How work life balance can be achieved is a topic as deeply discussed as it is variegated. Every HR manager, director or specialist should strive to help their employees reach at least a semblance of work life balance.
Although HR is important, leaving no stone un-turned in the realm of technology to solve the work life balance issue is imperative, and that’s why eFileCabinet sells the software it sells—so workers can turn work life balance into much more than a highfalutin abstraction.
To understand our purpose at a deeper level, it’s necessary to dispel the following myths regarding the subject.
Myth 5: Work Life Balance Is Just About Hours Worked
When it comes to how work life balance can be achieved, it’s about much more than working long hours. It’s about the purpose behind what you’re doing, and your reasons for doing it.
For instance, what you do for a living may only require 40 hours of work per week, but if it’s making it difficult for you to sleep at night (for stress or reasons of integrity), your work life balance is out of whack.
Or, perhaps, you rely on outdated processes in your office that make you a records manager first, and the thing you studied in school second: If you are making a minimal impact due to outdated processes, as few as only 25 hours per week are engaging you in your expertise, but that can be changed.
So, considering that the number of hours worked is not the only metric by which we can measure work life balance, this opens up the playing field up for a number of factors that play a much more crucial role in establishing myths propounded by the work life balance dichotomy.
Myth 4: It’s About Finding Your Passion
People talk endlessly about how they need to “find their passion.” In the words of the revered organizational psychologist, Simon Sinek, it’s not a particular line of work that will help us feel passionate about our jobs—but finding success in whatever it is we’re doing will help us become passionate about it.
Instead of starting with the objective of finding a passion to overcome passionless-ness, we can be happy doing just about anything if are able to be successful at it.
One of the reasons eFileCabinet can help employees achieve this end is through the efficiency it provides to workers.
Myth 3: You Must Choose Work or Family
We once saw the work and life dichotomy split by gender: Men went out to work, and women stayed home to produce life in the form of children. However, women no comprise the bulk of the workforce in several industries once dominated by men, accounting included.
The boiler room mentality has been laid to rest, and even the most cutthroat of institutions are beginning to realize that retaining and cultivating talent requires letting go of the 80-hour workweek.
Carlene Patterson has noted that using eFileCabinet technology has enabled her to cultivate a work life balance by having the ability to work remotely, and in result, she can spend more time with her family. She can travel with her office in her pocket, keeping the information secure and accessible. If a client asks for a file or piece of information via email, she can access it via the cloud.
This is just one aspect of how work life balance can be achieved while tending to family and social life. For instance, eFileCabinet enables remote workers (who are sometimes primary caregivers for children, whether man or woman), to stay accountable through the document management system, allowing their managers to trace their activity and production of services.
Myth 2: Hours Worked Are Directly Correlated to Value Created
When it comes to how work life balance can be achieved, the hours an employee works, or the collective hours a group of people works on behalf of an organization, are sometimes not indicative of the value created.
There are plenty of organizations with a litany of workers who work long hours, yet do not work intelligently and therefore fail to create the output the organization needs. On the other hand, there are numerous employees who pack a hefty punch into a 30-hour workweek and create loads of value. Oftentimes, the difference is the tools one team usesover another.
Work life balance can be achieved through the right tools, and this balance can leverage the value of employees without the organization itself hemorrhaging money.
Myth 1: Workplace Appreciation Plays a Big Role in the Feeling of Balance and Culture
Many large corporations have failed to introduce the most valuable aspects of employee wellness into the world of business. One of the ways how work life balance can be achieved among these organizations and even among smaller ones, is by giving employees the resources they need to excel. Otherwise, workers will rise to the level of their incompetence.
The more wins an organization has, and the more integral the employees feel in contributing to these wins, the more appreciated they’ll feel—assuming their managers give them credit for a job well done. But this shouldn’t be hard to come by: Data points to the trend that managers are becoming better at giving positive feedback to their team members.
Contrary to popular opinion, all peer reviewed, academic research on organizational culture points to the fact that company cultures are developed organically. In other words, they cannot be deliberately formed as there are too many immensely complex variables at play.
For instance, it’s not a surefire idea to say you want a “happy” company culture, then try to build the culture from scratch. Although there are numerous ways to deliver a workplace that will be “better” and “more productive” these are not facets of culture, but rather byproducts of efficiency and coalesced efforts.
These changes, in turn, can create a positive environment for an organization, but they cannot be facilitated beyond the role that the right technology plays in creating a productive and fruitful work environment for employees.