Phrase of the week: WORK-LIFE BALANCE!
You know what it's like ... You'll be driving along and all of a sudden you will see four or five of exactly the same type of car (even in the same colour) in a matter of minutes. Or over a few days every time you turn on your radio the same song will be playing (for me it's been Michael Buble's "Just haven't met you yet"!) more recently. I like to think of it as a co-incidence. This week I have experienced another slightly more work-related co-incidence. I interviewed four fairly senior candidates a few days ago and when I asked them specifically why they were looking to leave their current role, they all answered with exactly the same response: ''I am just looking for a better work-life balance".
Each of them had the identical response - almost as if they had all plotted to give the same answer word for word.
Does anyone really know what the term "work-life balance" actually even means? When I asked each of the four candidates to elaborate slightly, it became quite clear that they didn't really know what it meant either.
It's just a phrase that has crept into the "employment vernacular" and so job seekers feel compelled to drop it into to responses during interview.
For some it might be the ability to work remotely one day a week; for others it might mean being able to get to the gym during the day but outside of the core rushed lunch hour; while some may just want to be able to leave the office at 5pm one day each week to get to an art-therapy course they have enrolled in.
When I asked the candidates this week if they had actually asked their current employer for this amount of flexibility, in each case the answer was no. They just assumed that the answer would be no, so they had decided to look for a new job rather than speaking to their manager. These were senior candidates who had made an assumption rather than presenting a case for some flexibility.
In today's employment climate, employers want to hold on to their good talent. It's far easier to say to a manager you have worked with for three years that you would like to work from home once a week, as opposed to turning up to a interview for a new job and expecting working remotely to be offered to you on a platter ...
It can't hurt to ask ...
Image courtesy of: EngineeringDaily.net
posted by Matthew Bradbury @ C Sharp. Complete Staff Solutions.. at
4:52 PM
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