What are the scales saying about your work life balance?

I really want to move to a company that offers work life balance and flexibility If I had a penny for every time I heard this I would have retired a long time ago, but with the economic climate in fluctuation it wasn’t a safe business model, so back to consulting I go. This however still leaves me with dilemma of finding companies that offer this work-life balance option. While I discuss this with Managing Directors, CEO’s and HR Partners we can talk about core hours and flexi time, we can talk about extra holiday incentives, and training courses for personal development and well being, we can talk about part time roles but in actual fact, is it all down to the companies to change or does the responsibility always lie with the people looking for this work life balance? Let’s define it. Wikipedia says “Work Life balance is a concept including proper prioritizing between “work” (career and ambition) and “lifestyle” (health, pleasure, leisure, family and spiritual development/meditation. Potentially if we take this as a definition it suggests that prioritising is the key to getting balance. So with this is mind, while an employer takes some responsibility for creating a positive working atmosphere, a big part of getting work life balance is down to the individual. To be fair you could have made that gym class yesterday evening, and you probably could have got home to read that bed time story to the little one if you were more strict with your time, and you probably could have cooked a Jamie Oliver 30 minute meal rather than a curry take away if you had planned and bought the ingredients earlier. So really one way of trying to get this work-life balance can simply come down to time management. This is always a huge challenge, especially when you have international clients, you can find yourself working around the clock. So how do you find more time? Well there are 24 hours in a day so you can’t add any more hours. Try and make a list of what you want to achieve that week- it could be walking the dog after dinner, getting yourself to that good old Bikram Yoga class, it could be dropping the kids off to school twice in a week. Whatever it is, aim to achieve it, plan ahead and see how you get on. I am not suggesting that you will definitely get that utopia that you were looking for, and of course companies need to take responsibility in creating a flexible working culture, but just try and change one thing in your week next week and see if you feel any better for it!