By Mark Kaplan / February 14, 2020
What if all it took to have work life balance was flexibility in a day’s schedule? The flexibility would make the worker more autonomous in selecting priorities. The worker could more easily blend his personal life and work life by attending to the most important facets of each.
Families and Work Life Balance
One of the great complaints for work life balance is missing out on family time. Part of that is being able to attend children’s activities. A flexible schedule would allow a parent to show up at plays or sports events. Maybe a child has to go to the doctor and this gives a parent the opportunity to leave work.
In the National Study of Employers written by Kenneth Mattos and Ellen Galinsky in 2014, they found that flexibility in workers’ schedules have profound impacts on worker happiness, health, effectiveness, and retention.
Workers given more autonomy over their time were found to be more capable of balancing their work and personal lives. Since most workers have different situations and life agendas, giving them control over their time is one way to equalize everyone’s needs.
“Workers who had more flexible hours were found to have:
Greater engagement in their jobs
Higher levels of job satisfaction
Stronger intentions to remain with their employers
Less Negative and stressful spillover from their jobs to their homes
Less Negative and stressful spillover from their homes to the jobs
Better Mental Health”
Setting Up Work Flexibility
The report further found that employees in effective and flexible workplaces had better health, less stress, and no indicators of depression. Effective workplace alludes to having quality jobs, concerned management, and less stress placed on workers. Employers and workers benefit from working together to create a mutually beneficial environment.
Workers can spend their flexible hours engaging in practices that have been found to stimulate happiness. The behaviors of learning, creating, contributing, health and fitness all stimulate the happiness brain chemicals of dopamine, serotonin, oxytocin, and endorphins.
In addition to scheduling work obligations, workers can create sometime for activities that make them more valuable employees, increase knowledge and skills that make them more promotable, spend time sharing their insights or collaborating to solve workplace problems, and get in better health to boost energy.
Business and Workers Benefit from Flexible Hours
When workers are allowed to balance their lives to pursue their expectations in their personal and work lives, they are going to be more effective and happy in both. Whereas businesses spend money on Well Being to create happy, healthy workers, who remain with their firm, workers consider Well Being to allow them opportunities to advance their careers and enjoy their personal lives.
Everyone can be on the same page. Flexible schedules and time spent on personal growth, career growth, and engagement in the organization’s Mission all point to a thriving culture.
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