Would you like to restore harmony in both your work and home life? Matthew Jennings offers his advice on how to obtain a successful work-life balance.

Britain is labelled within Europe as having the longest working hours, particularly for managers (The Work Foundation EU Study 2006). It is considered a ‘good thing’ to be first at your desk in the morning and last out of the door in the evening. There is an apocryphal quote that has been attributed to most of the world’s leading corporations, which sums up this management ethos:

‘If you don’t come in on Saturday, then don’t bother being at your desk on Sunday morning.’

The truth is that the best managers often don’t work the longest hours. They work the most effective hours. It’s not just a question of getting results; it’s also about sustaining those results and nurturing your team to feel confident enough to be able to achieve success themselves. In order to be able to do this you must first understand what makes you tick and what genuinely drives and motivates you.

Write down eight roles you fulfil in your life. Now write a list under each role of things you want to achieve in the coming year for that role. Write whatever you want, don’t restrict yourself.

For example, for the role of ‘HR manager’ you may have: increase staff retention; expand team; reduce sick days; launch product x successfully; achieve Investors in People status, etc.

Now choose three of those ideas and turn them into proper smart goals. For example, ‘expand team’ becomes ‘by December 2008 I will have successfully recruited two graduates and identified and promoted one existing staff member to management’. Now that’s beginning to look like something that will happen.

If you want to expand your team by December 2008, what should you be doing now? What do you need to have done by the end of the month? What needs to be in place in 90 days’ time? Who else needs to know these plans? Who can support you?

Communication and focus

Effective time management is the Holy Grail for a successful work-life balance. Communication and focus are the keys to this. If it is your child’s first day at school then let people in the team know. Arrange meetings that won’t clash with that morning. Stay late the night before and get ahead of yourself.

An EU study has recommended that work-life balance becomes the main priority for European Governments. In this wake will come all sorts of legislation: expansion of maternity rights, paternity, part-time, flexitime, working hours restrictions, duvet days, compassionate leave extensions, and so on. The official approach to achieving a work-life balance will be to legislate lots of leave and days off.

This won’t help anyone really achieve a proper balance, least of all HR managers who will probably face an increase in workload. The only way to genuinely lead a happy life is to make as much of a success of everything you do as you possibly can.

As a manager, the most logical way to achieve a work-life balance is to honestly look at what drives you. Look at your values and work your energy around those. Then, when you achieve something you will really want it.

Understanding your values is a complex business. You can do a professional values elicitation exercise or simply make a list of values and choose the five that are most important to you. If you are driven, for example, by the values of fun, security for your family, success, wisdom and integrity, then look at all the things you are doing and see if they fulfil these values. If they don’t, ask yourself what activities you could be doing that do meet these criteria.

Your job brings you success and integrity, but does it bring you fun? If it doesn’t, then think of ways to introduce fun to your working life. Start an informal competition amongst the other managers for best staff motivation incentive – maybe buy a tin cup with ‘world’s best manager’ written on it as a prize. Make sure that next time you are at a meeting you find a connection with that person. Ask what they like to do in their spare time? What’s their favourite food? What’s the most daring thing they have ever done? You may just be surprised.

Matthew Jennings is training director at Spark Training. Please call 01273 301121 for more information.