Acting Human

The term “work-life-balance” describes the balanced relation between job and personal life. The work-life-balance should be important to companies because if the balance is not right it influences the work of an employee.

Concerning the job an employee needs to feel comfortable at his/her working space. The job itself should bring fun and challenging without being always just stressful. Also a good relationship to other employees and superiors are important. Mainly the factors of job satisfaction are playing an important rule.

If the personal life offers support to someone and also the family supports an employee it is easier to cope with stress at the workplace. This includes that people with problems at home won’t be very effcient on the long term in the job. Some people think if one area of life works out well the other one will follow somehow. But people with family and job know that this normally isn’t true. Every area of life needs its tributes and you have to set the right priorities. Because after all you’ll figure that time is a rare good.

For a good work-life-balance the employee itself probably needs to put up with a less income. Other possibilities to reach a good balance are part time jobs, time outs, downshifting and a high level of flexibility from both sides - the employees and the company.
An employee should try to consider a couple of points to reach an optimal work-life-balance. As said he needs to know and to accept stressful times in the job. Afterwards there should be more time for himself/ herself and the family again. This knowledge also applies the other way around. On normal working days whereas it is advisable to go home early enough to spend the evening with the family. Also meeting friends regulary is important. Furthermore it might be helpful to make meetings for yourself where you take the time to do things you like to do.

The employee also should be confidient with his/her own goals and values. Regular time outs are helpful for that to figure out where you stand and which step you need to take next. Always review what you already reached, where problems occured, which steps to take next, what are the longterm and shortterm goals which are also realistic for your own situation and so on.

Other simple things to take care of in the daily routine is to eat something for the meals and to take enough time for them. Regular breaks and small walks at the air make the head clearer and can give new impulses. Also small excercises help to find a good balance: get of the metro station one station earlier and walk the rest or go by bike to the work, don’t take the elevator, get up once a while from your seat and walk around or stretch yourself.

After all also your health is important. If an employee feels fit and strong enough to its way then he can go his way and reach an optimal work-life-balance.

Like every company also the people working there are individual. There are a couple of factors which have influence on the performance of a company which need to be considered.

The essential factors can be distinguished in external and internal aspects. The externals are the macro environment (demographic, technological, political, economical, legal and socio-cultural aspects), the social class, the meaning of reference groups and the family.

The internals include psychological aspects which are the needs and motivation, the perception, the learning progress and the memory, the attitude as well as the personality and the self-image of an individual.

Those factors form the personality and the acting of a person. For a company and the human resource department it can be essential to know “where” people come from, why and for what they work. The origin of the performance of a person lies within that. Manifold examples for that can be found easily e.g.:

• does a worker perform bad because his surrounding told him that this job is great but he actually doesn’t like the work because it doesn’t meet his dispositions
• is somebody motivated because he needs to earn money to supply his family
• does someone constant work because he is just not interested in learning new stuff and keep on developing his skills

As already said there are a lot of factors which influence the performance. Companies can intervene partly on these factors especially those concerning the macro-environment. Knowing the people who work for a company furthermore helps to work out special incentives to reach a better performance. Nowadays that doesn’t mean that a higher salary leads to more motivation. Also things like e.g. a better workplace design, taking care of a good, internal communication progress or the creation of an acceptable work-life-balance can already mean a great benefit to the workers and motivate them to increase their performance.

There are many different ways in the end to value the work of people and show it to them. Then no company can exist without the work of people who perform it!