What is Work-life Balance and how can it help us?

The growing tensions between life and work are hitting us hard - as organisations and as individuals. It's clear that the old ways of working are simply not flexible enough to meet the pressures on peoples time, the skills shortage, the changing balance of the population and the demands of customers. Something has to give - and in most organisations, its people.

Absenteeism and sick leave are sometimes the last resort for people who have to care for children or aging parents. Employers are finding it hard to recruit and retain people and the cost of losing staff is high - perhaps up to 40% of yearly profits (research by the Hay Group - quoted on the Employers for Work-life Balance website). Just as damaging is the gradual wearing away of motivation and loyalty - two vital ingredients for meeting rising customer expectations.

The Work-Life Balance Model offers you a practical way to help you get to grips with these issues and find the right solutions for your organisation. The Model is practical and realistic - helping you to find solutions that match your organisations culture and business needs. Flexible working hours may work for some places but in others, long hours are just part of the culture so the focus is on making sure that you look after the well-being of your people.

The common factor in all work-life balance solutions is that they all recognise the different needs of different people. The new Model helps you to achieve that by shifting the focus onto what you can do to help people deliver your objectives rather than managing how they do it. Formal schemes can certainly help, but smaller more informal gestures can have just as much effect.

Whatever the size of your organisation, the new Work-Life Balance Model can help you to build commitment, improve quality, offer best service and give everyone more choice. For further information please contact us.