Personal & Professional Life in Harmony

The issue of balance between private and professional life is a central theme for Social Responsibility. I will address 3 axes on which the issue relies; and I will also address the question of knowing which duration should this equilibrium take, hopefully creating an interesting debate.

I read some weeks ago an article arguing that we shouldn’t be talking about work-life balance, but mostly of harmony. A little skeptical at first — I am always skeptical when it comes to a vocabulary debate — I still read this article. The author explains that there are three times of work for each one of us:

1. At work,
2. At home,
3. In our head, when we reflect on the actions and choices made during the first two stages. The danger for each of us is that we do waste a lot of energy during the third stage. Indeed, according to the author, there can be no balance: we can only make compromises that are not optimal. Working more will inevitably take some of the work at home, and vice versa.

The idea is therefore not to speak of balance, impossible to achieve, but harmony. We have to manage the stress associated to the third stage by analyzing the choices in terms of trade-offs. So not to worry about having spent more time here and there, but mostly to seek for a satisfying relation between private and professional life. Why not?

Can we draw conclusions, and mostly concrete applications, of this perspective change for companies?

Without doubt, more flexibility in the working time. Working on the base of « core hours » is interesting: necessary presence from 09h00 to 11h30 and from 14h00 to 16h30. The presence outside these hours can be managed by each one individually. And the opportunity to work from home on ad hoc basis.

Be clear, too, on whether or not to solicit employees when they are at home, after the usual working hours. A practice that unfortunately is very frequent. Employees must feel free to be devoted 100% on other things than work when they decide to. On the other hand, employees should be given the choice to work late or during the weekend.

A concept of harmony between personal and private life can finally be promising. Would you see other concrete applications of this concept ?

Translated and Edited in English by Christina Andreou