IT people have a better work/life balance today than they did when Leo Collins started in the field about 20 years ago. Collins, CIO at Lions Gate Entertainment Corp., points out, for instance, that employees don’t always have to physically be in the office to do their work nowadays.
In fact, in a study released in July by Robert Half Technology, a Menlo Park, Calif.-based IT staffing company, 44 per cent of CIOs surveyed said their company’s IT workforce is telecommuting at a rate that’s the same as or higher than it was five years ago. They cited improved retention, better morale and increased productivity as the greatest benefits of telecommuting.
While that’s a step in the right direction, the industry still has a long way to go. Reluctant managers and a domineering corporate culture can influence how effectively work/life benefits are implemented in an organization and how willing employees are to seek them out, Mok points out.
And Collins acknowledges that for all the progress, IT workers at his company still tend to log some serious overtime. “The norm is a lot closer to 50 to 60 hours,” he admits, “but you don’t always physically need to be there.” Either way, “we try not to have a crisis attitude,” he says. “So if you need to take care of [personal] things, we can adjust priorities and move tasks around.”
How can you find ways to better balance your professional and personal time — even if you’re at a company that’s less progressive on the issue? Work/life coaches, IT executives and experienced tech professionals share their strategies for finding the right balance, with these 10 tips:
1. Establish and enforce your own priorities.
Many people who want to make a change in their lives fail to first reflect on exactly what it is they want to do differently, says Kathie Lingle, director of the Alliance for Work-Life Progress in Scottsdale, Ariz.
Step 1 should always be to set your priorities, she says. “Get those straight in your mind, and [then] act on them,” Lingle suggests.
Whether your goal is to be active in your community or nurture personal relationships, it’s likely you’ll need to make time for those priorities by limiting your hours at work — even if that means saying no to overtime or extra projects, or to a promotion.
Brian Schultz, information assurance practice lead at the Battelle Memorial Institute in Columbus, Ohio, undertook this exercise when working as a manager with the computer risk management practice at the former Arthur Anderson LLP. He didn’t want to follow the same track as the executives he knew who sacrificed fulfilling personal lives to work 60-hour weeks.
“Early on, I established a priority list: God, family, country, community and company,” Schultz explains. “The company is last. If you take that strictly, of course, you’d be living on the street, so there’s a definite balance between those commitments. But to be fulfilled, you need that balance.”
It wasn’t an empty exercise. Schultz left Arthur Anderson in 2000 because he wasn’t willing to put in the 14-hour days and weekend time needed to reach the next level. Instead, he found a position with another company that offered challenging work yet still respected the work/life balance he sought.
Now at Battelle, where he works an average of 45 hours a week, Schultz says he doesn’t have to sacrifice career aspirations for personal time. Unless there’s a looming deadline or an after-hours client meeting, Schultz doesn’t work on Sundays, and weekdays he’s usually home for dinner with his family.
Part three will take a look at communications in the new work/life scene.
