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!?

Qantas Cabin Crew (UK) Ltd: LONG HAUL FLIGHT ATTENDANTS

Qantas is Australia’s leading airline, a global brand recognised for its award-winning inflight services. Flight Attendants employed by Qantas Cabin Crew (UK) Limited operate onboard Qantas flights from London Heathrow to South East Asia and the Far East. They are currently looking to recruit Long Haul Flight Attendants, for full details of the job and how to apply visit: Travel Job Search/Qantas.

Stag Dos should check insurance covers dangerous activities

Grooms gearing up for an adventurous stag do should make sure that they are insured for dangerous activities, one expert has advised.
According to specialist in stag and hen weekends Designaventure, stag dos need to watch out for clauses which could leave them exempt from cover if they undertake certain types of activities. Project manager of Designaventure, Anna Makin Made, said: "We advise everyone to take out their own insurance and check that they are covered for the activities that they’re doing." She added that clauses can sometimes be so specific as to say that machine gun shooting is not allowed, for example, which could leave the groom and his friends in trouble if an accident were to occur.
Research carried out by Halifax last year found that 8.6 million Brits took a single sex holiday in 2006 and 25 per cent of those were stag or hen parties. Furthermore, the study revealed that while 26 per cent of men had been on a lads break in the past 12 months, while only 19 per cent of women had done the same.

Source www.holidayhypermarket.co.uk

Can we really be the worst behaved tourists in the world?!

We’ve all been there; cringing while on holiday as a fellow brit over-reacts, makes a fool of themselves and swears at the waiter or staff. All of a sudden you’re reluctant to order anything or even speak a single word of English and start searching the back of your brain for a scrap of GCSE foreign language skills.

Over the years it’s fair to say we’ve tried our best to up our game but it looks as if football hooligans, socks and sandals are keeping us at the bottom of those most loved charts. A recent Expedia Best Tourist research campaign, carried out with over 4,000 hoteliers worldwide, saw to naming and shaming the best and worst tourists in the world, marking them on behaviour, politeness, respect for local culture and style.

Well guess what, we brits were named the worst by European Hoteliers for neglecting (possibly to even register the existence of) local culture, as well as being rude and pretty darn messy! How could this happen? We’re behind both the Germans and the Americans who topped the chart as the best behaved tourists in the world.

However, it’s not all doom and gloom for we British. We’re regarded as big spenders, which is always nice, coming a close second to the Americans. We’re also the most polite after the Japanese, and (can you believe it!) the second best dressed after the Italians.

Well looks like we’re not doing too bad after all that! The only major other thing to worry about, (let’s make an effort this year Britain!) is that we’re regarded as by far the messiest going.