Seven Things You Should Know About Work-Life Balance
It’s about investing in human capital. It’s not just a perk anymore.
- Work-life conflict is a health hazard. The way work is organized is making us sick. And it will take fundamentally rethinking work, not just adding a few wellness programs, to fix it. The stress of long work hours, chaotic schedules, and the inability to control or predict workflow is associated with an estimated 120,000 excess deaths a year, 5 to 8 percent of health care costs and a 35 percent greater chance of having a physician-diagnosed illness. Long work hours alone are associated with a 20 percent higher mortality rate.
- Work-life balance improves health. Ongoing research conducted by the Work, Family and Health Network, funded by the National Institutes of Health and the Centers for Disease Control, has found that training workers and managers to work flexibly, normalize caregiving responsibilities, and focus on performance has improved health and sleep, reduced stress, and increased quality family time.1
- Flexibility is the future. Two-thirds of Millennial workers, now the largest generation in the workforce, say they’d like to work remotely, and 66 percent of older workers say they’d like to shift their work schedules.2 With the majority of children being raised in homes where all parents work,3 a growing elderly population requiring care (more than one in five U.S. residents will be 65 or older by the year 20304), and the rise of contingent work in the gig economy, flexible work will be critical for managing the changing nature of work and the competing demands of work and home.
- Longer work hours don’t mean more productivity. In fact, productivity begins to fall off after 48 hours a week, and drops steeply after 55 hours, as fatigued and stressed workers make more errors, get sicker, and are more prone to accidents.5 International comparisons show that the two countries with the longest work hours, Japan and South Korea, are actually the least productive.6
- Work-life balance makes good business sense. If everyone who could and wanted to telework was given that option, the national savings to workers and businesses in the U.S. would total more than $700 billion a year.7 Cisco Systems, Inc. reported a gain of $195 million one year from increased productivity and savings associated with a new flexible, results-focused work environment.8
- Overwork disadvantages women. More men put in longer hours than women, who still tend to be primarily responsible for caregiving. This is true particularly at the professional management level. Overwork came to be seen as desirable in the 1980s, and compensation increased for those willing to put in long hours. That not only has increased the gender wage gap by about 10 percent, but led to occupational segregation and the attrition of women from high-level positions and professions.9 That’s not good, because the presence of women and women leaders not only boosts performance and profitability,10 but makes teams smarter.11
- Work gets better when workers have work-life balance. One 10-month study found that giving workers flexibility over time, manner, and place of work led to a 13 percent performance increase, improved work satisfaction, and cut the attrition rate in half.12 Happy workers are 12 percent more productive.13 And well-rested workers perform better.14
Citations
- “Publications,” Work, Family & Health Network, source.
- Dennis Finn, Anne Donovan, PwC’s NextGen: A global generational study [PwC, April 2013] source
- Gretchen Livingston, “Fewer than half of U.S. kids today live in a ‘traditional’ family,” Pew Research Center, December 22, 2014, source
- Families Caring for an Aging America [The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, September 2016] source
- John Pencavel, The Productivity of Working Hours [Institute for the Study of Labor, April 2014], source
- “The Conference Board International Labor Comparisons,” The Conference Board, source
- “Latest Telecommuting Statistics,” GlobalWorkplaceAnalytics.com, source
- Ken Giglio, Workplace Flexibility Case Study: Cisco Systems and Telework [Cisco Systems] source
- Youngjoo Cha, Kim A. Weeden, “Overwork and the Slow Convergence in the Gender Gap in Wages,” American Sociological Review 79 [April 2014]: 457-484, source
- Marcus Noland, Tyler Moran, and Barbara Kotschwar, “Is Gender Diversity Profitable? Evidence from a Global Survey,” Peterson Institute for International Economics Working Paper 16-3 [February 2016], source
- “Measuring Collective Intelligence,” MIT Center for Collective Intelligence, source
- Nicholas Bloom, James Liang, John Roberts, Zhichun Jenny Ying, “Does Working From Home Work? Evidence from a Chinese Experiment,” The Quarterly Journal of Economics 130 [November 2014]: 165-218, source
- Andrew J. Oswald, Eugenio Proto, Daniel Sgroi, Happiness and Productivity [Department of Economics, University of Warwick, February 2014], source
- Cheri D. Mah, Kenneth E. Mah, Eric J. Kezirian, William C. Dement, “The Effects of Sleep Extension on the Athletic Performance of Collegiate Basketball Players,” Sleep 34 [July 2011]: 943-950, source