Work-life Fit rather than Work-life Balance

A study conducted by Phyllis Moen, looking at the effect of flexibility as a living, breathing, vital aspect of work, as a default mode rather than a privilege, has demonstrated the positive benefits for the company as a whole.

The most evident benefits to the introduction of a work-life fit culture in an organisation are:

• Performance: Employees reach their objective.
• Resilience: Employee are sleeping better, are healthier and experience less stress, the effects even cascade down to employees’ children.
• Retention: employees report less interest in leaving the organization

Key to the implementation of a Work-life fit culture in the organisation:

1. Changing the language used: work-life fit instead of Work-life balance. Balance refers to a dual system,  when one is up the other is down, it’s like a zero-sum game. Work-life Fit is an open system where 1+1 is 3. The Starting point of Work-Life Fit is : “how a flexible workplace could improve the company’s performance” and not” how to manage  the inconvenient fact that some people have children”,
2. Making it gender-neutral: Flexibility should not be seen as a perk to work around the inconvenient fact that some people have children but as a way of enhancing the performance (and happiness) of both men and women, parents and the childless alike.
3. Establishing transparency to acknowledge the full flexibility culture and remove the guilt preventing some employee to embrace the work-life fit culture, using the today available technology to makes the process light and easy.

Work-life Fit is not a feature of a benevolent, soft management style, but rather is a powerful tool for conscious leaders who reach their goals and make their organisation more efficient. 

In the Outplace Yourself Coaching programs , one of the widely used technique to empower professionals is to help them identify and reconnect to their performance by enabling them to restore their resources in work and private environment. The access to both the professional sphere and the private sphere resources is key. “I get resource where I need and utilise them where they are needed.”

Interested in setting up your own Work-life Fit? Contact an Outplace Yourself Coach today

More info & source article: https://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/28/magazine/rethinking-the-work-life-equation.html