work-life balance part 1

Do you have a “work-life balance” issue?                                                                           The working hours getting longer and you bring work to home. Skipping sometimes lunch or eating at the workspace.   

• Do you feel tired and overwhelmed from the work?
• Do you sleep less or not good and wake up several times at night?
• Do you feel that you have no time for yourself to enjoy your hobby or even have no time for physical exercises, like going to the gym, swimming, or just walking?
• Your energy level is dropping and the pressure and stress start to block your daily life.

The quality of life drops consequently. This is the situation when we talk about a mismatch in work-life balance. The harmony and well feeling are disrupted. We observe a change in our perception and confidence. This can make you ill as you don’t find the way out of this vicious circle. This is an important part of our life where we need to push the brake, not to hit the wall.

I believe it is highly important to speak and discuss the mismatch in work-life balance to identify the root cause for the problem. I noticed that this topic did not find the requested attention in our workspace and most of the articles are offering some general suggestions to order your life. But the suggestions are not solving the problem.

I worked in different industries like Paper, Water, Printing Inks, and Adhesives for Flexible Packaging, always in internationally operating companies. During the years I worked for some years as a single contributor but most of the time as team leader of large groups of field-sales, application engineers, technicians, customer service, and in Senior Management Positions. During my career in different companies, I learned how to handle the increasing workload. This is what I want to share with you.

In 1991, at the beginning of my career, we still had secretaries that help us to take away the admin work. We could use the time for more creative and team (social) work. When the PC entered our life we learned how to manage more workload in a shorter time. Repeating works were not a problem anymore. Supporting programs were developed and a new workplace was born. At the same time, the Internet gave us much faster and better communication channels. Access to all information through the internet opens us the doors to the world. The workplaces are changing and there is less room for a classical secretary. As a consequence lesser secretaries are employed. In the past, you had your secretary or shared with another peer. Today, the whole departments have only one. The admin work did not decrease; it even increased as we are using much more tools to manage the workload. That has a cost; the creative working hours getting lesser or they need to be done outside of the office hours. Some people can make a clear split: what is at the workplace remains there. When they enter the home, they only spend time with family and only for private purposes (hobby, sports, etc.). Not everyone can do this and some of us bring work to home….

As mentioned many jobs were done smarter, faster, and better. What has been accomplished in the past within months is now done in days. And what has been accomplished in days is now done in hours. The expression “urgent” changes his meaning, too. However, we also learned that what is declared urgent is not always urgent. The word is used to increase the pressure of solving problems immediately. Besides the misuse of the expression urgent, we also found some problems in our working environment.

Some findings why works get urgent:

·       Disorganization in the working process (changing priorities and timing)

·       Too many interruptions of the daily work

·       Team members in the working chain are not able to finalize their duties on time.

·       The manager doesn’t distribute the workload properly and

·       The manager doesn’t communicate early and clearly the duties to the team members

·       Not well trained or properly qualified team members

·       Repeating non-productive workload

·       Lack of motivation

Getting more access to more information can also distract from the major topic and the people get lost and don’t find the way back to the major topics. Focusing is very important at this step. Working methodically and solving one problem after the other will give more accomplishment and satisfaction. Building teams with a different scope of work are more effective than “trying to save the world.”

In other words, the working environment changed quite quickly, and our understanding of work changed, too. Adapting faster to these changes is critical. This requests more agile managers and team members.

to be continued...