How Do You Support A Healthy Work-Life Balance? Trust.
I first met Monika Gilmore on a Wednesday morning. But I was nowhere near the office — I was on the ski lift enjoying a phenomenal powder day. We got to chatting, and I discovered Monika was working at the resort’s hotel. By the time we hopped off the lift, I had convinced Monika to come interview. A week later, she started at Lucid, where she is currently a product manager.
Today, Monika arranges her work schedule so she can catch a few runs before coming into the office or fit in a long bike ride after work. Similarly, during the winter work weeks, I sometimes schedule meetings for later so I can enjoy a morning on the slopes, and I always start my week by making sure my work schedule can accommodate my kids’ science fairs or fencing matches.
A healthy work-life balance has naturally become part of the culture at Lucid. And it’s not a 9–5 work-life balance — it’s whatever works best for the individual employee. The balance is possible because of another key aspect of the Lucid culture: trust.
The balance is possible because of another key aspect of the Lucid culture: trust.
As an executive team, we trust our employees enough to let them walk away when they need to. We know they can get the job done well in the time and manner that works for them — no one is going to give you a hard time for leaving early or having to leave in the middle of the day and come back.
Here at Lucid, it’s not about face time or clocking in and out. Rather, it’s about finding the people who care enough to do whatever it takes to do a good job. When you have those people, it’s easy to provide the flexibility that is necessary for work-life balance — employees can get their job done how and when works best for them without being micromanaged.
I was recently reminded of my first meeting with Monika when a colleague sent me this survey conducted by Slack, an application that we use here at Lucid to make these flexible work schedules possible. The survey reveals Salt Lake City to be “the home of the healthy work-life balance.” Among the results that caught my eye? 72% of knowledge workers here in Salt Lake City say they are rarely or never under pressure to be contactable outside of work, and 59% say they head outside to take breaks from their work and improve performance.
Promoting work-life balance is nothing new at Lucid — it’s baked into our culture — but it’s encouraging to see so many others in the growing SLC scene operating with a similar mindset. And these companies’ efforts are paying off — according to the Slack study, a whopping 90% of Salt Lakers are satisfied with their work-life balance.
One needs to look no further for verification of Slack’s findings than Monika, who offers key insight into how this work-life balance works at Lucid. “The key to work-life balance is flexibility, and Lucid has that nailed,” she says. “If you need to get in early, take a sick day, or work from home, you can do that. We also live in a place with incredible access to the outdoors, and Lucid knows and wants us to take advantage of that. Flexible work hours make it easy to go for a pre-dawn ski tour or a post-work bike ride.”
More and more companies today are realizing that what makes employees happiest is not necessarily the bells and whistles offered in the office but is instead the freedom to pursue interests and passions outside the office. At Lucid, we know that disconnecting from work is crucial. Life gets dreary and productivity plummets if there isn’t time for family, friends, and activities. Monika told me outright, “If I can’t ski, bike, or exercise in general, I’ll be miserable, which would make me useless or at least a pain in the butt at work.” We use various tools at Lucid to help support this, with Slack actually being one of them. In particular, our employees often use Slack’s feature to set work hours, and outside of those hours they are marked as away and can’t be bothered. This way family and other activities come first.
Life gets dreary and productivity plummets if there isn’t time for family, friends, and activities…We use various tools at Lucid to help support this, with Slack actually being one of them.
We encourage employees to step away from work and take time for the things they are passionate about. Each quarter, we invite families to a company event in efforts to make employees’ families part of the larger Lucid family. The Lucid office offers a bouldering wall, foosball, ping-pong, and an onsite gym so employees can blow off steam even while still at work. The team has Slack channels set up for just about every hobby under the sun, from softball, skiing, and basketball to photography, movies, and gaming.
No one said work-life balance is easy, and it’s different for everyone. But it’s not an exact science — it’s trusting employees enough to grant them the flexibility to define it themselves. As for Monika and myself, we’re definitely both glad Lucid’s definition of work-life balance includes weekday ski runs.
