Before globalization and the advent of 24-hour connectivity work-life balance was plausible. The future is work-life integration.
Most of today’s workforce can remember a time when there was a distinct separation between work and home. That separation is disappearing and with it so is the dream of balancing work and life demands by separating them in tidy eight-hour increments.
Instead organizations are pursuing work-life integration strategies to reduce employee burnout, stress and absenteeism.
Balance vs. Integration
The biggest benefit of work-life integration is that it acknowledges life can no longer be neatly siloed into separate components. Could it really ever?
Work-life balance is your employee, Amber, splitting her day into rigid eight-hour increments. Eight hours of work, eight hours of free time and eight hours of sleep.
Work-life integration is Amber taking steps to bring work and life closer together. For instance, instead of putting eight hours in at the office, she may work seven instead.
After leaving work Amber heads straight to the grocery store. By the time Amber arrives home the kids are done with school. She situates them, puts the groceries away and then works from her laptop for another hour.
The Gift of Time
Time is a priceless, finite resource that almost all employee wants more of. This is why 32 of Fortune’s Best 100 Companies to Work For offer work-life integration benefits like employee concierge services.
Less-stressed employees are happier, 12% more productive and they have a proven track record of increasing customer satisfaction. Results that financial incentives haven’t been able to deliver.
Professional concierges manage the daily tasks that interfere with employees’ professional productivity while giving them the gift of more personal time. After all, balance and integration are a means of maximizing time and concierges enable employees to do just that.