Work Life Balance is good during Recession!

Some fellow managers are surprised when I start to talk about how important is it to maintain Work Life Balance during these tough economic times, the response is ‘Are you serious? There is a full scale recession out there and the thing you now want to talk about is work life balance!’ My simple and honest answer is: ‘Yes! Work Life Balance options have a proven record to help companies and national economies to deal with severe recessions’. Let me explain how this works. During the last severe recession in the 1980’s work life balance initiatives were used to help companies and countries to deal with the down turn and to help them to get back on their feet again. Multinational companies are looking at Work Life Balance and flexible working initiatives to help them through this down turn as the cost associated with the recruitment and training of new staff is great. Even companies who had to seriously restructure their organisation in good economic times used Work Life Balance initiatives.There are many examples of how Work Life Balance can assist an organisation during a recession but let me just give you a few: Part Time Work arrangements / Job Sharing: Giving your existing staff members the option to work part time is a very effective manner by which to boost the eiciency of your staff. Part time workers work more effectively than full time workers and have a higher output per hour then full time staff members. Research has shown that the most efficient and effective employees work 19 hours per week. It is a myth that you need to work non stop to be efficient! Furthermore, establishing part time arrangements is a very effective way to reduce your staff count. Two staff members who start to work part time (50%) have reduced your count by one full timer. This is possibly the most effective and popular manner to reduce your head count.Sabbatical Leave: Offering sabbatical leave for your staff members to go to travel the world or use it to improve their education is another way to temporarily reduce your wage bill. If you are overstaffed at the moment, but expect you need staff in a year’s time when the economy picks up why not offer your staff the option of sabbatical leave? Look at the recent example of Permanent TSB who offered their staff members even a paid break for a number of years in order to reduce the staff members for the coming period. Normally sabbaticals are unpaid. One of the benefits of such an initiative is that you keep your staff members who you have invested in through training and establishing a social network.Flexi-time: In these difficult times it can be important to extend your organisation’s opening hours without increasing cost, Flexi time could have this effect. Extending the starting and finishing times for employees has the effect of being longer available for your customers and your business hours can increase which can be of benefit to service industry organisations. Most organisations are now working in the service sector and fixed opening hours which were necessary in an organisation which was confined by the working of the production belt are no longer necessary.Term Time: Term time working is that employees work more during certain periods in order to work less during other periods. If these periods relate to your business peaks then both the organisation and the employees are on a winner. If your organisation works less during the summer months why not let your employees work less hours then and let them build up extra hours during the times when the organisation is busy in an employee Working Hours Bank.E – working: In our time of e-mails and Internet working from home can be of great benefit to the employee and organisations, especially during a recession. Working from home through an internet connection is in fact more productive than working from the office through factors of less distractions and old fashion guilt, which makes employees work extra hours to get projects finished. There is also less time wasted on talking to colleagues, traffic congestion and other disruptions.As you can see Work Life Balance provides creative solutions to meet the needs of organisations during a recession and increase the job satisfaction of your workforce. Taking time to reflect on this topic can give you solutions which suit your organisation.