So as it is read: work-life balance, there is no confusion about what is required from a work place. The part that says "life" brings many questions. Does life mean just to have enough time to go home and arrange basic needs like food, clothing and shelter? Does enjoying life mean nothing? Often corporate professionals are very busy trying to solve the issues at work place; they hardly notice the issues at home.
Now the balance is the part I find the trickiest. As an accountant I cannot but try to quantify things, so here goes: there are 168 hours a week. And if you are working 5 days a week and average 9 hours a day then you are spending approximately 26% of your time at work. Well, now that does not look bad, only a quarter of the all your available time for all the money you earn. But let us look at this from another angle.
On a daily basis you would need around 8 hours to sleep and 2 hours to perform the other basic human needs (eating and everything that follows). So on a weekday 19 hours (10 hours of being just human and 9 hours of corporate professionalism) have gone by without you getting anything out of life. So, the 5 hour that you get daily, does it look like the right balance? I did not even count the hours you spent in traffic. Does it seem fair?
So 25 hours ( 5 days multiplied by 5 hours per day) on weekday and 24 hours on weekdays. 24 hours a day minus 10 hours of being human and 2 hours of other chores that you have been keeping to do over the weekend is actually what you really get to live life. So to sum up: average weekly time spent on work is 45 hours vs average weekly time spent on enjoying life is 49 hours; so the balance is there, theoretically.
But looking at it practically, can a corporate professional actually get everything done to ensure smooth career progression with 9 hours of work 5 days a week? The answer in most of the cases will be no. Late night work, working over the weekend is very common. So what could be done?
Well, throughout the article mostly questions have been asked. Let us try to answer those: Work life balance is as much an issue for the employer as it is for employee. Many work places already offer the balance and their employees' love this fact about their employer no matter how much they complain about the salary. So if an employer is not offering the balance yet, then they are definitely giving away the chance to get some of the smartest people out there. The ones that are already offering the work life balance should not just kick their employees out of office after a certain hour. Their focus should be to improve employee's efficiency and enable them to do their work in the stipulated time because sacrificing work to manage life is a negative ROI project.
From an individual's perspective the answer is quite difficult. It is up to the individual to decide what sort of employer one should go for, given one has a choice. One may go for faster career progression while sacrificing certain aspects of life while another will want to maintain the balance no matter where they work. This decision will not be the same throughout the life-cycle of a corporate professional.
As family life grows for an individual it will be more important to have the right balance. But one thing should be kept in the back of mind, no matter what sort of employers you have and what stage of the cycle you are in, work pressure will always be there in a corporate set up. It is up to you to approach work smartly and try to get a balance out of it. At the end of the day you will be the one who might be missing out of life.
The writer is an ACMA, CGMA, now working as Finance Manager- GL at British American Tobacco Bangladesh, ahmed_shafquat_noor@bat.com
Balancing work & life: Corporate way
Ahmed Shafquat Noor | Published: April 09, 2015 00:00:00 | Updated: November 30, 2026 06:01:00
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