The topic of the next episode of the Economy360° podcast is the so-called work-life balance, which is talked about so much today. To work with pleasure, achieve high results and at the same time stay alive, each of us needs to find a balance between work and our own personal and family life. /nginx/o/2024/07/15/16222923t1h6bef.jpg)
Stanislav Filipov. Photo: Daniel Gilman
The topic of the next episode of the Economy360° podcast is the so-called work-life balance, which is talked about so much today. To work with pleasure, achieve high results and at the same time stay alive, each of us needs to find a balance between work and our own personal and family life.
The question is how to do this, especially if you haven’t even thought about any work-life balance before, you worked and continue to work like Papa Carlo and kill yourself at work 24 hours a day.
The guest of the podcast is psychologist and business coach Stanislav Filipov.
First, let's define the terminology. What are we even talking about?
Work-life balance is the balance between work and personal life, which allows a person to effectively cope with professional responsibilities, while devoting enough time and attention to personal interests, family, recreation and self-development.
It is important for businessmen and company managers to understand: work should not have a negative impact on the health and personal life of employees.
They are free to use their free time to recuperate and satisfy personal needs.
Otherwise, the enterprise will inevitably face burnout of employees, a decrease in their productivity, staff turnover and a host of other serious problems.
According to psychologist and business coach Stanislava Filipova, work-life balance is not just about coming to work at 8:00 and going home exactly at 17:00: “This is when your thoughts are here and now. If you are at a meeting, you are immersed in this process; if you are at home with your family, you are only concerned with them and your thoughts are also everyday thoughts – about loved ones, about yourself. So that it doesn’t happen that you are physically on vacation at sea, but at the same time you have a phone in your hands and are solving some work problems. I was like that myself.”
In Scandinavia, everything is fine with work-life balance: the bell rings, and even if the nail remains half hammered, the worker leaves the hammer and goes home. What's wrong with the people of Estonia?
“Let's distinguish between production and office – these are completely different motivations, goals, people have different attitudes to work-life balance. They have different needs according to Maslow's pyramid that they need to cover. If we are talking about production, it’s a little simpler: there is a clear schedule, volumes, the work still ends,” comments Filipova.
At the same time, according to her, office workers get the feeling that work never ends: “And you seem to cross out some tasks that you have completed, but new ones appear. And also this stream of unread letters… What is important here? It is important to clearly prioritize your tasks. It is also important for the employer to understand the person’s workload. It is in the interests of the employer that his employee has a work-life balance. Because this is productivity, human effectiveness, not only for a week before burnout, but over a long period of time.”
The psychologist and business coach noted that people in the Baltic countries are not used to working with stress. “Thus, it turns out that our employee goes all out at work, he has a very high workload, and after work he takes out all his negativity on his family,” says Filipova.
She added that there are also counter-examples. “I worked with a company in which one of the employees periodically came to work very dissatisfied. She could argue with both clients and colleagues. The next day everything was fine with her. We couldn't understand what was happening to her until we started working individually. It turned out that her husband drinks. And when he starts drinking, her work day disappears,” she explained.
According to the specialist, such a person returns home with the same dissatisfaction, because at work he did not have the opportunity to think about work or switch to it. Instead, he took out his anger and received negativity in return. “The ability to separate work and home even in your head and in your actions is a very important skill that, unfortunately, not everyone has,” says Filipova.
To learn to be here and now, she advises using the practice of four questions. These questions need to be asked to yourself, for example, every four hours for several weeks: 1. What am I doing now? 2. How do I feel? 3. Does it bring me pleasure? 4. What do I really want?
“If you see that you are taking an action that contradicts your feelings, your desires, something needs to change,” said the psychologist and business coach.
What else we talk about in the podcast:
-
Many are convinced that the more you work, the more actively you put in the effort, the better the result. Is it really?
-
What is the situation with work-life balance in Estonian companies?
-
Where to start balancing your work and personal life?
-
Why is proper rest and personal time for employees no less important for a company than the effective use of their working time?
Read more in the latest episode of the Economy360° podcast.
Music used in the podcast: Keep Calm and Podcast – Step To The Beat.
Economics, finance, investments, taxes, new technologies and business innovations, employee search, legal issues, crypto-assets, security – we talk about all this and much more twice a month in the Economics360° podcast on the portal rus.postimees.ee .
