The Balancing Act Isn’t Working Statistics
Latest studies have revealed that just under half of the working UK population feel like they’re spending too much time at work. Interestingly, women are around 5% likelier to be happy with their work-life balance than their male counterparts.
However, it’s not all bad news. A government study released the same week has shown that things have been gradually improving since 2012, with an increase in positivity about our lives taking hold and levels of anxiety falling across large parts of the British population.
Part of the difficulty in managing the balance has come about because of the digital revolution, and how we’re able to take our work with us wherever we go on our smartphones, making work accessible around the clock.
Steve Thompson, the Managing Director at Forward Role, who carried out the study, emphasised the importance of being able to block work out in your personal life. “On my phone alone, I get updates from two email accounts, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Vine, Snapchat, Instagram, WhatsApp, and that’s before text messages, calls and various push notifications from apps.”
“I think the key to getting a degree of balance is to ban yourself from physically having access to the phone when you’re at home and spending time with significant others. Sleep mode is a must at night-time. We have a box on our dinner table that phones are placed in at meal times, and we’ve also implemented a fines system for touching your phones when out with friends for a bit of fun!”
The National Statistics indicate that improvements are coming slowly and that we’re getting better at finding the balance, but there’s plenty of work to do in the meantime in order to improve our working lives and personal space.
By Jack J Collins, Editor, AllAboutCareers.com
Image courtesy of Flickr User, 'Tanja Föhr'
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