Work Life Balance

Work life balance: a definition

Work life balance (التوازن بين العمل والحياة) is an employee’s ability to do their job without the job taking over their time and energy outside working hours, so that their personal life keeps a defined share rather than whatever is left over.

The definition names two things that the job can take beyond working hours: time and energy. Work life balance concerns both. An employee may leave at the end of the working day and still have their evening taken up by the job, through the time it claims or through the energy it has used, and in either case the job has reached beyond working hours.

The definition also describes the kind of share that personal life receives. A defined share is one that is set and kept. A share that is whatever is left over is what remains once the job has taken what it needs. Work life balance, as defined, means that personal life keeps the first kind of share and is not left with the second.

What work life balance actually measures

Asking employees whether they feel their work and their life are in balance gives an impression. What can be observed and tracked are behavioural indicators. The question records how an employee says they feel; the indicators record what happens to the employee’s time, and that can be observed whatever the employee reports. There are four indicators:

• Actual working hours set against the statutory hours. It compares the hours that are actually worked, not the hours that are announced, with the statutory working hours. The hours an organisation announces describe the schedule on paper, so they are not the figure this indicator relies on. The announced hours can match the statutory hours while the hours actually worked do not, which is why the indicator uses the actual figure. What the statutory working hours are is covered in our guide to statutory working hours and the weekly rest.
• Communication outside working hours. It counts how many messages management sends after working hours, and how many of those messages are expected to receive a reply. The second count is taken from within the first: of the messages sent after hours, it asks which ones the employee is expected to answer. A message that is sent after hours and needs no reply counts in the first figure only; a message to which a reply is expected counts in both.
• Unused leave balance. It tracks the unused leave balance and whether it builds up. A balance that accumulates is a sign that taking leave is difficult in practice, however much it is permitted in theory. The indicator therefore looks at the gap between the leave an employee is allowed to take and the leave they actually take.
• Work on days off and holidays. It covers work done on days off and on public holidays, and how often that work recurs. Two things are tracked: whether such work takes place at all, and its frequency.

Why policies alone do not create work life balance

A policy that grants flexibility means nothing if using it costs the employee something. The policy states what the employee may do. Where using that permission carries a cost, the permission on paper does not change what the employee does in practice.

The cost can be simple. Where the employee who leaves on time is noticed, and the employee who replies at night is thanked, the policy is written down but the behaviour in practice runs the other way. In that situation the written policy and the actual behaviour point in opposite directions: the policy permits leaving on time, while the behaviour that is noticed and thanked is replying at night.

The behaviour of managers themselves is part of these indicators. The messages a manager sends after working hours, the time the manager spends at work and the leave the manager takes or leaves unused are counted in the same indicators as the team’s. The difference lies in how that behaviour is taken: what a manager does is taken by the team as an expectation, not as a choice the manager has made for themselves.

The other end of work life balance

Work life balance does not mean reducing work to the minimum. The definition concerns the share that personal life keeps, not the amount of work that is done, so it does not call for the smallest possible amount of work.

A team working on a project with a deadline may go through intensive periods. That is acceptable as long as the intensive period is an exception that is known and has a set duration. That description holds two conditions. The exception is known, meaning that it is recognised as an exception rather than presented as the normal pace of work. It also has a duration, meaning that the point at which it ends is set.

The problem begins when the exception becomes the normal state without being named as such. At that point both conditions have lapsed: the intensive period is no longer recognised as an exception, and it no longer has an end. The team then works at that pace as a matter of course, and nobody has said so.

How work life balance differs from employee wellbeing

Work life balance concerns how time and energy are divided between work and everything else. Employee wellbeing is wider. It includes physical and mental health, the working environment and job security.

Work life balance is one of the elements of employee wellbeing, not another name for it. An account of an employee’s wellbeing that looks only at how their time and energy are divided covers that one element, and leaves physical and mental health, the working environment and job security outside it. In the same way, a sound division of time and energy describes work life balance, but it does not by itself describe the employee’s wellbeing as a whole. Where the division of time and energy is sound, work life balance is in order, but employee wellbeing still depends on the other elements it includes.

This is an explanation of the concept, not legal advice.