Corporate wellbeing expert, Dr Paul Lanthois suggests that its time to stop blaming long working hours for our poor work life balance…
Dr. Lanthois says that recent work life survey from the University of South Australia shows that we have an increasing dissatisfaction with our work life balance. This was despite the survey and more recent Australian Bureau of Statistics data showing that we are working about one and a half hours less each week when compared with previous years.
“We are working less but we are more out of balance so we have to stop blaming work for all our woes,” says Dr. Lanthois. “It may be easier to blame someone else but it’s time we take greater personal responsibility for how we juggle our health, work and family commitments.”
Dr Lanthois acknowledges that the greatest work life balance challenge for working Australians is finding enough time for ourselves but suggests that improving time management skills isn’t the only solution.
He suggests that we need to ignore outdated work life balance advice like, “You should work to live and not live to work”.
“work isn’t just a means to an end. It has the opportunity to be the source of great personal fulfilment. People should be putting more life into their work. “
Dr. Lanthois goes on to claim that if we began to work on improving our health and relationships it would go along way to recouping lost time to help provide a better work life balance.
“My research has found that poor physical and emotional health causes the average Australian employee to lose 24 working days of productivity losses each year. If you add the lost productivity that poor health has at home you can see how much time is wasted by not looking after ourselves.”
“If you put life into your work and you work on your life and your health, you’ll have a healthy life that works. That’s how we can improve our own work life balance without having to work less.”
