Work Life Balance

I am sure that working in the Travel Industry you may find it hard to get the right balance between your career and your personal/home life. This is such a popular topic and always emphasized in job adverts as a major benefit to you – the employee. ‘Working to live not living to work’. Forward thinking employees embrace the move to re-organise workloads and hours. What is your opinion on this subject? Have you ever been refused your ‘flexible working’ requests? Do you feel you have a good balance?

Here I am typing up this article on a Sunday evening when I should be chilling out ……… but then work-life balance is a difficult thing to achieve, especially with the demands some employers place on you.

In the 1950’s comic strips and throughout the last century the arts thought that automation and computers would take the strain, leaving us with a world of leisure, liberating us for rich, rewarding and balanced lives. But it has failed to materialise. Instead, those of us in employment work harder and longer. The world has become a whirl of 24-7 communication, and time pressured delivery.

You only have to watch a couple of reality TV shows like Super Nanny or Wife Swap to get a get an understanding of how unbalanced most of our lives are in favor of work. The stresses and strains of keeping the wolf from the door often result in far too much work and very little time to live.

The government is keen to stress the importance of work/life balance. They define is as:

“Work-life balance is about people having a measure of control over when, where and how they work. It is achieved when an individual's right to a fulfilled life inside and outside paid work is accepted and respected as the norm, to the mutual benefit of the individual, business and society.”

The reasons for this are three fold:

* employees can reduce stress, and become more productive and motivated, and happier, as they achieve a better work-life balance

* companies can boost staff morale, and introduce practices which are more efficient and effective

* socially excluded groups who of necessity have to prioritise home life (e.g. because of caring responsibilities) may gain access to employment opportunities with companies which allow a better balance.

What do you think? Is working in the travel industry as glamorous as it can look or are you constantly run ragged with juggling those balls!?