Millions of workers across the country are in a constant tug of war between work and life every day. But this isn’t anything new! For over a century, employees and employers have struggled to build an equally beneficial balance. To shed light on life’s greatest balancing act, Top Applicant is taking an in-depth look at the concept of work life balance and emerging practices disrupting the status quo.
A Background on Balance
Living and Working in Balance
Entering the Age of Integration
Build Balance Into Your Career
A Background on Balance
Throughout your career, you will alternate times when work needs to take priority and times when you need to focus on life. Everyone goes through these cycles naturally, but there’s nothing natural about spending 70 hours a week pounding away at a keyboard. That’s why balance is so important to your career! To share both sides of the modern work life balance equation, let’s look into the 2 mindsets that define many workers’ lives.
Living to Work
To understand the modern struggle of work life balance, let’s rewind the clock to the dawn of the 20th century.
Towards the end of the industrial revolution, companies began to track the hours their employees worked to measure productivity. As companies adopted this practice, they found that many workers put in over 100 hours, 6 days a week! While this supported company progress, it also proved detrimental to the generational health and wellbeing of the communities that made up the workforce.
Over the following decades, civic action groups, worker’s unions, and other human rights advocates drove change in the workplace that shaped the standards we know today. In 1940, congress amended the Fair Labor Standards Act, which limited a lawful workweek to 40 hours. Throughout the 20th century, this remained the standard. But as businesses evolve, so does the status quo.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates that employees between the ages of 25 and 54 currently spend an average of 40.5 hours per week at work. While this statistic may seem ideal, the average balances out full time, part time, and contract-based employment. Currently, many employees put in over 50 hours a week or more when factoring in side jobs.
Whether you’re striving for a higher position or struggling to keep your head above water, you’re not alone! Higher competition, cost of living, and continually rising demands from employers have pushed the modern workforce into a new era of “industrial revolution.” To keep up with ever-growing responsibilities, millions of employees across the country find themselves devoting more time to work.
This modern work culture correlates to a rise in mental health concerns amongst US workers. The US Department of Health and Human Services cites a recent study that shows 84% of polled workers report that their workplace conditions contributed to at least 1 mental health challenge. This staggering statistic bears an eerie resemblance to the situation that sparked the work life balance conversation over a century ago.
Working to Live
In an effort to prevent history from repeating itself, millions of workers are leading a modern push to prioritize life over work, and employers are taking notice. In recent years, companies have shifted their productivity targets to focus on the impact of the work an employee does over the hours spent working. While this renewed focus on enjoying life enhances productivity, the true benefit of this approach lies in fostering autonomous balance.
All of us need to enjoy the life we live outside of work in order to keep working. But don’t expect your job to be business as usual when you put yourself first. If you feel burnt out, we suggest discussing your concerns with a manager before completely refocusing your time. Creating a more manageable workload or flexible schedule can help you build a healthier balance between work and life without compromising your career.
Making drastic changes in how you work without communicating your needs can create disastrous circumstances that trickle into your personal life as well. Missing targets, putting in fewer hours, and producing a lower quality of work can lead to verbal reprimands, formal write ups, and possibly even losing your job. So how can you build a successful work life balance? Top Applicant’s experts weigh in with a few important tips.
Living and Working in Balance
How you build a successful career all depends on how you define success. Each person and each season could have a different measure of success, so you have to stay true to yourself as you set your priorities. To build a healthy work life balance, focus on 3 key aspects that define a beneficial relationship.
Positivity
No one likes to work with a negative person, and negative people usually don’t like the work they do. So even on your toughest days, focus on finding the positive. Practicing mindfulness, breathing exercises, and a solution-based mindset can all help create a positive atmosphere in your life and work.
Instead of counting the hours, making every minute count can increase your productivity and boost your self esteem. Developing a positive relationship with work also helps build a more positive life off the clock. But to achieve this, you may have to have a few hard conversations.
Communication
In work and life, balance requires communication. This is why it’s essential to get comfortable with uncomfortable situations. Even if it feels difficult to bring up your personal needs with a manager, you can’t build a healthy relationship with work without these conversations.
The same goes for talking with friends and family about your work needs. In times that your job needs to take priority, clearly sharing your situation can garner support outside of work that helps you stay motivated. With effective communication regarding your personal and professional needs, you’ll feel more in control of your work life balance.
Ownership
The final piece of the puzzle for finding an equitable balance is taking ownership of your life and your work. In life, this means holding yourself accountable for your happiness. Treating yourself like you’d treat a friend, enjoying hobbies outside of work, and learning when to say no will help build a successful balance off the clock.
You also need to claim ownership of your work—taking charge of your path to growth, managing time effectively, and staying intentional about meeting or exceeding goals. Owning your work also means making sure your professional life is a gratifying one. Building a healthy balance requires you to stay in the driver’s seat of your life and your career at all times.
Entering the Age of Integration
In its latest evolution, the work life balance equation is finding ways to integrate how we work into how we live. From minor changes like hybrid scheduling to major impacts on community planning for shorter commutes, companies and career builders are redefining work life balance together. At the core of this revolution there are 3 distinct shifts in how working and living coexist.
Starting a Dialogue
“Work life integration” has started to replace “work life balance” as employers and employees develop more holistic relationships. UC Berkeley describes this idea very poignantly in a statement from their HR department.
“We use the term Work-Life Integration instead of Work-Life Balance because the latter evokes a binary opposition between work and life.”
This explanation directly addresses the problem many workers face when trying to find a healthy work life balance. Instead of fighting to constantly balance the scales that bear the weight of both, the movement for work life integration focuses on life and work existing in harmony. With integration comes flexibility, responsibility, and another very important word.
The C Word
Compromise supports successful work life integration. To help employees fit work into their lives in a way that makes sense for everyone, arrangements need to be equally beneficial.
For example, while many children get out of school between 3 or 4, their parents still have to work until 5 or 6. This arrangement doesn’t make sense for parents that need to pick up their children.
To integrate this aspect of life into work, many businesses open their offices earlier, offer flexible work arrangements, and some even promote after-school programs. Finding an equitable compromise helps employees feel personally secure, which benefits their professional lives as well!
Making a Mindset
This paradigm shift in how businesses operate revolutionizes the way employees think—both inside and outside the workplace. To establish an integration focused mindset into the workforce, employers need to lead by example. For many years, working long hours has been a badge of honor for managers.
But as a new class of employees looks to take the helm, many abandon ship when they consider the impact a promotion may have on their personal life. To build a more holistic path to growth, employees and employers share 1 crucial word for the future of their roles.
The A Word
Accountability helps build a company culture that integrates work into life. As employers demand more from their employees, they need to prepare for necessary changes in how those workers live outside of work.
Employees can build healthier relationships with their employers by communicating their needs, working out equitable expectations, and advocating for themselves. From consistent discussions about progression to getting comfortable saying no, both employees and employers need to hold each other accountable for work life integration to work successfully.
Redefining Success
As the modern “industrial revolution” moves to innovative integration over outdated balance, businesses and career builders continue redefining the way we think about success.
Personal and professional fulfillment mean completely different things than they did when the idea of work life balance came into the mainstream. So no matter where you land on the company ladder, we also challenge you to redefine the way you think about success in life and in your career. If you’re not feeling fulfilled both personally and professionally, you’ve got some work to do!
Build Balance Into Your Career
Every success story relies on the relationship between work and life, which is why it’s important to choose a hiring platform equally devoted to sharing your professionalism and personality. Top Applicant puts the human element back into the hiring process by blending the best aspects of both!
Every innovation on our platform focuses on helping you put your best foot forward with a quality resume, customizable portfolio, and streamlined communication. Put yourself on a path to a better career by balancing your resume with the great opportunities found here.
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