Achieve a Balance

• Set personal strategies
• Be organised
• Recognise that balance takes work
• Enjoy life
• Find a job you actually enjoy
• Separate work-life from home-life
• Make time for you and your hobbies

Family Friendly Work Practises

These are broadly defined as arrangements designed to support employees faced with balancing the competing demands of work and family life, in today's fast-paced, complex environment. The underlying goal sought by the adoption of family-friendly work policies, is flexibility to both males and females.

With the increase in dual-earner couples, their family responsibilities, and the rise in elderly dependents, organisational cultures need to adapt to the changing needs of their employees.

One or both parents in the majority of dual-income families work hours outside the standard '9-to-5'. 33% of fathers find their job routinely takes them over the 48 hours per week limit, set by the European Working Time Directive. While a fifth of mums also work unsociable hours, fathers in professional and managerial jobs endure the longest jobs. Being required to work outside regular hours means they often miss out on family time, arriving home after the children have gone to bed. In the long-term, greater flexibility for dads is vital to ease the burden of families, and in particular mums, who still feel they have to choose between a family and a career.

Because 'parenthood' and 'career' have been seen as mutually exclusive, women have suffered chronic low pay, and often, removal from the economy. This actually pressures men into working longer hours, just to make ends meet, and so the culture persists. Other aspects include those households which are forced to operate a 'shift system' with one parent looking after the children per shift, while the other works. Thus, time spent as a couple or indeed a family is even further reduced.

Walk The Talk At The Top

Senior managers should set the standard by reducing their own working hours and also by enforcing a reduction in the employee working hours and availability expectance. Reduction in work time does not have to equate to financial losses for the organisation concerned. Indeed, research has shown that prolonged working hours, 50-60 hours per week, results in a loss of efficiency.