Forget Work-life Balance and Go for Integration Instead
By HARVEY SCHACHTER for The Globe and Mail
Thursday, Apr. 19 2012
A few years ago Craig Chappelow decided that the traditional model of work-life balance as a scale with both sides equal was bogus, and not something that applied in a practical way to most people’s lives. The only time the scales were at the same level, it seemed from his life and those of others he knew, was when they passed one another. “Is the goal to have them level or is it to integrate them together properly?” he asks.
Mr. Chappelow, a senior faculty member at the Centre for Creative Leadership in Greensboro, N.C., heads a team that builds the evaluation questionnaires used for its personal development work with executives. So he decided to establish a tool that will help individuals to understand their work-life challenges better, partnering with Ellen Ernst Kossek, a professor at Michigan State University and author of the 2004 book,Work and Life Integration: Organizational, Cultural and Individual Perspectives.
The indicator, which you can take for a fee of $30 (U.S.) at the centre’s website, starts by helping you to understand the degree to which you combine or separate your family and your work. This factor boils down to two important challenges we face daily: Family and personal time interrupting work, and work interrupting family and personal time. Five categories of behaviour are outlined: Read full article>>