Boost retention with a balanced life

The snippet of video footage showing the children of BBC freelancer Professor Robert Kelly's children coming into the room during a live interview is a reminder that men also have to balance their work responsibilities with those at home.

That Kelly felt the need to explain the interruption in a follow-on interview shows we live in a society that is surprised when home matters affect our work lives.

We continue to live under the illusion that success at work requires a trade-off with our non-work commitments and feel pressured to clock in as perfect beings, barely affected by family matters at home, lest they affect our chances of promotion.

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It is high time we realised that we are looking at this work-life balance incorrectly.

Work life cannot be separated from our lives outside of work - there is just one life.

Every day we each have a designated number of hours in which to attend to an assortment of tasks - at home, at work and within our communities.

Instead of looking at this as a trade-off, an alternative would be to look at it from the point of view of how our energy is balanced across life's activities.

On the list of our daily activities, there are those that drain our energy and others that restore it.

To be effective human beings we need to balance depletion with restoration. How we spend our time should be directly correlated with ensuring that a balance of energies is achieved.

The most obvious example is parenting.

Some working parents gain energy from spending time with their children, while certain aspects of their work may have the opposite effect, draining their energy. To ensure a balance of energy they ought to be using time spent with family to replenish their energy so that they can continue to be productive during the drain experienced at work.

It is simply not possible to perform exceptionally at work if you are not investing time in the activities that will restore the energy required to deliver excellent work.

Some people take part in sport or go to the gym, because it gives them the restorative energy they need to function optimally when spending time with their family, their community and at work.

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Others are energised by their work, and so, the longer they work, the more effective they are at everything else.

Men are often privileged because organisations have accepted that they need time to restore their energies, often facilitating activities such as golf days and office soccer tournaments to boost connection and productivity - and thus performance and retention.

The challenge remains for women, especially working mothers, who are by default assumed to prefer spending their time attending to family responsibilities.

However, not unlike fathers, many mothers actually derive energy from other activities too - activities that may be completely unrelated to their families.

If we are serious about increasing the retention levels of women in business, we should be asking whether we are creating space in the workplace for them to participate in restorative activities that go beyond parenting - and this space needs to be secured beyond Women's Month.

We should also stop judging those mothers who choose to restore their energies with activities that are unrelated to parenting, such as sport, travel, or even challenging projects at work. We should extend to them the same privileges we afford fathers.

In organisations that promote a balanced life, you can easily sense a vibrant and energetic work environment.

Companies achieve this by encouraging their employees to know and build their energy centres, whether they are in the workplace or not. They do not see this empowerment of employees as a threat to control and productivity.

Instead, they realise that energised employees are what leads to exceptional performance.

This is not to say that every organisation needs to have flexible work hours - often the default solution to retaining working mothers.

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Merely acknowledging that people require a variety of energy sources - whatever they may be - and making it acceptable for them to talk about their engagement with these avenues of energy replenishment can go a long way towards improving the levels of productivity within an organisation.

Instead of trying to find one work-life balance solution that works for all, companies would do well to help employees identify and optimise access to the activities that best restore their energy levels.

zipho@ziphosikhakhane.com

Sikhakhane is an international speaker, business executive and investor, with a business honours degree from the University of Cape Town and an MBA from Stanford University