Life Balance vs Work/Life Balance
What is Life Balance?
I define Life Balance as the harmonious blend of various different facets of life such as career, relationships, community involvement, hobbies and recreation, giving back, health, finances, spirituality, all of those things that make for a full and rewarding life.
Sometimes you hear the term “work/life balance” to mean a balance between work and life. I would eschew that as an inherent untruth for it implies that “work” and “life” are equal concepts along a continuum. I just do not think that is true. What resonates for me is that work is a part of life along with many of the other things I mentioned earlier such as relationships, giving back, finances, spirituality and health. So, you do not have “your work” and then have “your life”. There is only life, and work falls under the larger umbrella of life.
Life Balance In the Workplace
Now, this might seem like mere semantics, but in the context of the work place it is actually revolutionary. This term work/life balance or alternately work/life integration confuses the issue even further. Work is a subset of the larger context of life and it is in a company or organization’s best interests to recognize this. When employees experience a sense of life balance within their own world, with their relationships, in their communities and with their employer, then they will be in a much healthier place.
The idea of work being separated from life is even less true than it used to be due to the advent of technology, thus the term work/life integration is starting to creep its way into business terminology. Now employees can work anywhere, any place, and any time particularly in a global marketplace where we often have cross-functional, global, virtual teams. There may be a team in India working on the same project with the team in New York City and a team in Europe or Australia. This results in people being up at all hours of the day and night in order to collaborate on joint projects and thus the lines between work and the rest of their life become fuzzier and fuzzier.
