Michael Specht

On Line Opinion had a feature during May on Work Life balance. I originally wanted to submit an article for consideration, however life just got in the way and I had my own work life balance issue. In the interests of keeping as much balance as possible I decided not to write a few thousand words.

I have been reading the features over the last few weeks and still want to document my thoughts. The original “brief” from On Line Opinion was that there had been reports that Australia was finally getting the whole Work Life Balance thing right, I disagree. In a recent BRW article it seems others tend to agree that we are in fact going backwards. 1

From where I sit work life balance is a multi-dimensional issue that has no single answer as there is no single problem to solve, hence the complexity felt whenever you try to address the issue. Before I get to the issues let me get the disclosure done. I am male, mid 30’s, married to a wonderful lady who balances work, family and education, we have a child, and would be classified as middle class Australians. This means my perspective comes from my environment and may not match your perspective because you might come from a different environment. This fact is a good thing as it provides the multi-dimensional opinions that are needed to solve the problem, but it also provides some of the friction found when developing a positive work life balance.

The issues around work life balance range from gender, to generational, to financial, and to spiritual and thus provides a complex problem to be solved. There is a large amount of work that has been done on the topic with input from all areas of society. One method (not very scientific, but then I am not a scientist, nor a researcher), of determining the size of the discussion is to search popular search engines such as Yahoo, Google and MSN. On average these three search engines are returning over 500,000 results for pages within Australia on the topic, while only one indicator it does provide a perspective on how large an issue we are dealing with.
Google 791,000
MSN 231,888
Yahoo 632,000

Just because there is lots of discussion does not mean that we are any closer to resolving the issue. In a report produced by The Australia Institute in November 2004 found that Australian employees work an average 1855 hours each year, above the average of 1643 for a developed country. This actually puts us at the top of all countries surveyed, even above USA and Japan, two countries known for long work hours. Not bad for a laid back fun loving country. The report also refers to a study by the International Labour Office where Australia had the fourth highest proportion of people working more than 50 hours a week and the number of people working at this rate is growing faster than any other industrialised country. We only enjoy an average number of holidays when compared to our OECD cousins. This is made even worse by the fact that a Newspoll found in 2003 that 58% of us did not use all of our annual leave. 2

The results of the report are staggering. According to the calculations done by The Australia Institute if we all kept working the average number of hours that we already do, and take all of our allotted holidays we could all stop work from November 20 and still manage to work the average number of hours as our OECD cousins!

Why do we continue working when we could be on holidays, spending less time in the office and more time at home? It has been proven that when someone experiences an increase in self-esteem or self worth they feel “good” inside. When someone provides you with positive feedback, or you achieve a desired outcome your self-esteem increases. Someone who is continually successful in the workplace builds a significant portion of their self-esteem attached to the achievements at work, no matter what level in the organisation they occupy. The increases in self-esteem increase the “buzz” they receive and so they work harder to achieve and the cycle continues. For some people the whole cycle can become as addictive as a drug, we call these people workaholics. If the person addicted to the “buzz” is at a senior level within an organisation they tend to expect the same level of “commitment” and effort from their peers and employees below them. An example of this I have been told about was in a large Australian organisation that had a employee satisfaction issue, so the managing director decided he wanted to resolve the issue and got the whole senior leadership team together over the weekend to work through solutions! An interesting approach to solving employee satisfaction.

While your self-esteem is attached only to your success in the workplace you are unable to gain a suitable work life balance. There are others who might be working hard, be it a sole trader/small business owner working to keep up or a wage earner taking additional overtime. All of these people will tell you that they are working long hours for the good of their family or to make a small fortune quickly and then they will back off. Unfortunately most people in these situations are working for the pursuit of pleasure (maybe money or a holiday) not happiness, and many times fall into the “self-esteem trap”. As people we need to remember that happiness is determined by the state of one’s mind more than by external events. Many people who pursue success receive an initial increased level of pleasurable feelings one attainment of the success, unfortunately these same people tend to quickly cycle down to a base line level of happiness. But what is the difference between pleasure and happiness? 3

Assume you had a great job in the city that while you generally enjoyed you sometime became dissatisfied with living in the city, there was the traditional issues with big city living crowds, traffic, pollution etc. Then you were offered a job in a small country town, the role was not as large your current one but still paid enough. The town was beautiful and had the attributes you were looking for in a new location, you had dreamt of such a place. The downsides, the job was in an area of your industry you were not so keen on, you would be away from your family, and as a lover of the arts you would miss the cultural activities currently found in the city. You might take the job in the pursuit of pleasure, that being the shorter hours, the slower life style, the beautiful country side instead of the happiness provided by being with your family and attending cultural events. Of course the opposite is also true. However by making a conscious decision based on the foundations of happiness helps when things get a little rough as you know you are going in the right direction. 4

When making decisions you need to ensure that the choices are made for happiness not pleasure. Another way to look at this is the difference between love and lust, here love is happiness, and lust is pleasure. Finally if that is too abstract try this. When you die what do you want on your tombstone? Looking at life from these angles helps you define what truly makes you happy. If you are working out of “lust” and not “love”, aka pleasure not happiness, then in the long term you will end up unhappy. On a side note one of the fastest growing mental health issues within the industrialised world is depression, most depression is centred out of unhappiness.

To help keep you on the right path, the path to happiness, you need to have external markers to ensure that what you are doing will truly make you happy and not just providing you the momentary feeling of pleasure. If you are working long hours “just temporarily to get ahead” make sure you have clearly defined markers to help you understand when you are getting off course. The last thing you would want is to have got ahead but in the process lost what is important to you and makes you truly happy.

Being addicted to the “buzz” of success is only one factor influencing our work life balance, not all of us are lucky enough to control our working environment to the degree of senior management who decide to spend 2 or 3 years working “their guts out” to set their family up. There are other factors that influence most people’s work life balance such as, food, money and shelter, many times you can assess your direction by looking at Maslow’s hierarchy of needs.

Over the last decade of so the cost of living in Australia has risen considerably. In the Mercer Human Resources Consulting “Cost of Living Survey 2004″ (used for expatriate placements) Sydney rose more sharply than any other city in the world from 67th to 20th position in a ranking of 114 cities. In fact all Australian and New Zealand cities rose year over year. Housing in Sydney is now out of line with the rest of Australia and New Zealand, from the Mercer report a 3 bedroom house rents for around US$3500 per month in a very good area of Sydney while a comparable house for only US$2000 in Melbourne. Over the last few years the average Australian’s debt has risen considerably and now most families have to have two incomes just to keep paying the bills, let alone trying to get ahead. This increase in the cost of living is a large factor in people’s work life balance. We now have to work overtime, or work extra hours to secure the annual bonus, no longer are these extra’s “nice to have’s” without them many might lose their houses. When you are working like this it is very difficult to adjust your work life balance as you have little control over your workplace. For example an administrative assistant who wants to shift their starting time one day a week so that they can watch their child’s sports training only to be told they cannot by their boss. They are unable just to quit and move on, how do they pay the bills?

Given my general focus is in HR and technology I could also not forget about all this technology that promised extra leisure time? Technology is NOT helping. How can you have a balance when employers expect you to be always available? Originally the very tools to help us attain work life balance have turned on us and now provide employers (and society) with the expectation that we are always available. The simple mobile phone has become a tentacle that keeps us connected to the world, we can be contacted at anytime, anywhere, whenever the callers wants us. Have you ever tried to call someone and their phone was switched off and you got offended? “How dare they, why are they just not waiting for my call”. These phones are now morphing into email devices that allow executives to keep in touch with email while they are out. This is meant to be a good thing? At a fundamental level the executive is now expected to be contactable via both voice and email always. In the beginning this is seen as a good thing, but eventually they will expect all office communications to move at this speed and workers will also have to participate at any hour of the day.

Overall we live in a society that is crushing the average Australian’s ability to achieve a work life balance. While many would argue that employers need to provide more family friendly policies this is only part of the picture. Employees also need to ensure that they truly understand what makes them happy and that they are working towards long-term happiness not short-term pleasure. Coupled with this the continued increase in the cost of living within Australia continues to place significant burden on our ability to stay ahead. This increase in cost of living is sometimes seen as a “side-effect” of our standard of living or quality of life. However the report from The Australia Institute highlights that actually if we all spent a little less time at work and more time at home, yes the GDP might dip slightly but the time spent with family and friends is more valuable and in the long run provide a greater standard of living. To quote ex-Microsoft executive and now author Daniel Petre “Life is a marathon not a sprint”.

Much of the above content came from ideas and thoughts generated from my reasearch online, if you are interested in looking at some of the content you can review my del.icio.us links for the tag Worklife, specific references are listed below. If I have missed a direct reference I appolgise and will correct it as soon as possible.

1. http://www.brw.com.au/freearticle.aspx?relId=13408(Subscription Only) Accessed 5th May 2005
2. “20th November Take the Rest of the Year Off” http://www.tai.org.au/WhatsNew_Files/WhatsNew/Overwork%20day%2020th%20November.pdf Accessed 19th June 2005
3. The Art of Happiness – A handbook for living. His Holiness the Dalai Lama and HC Cutler M.D. 1998
4. The Art of Happiness – A handbook for living. His Holiness the Dalai Lama and HC Cutler M.D. 1998

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