What is Balance Anyway?

I'm not sure, but I'm wondering whether the pendulum is going to swing soon in discussions about work-life balance. The notion of improving balance is a cornerstone of recruiting in many accounting firms - at least the larger ones. Many smaller firms seem to regard it as one of those issues big concerns can afford to worry about while they make sure the bills get paid. The Wall Street Journal's Jared Sandberg points out that former GE chief Jack Welch wrote in his book Winning that "the work-life policies in the company brochure are mainly for recruiting purposes… People who publicly struggle with work-life balance problems...get pigeonholed as ambivalent, entitled, uncommitted or incompetent - or all of the above."

Sandberg writes about work-life balance in today's Cubicle Culture column in the Journal. He says that today, cell phones, BlackBerries and the like haven't so much extended the work day so much as they stirred work and home life into "a stew that often satisfies neither quarter." He then goes on to say that (a) the notion of completely separate work and home lives is a product of the 1950s and 60s, (b) people spend less of their life working now than they have in the past and (c) for many people work-life balance is really about blending work and home life through the course of the day. One financial consultant:

...sees farmers working long hours in the same way her great-grandparents did; they milked cows at 5 a.m. and fixed tools after supper. "They didn't see it as a work-home balance, it was just all the stuff you did," she says. "With technology, we have to relearn those skills that our great-grandparents already had."

One of the folks commenting on the story had this to say:

Pager, take home laptops, cell phones and the rest are oddly comforting. Before that all came along I used to login at all times of the day and night to make sure systems were up and tasks were getting completed. Now I login only when the pager or my boss goes off.

Good story, with a lot of food for thought.

Back to the Future:Mixing Work, HomeIs a Very Old Dilemma [WSJ - $]