Leadership in the Balance
Benefits of Balance

Encouraging employees to find time for their families and life outside of the office is good for business. According to Fortune magazine's latest ranking of the 100 Best Companies to Work For 2007, four of the best 25 companies also received high marks for promoting a healthy work-life balance.

CCL's Joan Gurvis, co-author of Finding Your Balance, isn't surprised. "It's very encouraging to see work-life balance being recognized as a defining characteristic for what makes a great company. It seems like common sense that low employee turnover is good for business. Satisfied employees want to help a company's bottom line," Gurvis says.

Having employees whose work and personal lives are balanced has tangible benefits - not only for the employees but for the organization overall, according to Gurvis. The payoff includes an increased ability to attract and retain skilled people, as well as higher levels of production, satisfaction and morale. The best companies have employees that perform more effectively in teams, and they report decreased levels of burnout and absenteeism.

"Many executives don't know how important balance is, and organizations are just beginning to recognize this as a serious concern for workers," says Gurvis. More than 50 percent of respondents to a recent online survey conducted by CCL said that "too little time for personal interests or relationships" contributed to feeling out of balance, followed by "pace of my job" (49%), "attempt to fulfill others expectation of me" (36%) and "financial pressures or goals" (31%).

"Companies aren't doing enough to generate meaningful options for employees -particularly when you think about single parents or employees who are traveling extensively," Gurvis says.

Some organizations do a better job of talking about balance than actually encouraging or providing for it. Employees are often afraid of being labeled as less dedicated if they make time for their personal life.

Gurvis advises leaders and organizations to create an environment that allows for and supports dialogue between employee, supervisor and peers in order to better understand issues of balance and create strategies for dealing with it. Executives need to know, she adds, that their own behavior and comments about life outside the office says more to an employee than anything stated in a company manual.

The Boss Barometer: Is There Life Outside of the Office?

The job description is a perfect match, the pay is great and the location couldn't be better. But "Will I have a life outside of the office?" is a question most job applicants fail to ask. This could be a costly oversight, according to CCL's Joan Gurvis.

"Immediate supervisors usually have the single most influential role in an organization when it comes to communicating organizational values and expectations and deciding how policies will be implemented," Gurvis said. "Therefore, your best barometer may be what your supervisor says or does."

Gurvis encourages applicants to get answers to the following questions to gauge the work-life realities before accepting a new position:
What time does your boss arrive and leave the office every day?
Should you expect to receive phone calls, voicemail messages and/or emails from your boss late after work and return them the same day?
Does your boss (or other employees) talk about loved ones or non-work related activities?
How does your boss react when you talk about your loved ones or activities you do in your spare time?