The Importance of Balance in a Well-Motivated Workforce
We live in an age of the 24/7 work place. People carry Blackberries and cell phones, and are getting connected to the company e-mail at home on the weekends. Some people have an easier time counting the hours they don’t work instead of the hours they do. I have observed people answering e-mail on their Blackberries on the beach, having business conversations on their cell phones at Disney World, and interrupting vacations to take conference calls. According to studies, nearly half of all American workers say their jobs are very or extremely stressful. The same study also found that 50 percent of employees said that job stress reduces their productivity, and those who report high stress are three times more likely to suffer from frequent illness.
The work world is becoming crazier and faster paced with each day. Pundits predict that it’s not going to get easier, it’s going to get harder. Mother Teresa said, “I think the world today is upside down. It is suffering so much because there is so little love in the home and the family life. We have no time for our children. We have no time for each other. There is no time to enjoy each other, and the lack of love causes so much suffering and unhappiness in the world.”
It is the manager’s responsibility to try to help employees through the quagmire of life-balance issues as they relate to work. These are very difficult issues and must be handled carefully.
So what causes burnout? Dr. Christina Maslach and Dr. Michael Leiter, who are experts on burnout, give six reasons for burnout:
1. Work overload
2. Lacking a sense of control
3. Insufficient rewards relative to the demand
4. Breakdown or lack of a sense of community in the work place
5. Conflict of values or seeing the work as meaningless
6. Absence of fairness
Why is it important to prevent burnout? Because employees who are out of balance and overwhelmed will not be very motivated and will be less productive.
The challenge is for managers to get the work done with short time lines, tight budgets, and lean payroll, and yet avoid employees getting burned out from lack of life balance. There are several problems inherent in this situation: cultures that might clash with the idea of life balance, and the very real pressure for managers to produce more with less.