycler. Accounting and farming, for example, fall into cycles of heavy work and heavy time off. So during harvest or tax season, these entrepreneurs may be working all hours, but during other times of the year, they have more personal time.
This is typical of our event coordinators and contracts people in my business, where speaking events tend to fall in seasons.
In Europe, the culture typically is one that promotes work-life boundaries. By law, every country in the European Union has at least four work weeks of paid vacation.
A German industrial union recently won its workers the right to work 28 hours per week in a deal that eventually could affect almost 4 million people in the country, CNN reported. IG Metall, the biggest trade union in Germany for metal and engineering workers, struck the deal, which will allow workers the time they need to care for children, the elderly or sick relatives.
France is famous for its “right to disconnect” law, where businesses of more than 50 employees must negotiate the hours during which emails can be sent after work. (Yet because there are no fines for companies who flout the rules, the new law comes with little cost, Time magazine notes.)
The United States is the only developed country in the world without a single legally required paid vacation day or holiday, USAToday notes.
It’s important for leaders to lead by example and help set boundaries for their employees. I lead by setting boundaries for work communications.
My employees are not expected to send or respond to company emails, texts or phone calls after 5 p.m. unless it is an emergency. Likewise, we emphasize employees take personal time off. So in addition to their vacation days, we also offer half-day Fridays during the year and every other Friday off during the summer.
In terms of personal wellness, we offer $500 a year so employees can learn how to disconnect through yoga or other wellness classes.
Finally, we have employees set their own work and personal goals, making it clear that they are just as important as business goals in our company.
Setting work-life boundaries is not a perfect system. But by no longer chasing an illusory work-life balance and setting work-life boundaries, I find that I’m more present in both settings.