Chapter 25
Striking a Balance in Life
In This Chapter
• Defining work-life balance
• Does racing make me a better mortgage broker?
• Ten tips to achieve work-life balance
• The bottom line in business and in life
On my resumé I list two awards I’ve won. I have other plaques on my wall, but these two, I think, are worth noting—plus they’re ones of which I’m exceptionally proud.
I won the Top Producer honor my first year out of college. I worked hard, pulled out all the stops, and by closing the most deals in the company, earned that mark of distinction.
The second award I list is the 2001 North Atlantic Road Racing Championship-Sports Club Car of America. I’m enormously proud of that prize. It was a team effort; something I shared with my dad.
I can list the characteristics of a top producing mortgage broker and compare it to the list of qualities that make a winning race car driver. Many of the attributes would overlap: quick-thinking, confident, enjoys a challenge, takes pleasure in working alone while being part of a team, smart, fast, detail-oriented. But I can simplify the lesson: I’m a better mortgage broker and smarter business owner because I’ve got a hobby that gets my juices flowing and a family that I adore.
Achieving balance in your work and life is critical to your career success. That’s what we’re going to talk about in this chapter.
Defining Work-Life Balance
Jim Bird, CEO of WorkLifeBalance.com, a management training company with clients that include Coca-Cola, Sun Trust, and Hewlett-Packard, defines the premise clearly:
“Work-Life Balance does not mean an equal balance. Trying to schedule an equal number of hours for each of your various work and personal activities is usually unrewarding and unrealistic. Life is and should be more fluid than that …. However, at the core of an effective work-life balance definition are two key everyday concepts that are relevant to each of us. They are daily achievement and enjoyment, ideas almost deceptive in their simplicity.
Life will deliver the value and balance we desire when we are achieving and enjoying something every single day in all the important areas that make up our lives. As a result, a good working definition of Work-Life Balance is: Meaningful daily achievement and enjoyment in each of my four life quadrants: Work, Family, Friends, and Self.”
Did You Know?
According to a study of executives by the Families and Work Institute, Catalyst, and Boston College Center for Work and Family, more than 20 percent of male execs have downsized their career aspirations. Number-one reason why: family and personal life demands.
The demands of work and family, including an adorable two-year-old, mean that I don’t race every day, not even every week. But when I’m filling in my work calendar, I include my races and practice schedule as well. And more importantly, I encourage my staff to make time for their families and hobbies.
Work in the twenty-first century has radically changed from even just 25 years ago. According to a 2004 study by the Families and Work Institute, “The fast-paced, global 24/7 economy, the pressures of competition, and technology have blurred the traditional boundaries between work life and home life. Furthermore, this new economy calls for new skills—skills like responding quickly to competing demands and jumping from task to task.”
This is a perfect description of your life as a mortgage broker—and compounded if you’ve now opened your own mortgage broker company. It’s easy to be on call 24/7. The nature of the mortgage broker business is a juggling act by definition. And the struggles of any small business owner are legendary.
This same study found that cell phones, computers, e-mail, and the like—all the technology we discussed in Chapter 11 as necessary for you to do your job—blur the line between work and nonwork times. One in three employees, according to the group surveyed, was in contact with work once a week or more outside normal work hours. But if that were a survey just of mortgage brokers, I’d bet the answer would be 100 percent of brokers are in contact with work outside normal work hours—if you can even define what normal work hours are for a mortgage broker.
The issue of work-life balance is complicated for this industry and maybe even more important.
Work-Life Balance Makes Financial Sense
As we discussed in Chapter 23, finding the right staff is a key factor to the success of your mortgage broker company. Keeping that staff is critical. According to Susan R. Meisinger, president and CEO of the Society for Human Resources Management (SHRM), “For organizations to be successful at competing for new talent and retaining employees, they have to know what workers want, what keeps them happy, and what makes them stay. Addressing the essentials, including fair compensation, valuable benefits, and the ability to balance work and life are critical components of an organization’s overall retention strategy.”
In an extensive survey of human resources professionals and employees, SHRM found an interesting generational schism. Women and workers younger than 35 report that work-life balance is the most important component to their overall job satisfaction. Men rank work-life balance as fourth in their list, and workers 56 years or older don’t list it all in their top five components of job satisfaction.
As you hire new staff, you will have an advantage in the competition for the best and the brightest if you develop a corporate culture that addresses the needs and demands of your workforce.
Did You Know?
According to the Families and Work Institute, “employees who have jobs that provide them more opportunities to learn, whose supervisors support them in succeeding on the job, who have the flexibility they need to manage their job and their personal and family life, and who have input into management decision-making are less likely to be overworked. This is true even when they work long hours and have very demanding jobs.”
What Happens if You Don’t Address the Work-Life Issue?
Making sure that you find a work-life balance—and encouraging your staff to find one, too—isn’t just a feel-good topic. According to a study by the Families and Work Institute, overworked employees are:
• more likely to make mistakes at work
• more likely to feel angry at their employers for expecting them to do so much
• more likely to resent co-workers who don’t work as hard as they do
• more likely to have higher levels of stress
• show more symptoms of clinical depression
• more likely to report that their health is poorer
• more likely to neglect caring for themselves
This is an issue that can’t be ignored.
What Can You Do About It?
The truth is that starting a business takes time (it takes money, too, and finding that money takes time). So how can you achieve that work-life balance for yourself—and for your staff?
The Families and Work Institute study found that “employees who are dual- or family-centric versus work-centric are healthiest and most successful at work and at home. Having a life outside of work doesn’t detract from work success—rather it appears to enhance it. Employers need to reframe how they think about employees and value and encourage, rather than disparage, dual-centric (in other words, putting an equally high priority on family and work) or family-centric employees.”
Here are three tips to help you develop a worklife balance for you and your company:
1. Don’t micromanage. As the owner, you have to let go of some of the reins and trust your staff. It’s a round robin, but you need good staff to succeed and you need to provide a work environment that makes good staff want to stay. It’s not an either/or proposition. You don’t have to stop working and play 24/7. Nor does your staff. But making time for family and yourself is essential.
2. Focus on what you do best. Identify those issues that have high impact on your company, and focus on those. Marketing, building relationships with realtors, lenders, builders, and contractors, staying current on economic and housing trends, projecting their impact, and adjusting your corporate strategy as needed—these are key to your success as a company owner. Don’t get hung up on small tasks that take time away from what you do best. For the brokers in your company, provide them with the environment and tools that let them do their jobs effectively.
3. Make personal life a priority. Schedule your personal commitments on the same calendar as those for your business. They have equal importance. Don’t be embarrassed to admit that work and family carry equal weight in your life. That’s not to say that customers have to adjust to meet your family’s dinner time. You need to be available when customers are free. But it does mean that you carve out time for your family, just like you find the time for your continuing education classes.
Did You Know?
A study by the Families and Work Institute found that 43 percent of small business owners worked more than 50 hours a week.
I enjoy my career as a mortgage broker, even more now that I own the company. As I said in the opening chapter, this is an exciting, challenging, creative, fulfilling, and lucrative career. I’m glad I could share what I’ve learned from my years in the business. If you’ve now decided to become a mortgage broker—welcome!
The Least You Need to Know
• The new global economy and modern technology have blurred the lines between work life and home life.
• Overworked workers are more likely to make mistakes, feel angry and resentful, and have higher levels of stress.
• Younger workers put a premium on a work-life balance. To retain your best employees, you need to find a way to provide them with that balance.
• Focusing on what you do best and delegating the rest—and providing an environment and the tools for your employees to do their best—helps to create the necessary balance in work and life.
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