Many times, we come across professionals who are absolutely at peace when they are working. We often wonder how their lives are so well organized. They handle everything so efficiently. Whether the boss wants them to give a presentation or we want to send out a campaign live in the next 30 minutes, they are individuals who exude the perfect sense of calm & serenity. There’s always this prevalent feeling of rich personal life which you can feel fuming from such individuals. Does it make you wonder how? We believe it’s the work-life integration. It’s all because they are always on top of things. They have adopted a new form of ideology.
More than 60% of Americans struggle to maintain a work life balance. Are your employees or subordinates also one among them? Here’s how you can establish the perfect mix.
How is work life Integration Different from work life Balance?
It is all about creating an ideal state where your work and life coexists & thrive in their separate ways. Work life integration is a concept that brings work & life closer to each other. Professionals, who introduce the work life integration in their respective lives do not concern themselves with the best time to work? Or when is the best time to have some personal space?
They just find out when it is the best time to focus on either of these things.
work life integration dissociates the concept of compartmentalization. Many of us have a habit of not responding to personal phone calls, text messages, or emails during our work hours. Or we avoid doing the same when we are at home where we spend time with our family and forget about businesses. What if there’s a big deal going down and we are too busy not to consider the possible loss which we can face? Work life integration removes our mental boundaries so we can be more adaptive to situations.
What Many Believe About Work Life Integration?
Is work life integration a profitable implementation? Is it beneficial for the business as a whole, or does it have its drawbacks? Let’s explore a bit about its perks & understand what its flaws are.
One of the increasing benefits of having a work life integration in your routine is that it eliminates the competition. It changes the mindset that many of us have relating to our personal & professional lives.
As Michelle Marquez, Associate Dean of Human Resources and Administration at UC Berkeley Haas School of Business, says,
“work life integration creates a mindset that allows an individual to look at the big picture and synergistic interaction of all these components, and there is no sense of competing elements of work & life which requires equal distribution.”
There are times when we are unable to fit everything in a single day or a week. Times as such requires us to find suitable working hours or personal life windows where we can explore our most creative forms.
With effective work life integration, this feat becomes ultimately achievable. To best explain how it works, here are a few examples.
| WORK-LIFE BALANCE | WORK-LIFE INTEGRATION |
|---|---|
| Leaving strictly at 5PM to pick up your child from after-school daycare. | Bringing your child to work after school. |
| Leaving at 6PM and shutting off your work phone. | Flexibility to leave earlier and take support calls remotely. |
| Using lunch break to walk your dog | Bringing your dog to work |
| Offering everyone a daily free lunch. | Letting employees choose between a free lunch benefit or equivalent value towards vacation expenses. |
How to Implement a Work Life Integration Program?
Many individuals (especially managers & entrepreneurs coming from business backgrounds) hold a false belief that work life integration can have a detrimental impact on performance. It may pose certain challenges, but all in all, it gives individuals an equal opportunity to acquire their maximum creativeness & create marvelous solutions. Also, helps them to make things better in almost every area of life.
It all bubbles down to what your goals & objectives are and what efforts you are making to achieve them. Based on those specific goals, here are some steps to effectively implement work life integration.
Step # 1: Analyze Your Current Work Life Balance Program
Are you running an organization and aiming to provide the best benefits to your employees? Not all benefits are equal and neither do they reward everyone equally. Many organizations are investing dollars worth millions to establish the best program for their employees. So before you go ahead with making such large investments, perform an analysis where you can identify the requirements of your employees as a whole. If employees aren’t quite aware of the benefits, create an awareness program. Enlighten them so they can choose what benefits can work best in their favor and how, you as an organization, can deliver it to them.
Step # 2: Segment Employees based on Requirements
Every organization deals with its fair share of customers. And if you’ve previously associated yourself with a marketing department, then nobody else then you know it best that every customer isn’t equal. Some require more attention in comparison to others so they can reward you in a much handsome way.
Same is the case with employees.
When your employees are transitioning from work life balance to integration, you need to group them up into segments. Based on their skills & responsibilities, you can provide them with the right incentives. It can help them organize their respective schedules, set working hour flexibility and perform cross-function work at incredible ease.
Step # 3: Deploy a Virtual Work Environment with Scheduled Flexibility
With the rising threat of the coronavirus growing expansively, many brick & mortar store owners are now moving towards expanding their virtual workforce & growing their respective work environments. Even when someone starts a new remote working job.
While setting up a remote work-force can take up a lot of your precious time in planning, they also come with their added benefits of offering working time flexibility. Organizations observe much qualitative outcomes for certain technical skills which they were unable to achieve with employees working in-house.
Work life integration is the new norm. It has empowered many individuals to lead a life which brings maximum satisfaction. It allows them to perform beyond their line of duty and produce results which are far-fetched and highly profitable for businesses.