During my recent holidays in Switzerland, I read an interesting newspaper article about people’s professional aims for the year 2011. Most mentioned, above 50%, was a better Work-Life-Balance.
I am sure that this sounds familiar to you, as I hear this objective frequently amongst my clientele as well.
There are many management ideas on how to create work-life-balance. Some are difficult to implement, some are ridiculous. If I would be in operational management today, I would focus on one thing. It is practical and likely makes an organization more competitive as it increases motivation.
The main thrust of work-life balance should be to give your staff flexibility to decide on their own working time and location as much as possible. Some ideas:
- Flexible working time. Have a core working time e.g. from 10.00 am – 03.00 pm and allow staff to make up the hours either before or after that core working time, depending on their needs.
- To a good measure, e.g. once a week, allow staff to work from home.
- Allow staff to run errands during the regular working hours. Typically, it takes less time to run an errand during regular working time because of less traffic, shorter queues, less waiting time, etc. And allow them make up for the hours later.
- Check yourself. Managers often ask things from their staff which has the main purpose to monitor the staff. These actions are often time-consuming and a bit inconvenient to the staff. Can you do with a bit less monitoring and a bit more trusting? Test it, one step at a time. Trust more and monitor less. If it works it is less time-consuming for everybody and certainly more motivational to your staff
I am sure that this sounds familiar to you, as I hear this objective frequently amongst my clientele as well.
There are many management ideas on how to create work-life-balance. Some are difficult to implement, some are ridiculous. If I would be in operational management today, I would focus on one thing. It is practical and likely makes an organization more competitive as it increases motivation.
The main thrust of work-life balance should be to give your staff flexibility to decide on their own working time and location as much as possible. Some ideas:
- Flexible working time. Have a core working time e.g. from 10.00 am – 03.00 pm and allow staff to make up the hours either before or after that core working time, depending on their needs.
- To a good measure, e.g. once a week, allow staff to work from home.
- Allow staff to run errands during the regular working hours. Typically, it takes less time to run an errand during regular working time because of less traffic, shorter queues, less waiting time, etc. And allow them make up for the hours later.
- Check yourself. Managers often ask things from their staff which has the main purpose to monitor the staff. These actions are often time-consuming and a bit inconvenient to the staff. Can you do with a bit less monitoring and a bit more trusting? Test it, one step at a time. Trust more and monitor less. If it works it is less time-consuming for everybody and certainly more motivational to your staff
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