From work-life balance to work-life integration: why it matters
Balancing on a tightrope
Employees who want to care for their parents or a sick child: it’s only natural. It’s important for an organisation to offer employees support in that personal part of their lives as well. After all, someone who feels well and understood at work is more productive.
At the same time, you have to manage your company with due diligence and make sure it keeps running. Focusing on a good work-life balance then seems like the solution, but in reality that idea is too good to be true. In fact, the infamous work-life balance is more like balancing on a tightrope.
Because it implies that these two important elements in a person’s life, their work and private life, are two different things. Extremes even, if you had to place them on a scale. Nothing could be further from the truth. Besides: constantly having to find your balance is exhausting. Moreover, it implies that you can lose that balance too. Nobody’s perfect.
At ITZU, we therefore put more faith in work-life integration.
Important evolution
During the covid lockdowns our work and private lives were forced to merge together. Which initially proved no easy feat for many of us. However in the meantime we’ve come to realise how practical it can be. Being able to work from home regularly has advantages and it benefits the well-being of your employees.
Therefore, as an organisation, it is important to look for ways to blend the work and private lives of your employees in the best possible way. Giving your employees the opportunity to function as complete individuals, both at work and at home.
Individual approach
Now how do you address this as an organisation? How do you make sure that this work-life integration is beneficial, both to your employee and your company?
There is no one-size-fits-all approach. Because, of course, every employee is a unique individual. And that requires an individual approach and some brainwork. Apart from the customer journey you rightly pay a lot of attention to, you should therefore also focus on the employee journey.
Get together with your employee and look for the best possible ways to merge work and private life. Examine how your organisation can support employees on the one hand, and how employees can continue to do their jobs during a difficult personal situation on the other.