WORK-LIFE BALANCE OR WORK-LIFE INTEGRATION
All of us have experienced difficulty maintaining a harmonious balance between our work-life. It’s challenging to balance our obligations at work with those of our families, our health, our hobbies, and even our pets. Disconnecting from one in order to focus on the other is difficult and not entirely possible. So how do individuals genuinely balance work and life?
Our personal spaces have improved as a result of remote and hybrid working. Can working remotely reduce stress even if it has numerous benefits, such as comfortable surroundings? When working from home, people typically display greater stress due to a lack of personal time.
Does it sound like you? You’d be surprised to learn how frequent it is. Additionally, it appears to be more difficult to distinguish between our personal and professional lives as remote and hybrid workplaces have grown recently. But what if we combined them instead of dividing them? Could that work?
You’re not alone if you’ve ever thought it would be hard to lead two distinct lives. And because of this, people are no longer looking for a work-life balance but rather a work-life integration, a new trend that combines our professional and personal lives.
Work-Life Integration
It refers to integrating our personal and professional responsibilities, which involves making compromises and balancing both of them. From taking your kids to work when schools are closed to finishing home tasks like folding clothes while on a conference call.
Because we can meet all of our responsibilities, regardless of their nature, this opens up a whole new universe of opportunities for us to reduce our stress levels and find more fulfillment. Work-life integration’s flexibility enables employees to more effectively manage their obligations and schedules, resulting in a greater level of happiness in all areas of their lives and boosting both personal and professional productivity.
It’s crucial to remember that improper work-life integration might have a detrimental effect on employees. Because work-life integration still demands a particular degree of balance, individuals who don’t establish the appropriate boundaries will find themselves under more stress and witness a significant drop in their happiness and productivity.
Even if many businesses are embracing the work-life integration trend, employers still need to fully grasp it, encourage staff to adopt it, and assist them in enhancing their work-life balance in general.
Work-Life Balance
A work-life balance, as opposed to work-life integration, aims to prioritize professional and personal obligations equally while setting up clear boundaries and a set schedule for each.
Unfortunately, these distinctions between work and personal life seem to be eroding as remote and hybrid workplaces become more common. Since most work is done remotely, employees could be tempted to check their work email or a message from a coworker after hours. Maintaining a strict schedule is especially challenging because workers may need to put in a little extra time at work to prepare for a large presentation or project, or they may even need to spend a little extra time at home due to a family crisis. Maintaining a consistent work-life balance may be challenging, and people may find themselves having to change this “balance” often. After all, unexpected situations are supposed to occur sometimes.
Integration VS Balance
Both integration and balance are strategies for achieving a healthy balance between our professional and personal lives; however, work-life integration focuses more on making life and work coexist and come closer together while work-life balance is more concerned with making life and work exist separately.
Finding harmony is the main goal of picking one or the other. However, just as the work-life balance has drawbacks, many experts contend that work-life integration is the best approach. So how do you choose between work-life balance and integration?
Every action you take in both spheres of your life should be carefully considered, and you should analyze how you typically approach things. Work-life balance is the strategy for you if you find it difficult to refocus after being distracted by anything, and you should create plans for each activity to assist you to finish everything on time. Work-life integration is the way to go if, on the other hand, you have trouble focusing for extended periods of time. This will allow you to take frequent breaks and utilize them to do other chores, allowing you to spend your time effectively and be more productive overall.
Conclusion
The ultimate goal should always be to live stress-free and take good care of oneself so that one may accomplish their job more efficiently, regardless of the approach that works best for each individual. These aren’t the only strategies to attain balance in life. You are responsible for creating your own rules and routines. There is no one proper way to do it, though; what is important is striking a good balance between one’s employment and physical and emotional health.
Elitez believes in and encourages work-life integration, join us today! For clients looking at how they can adopt a work-life integration, get in touch with us for a non-obligation consultation.
