Census Work/life balance

Work to live, live to work, etc.

We hear term "work/life balance" bandied about and after hearing you basically get no time off for parental leave (astonishing btw) in the US, I thought I'd check what kind of arrangements your work has for you to maintain work/life balance. How do you ensure you have time for yourself, and not your company.

If you're unsure of any terms and their meaning, ask in the thread and someone can advise.

So, an actual poll that is intended to be somewhat reflective of people's experience. Shocking!

 

In addition to the poll results, I get free breakfast, lunch, and dinner from the various 20+ cafeterias, restaurants, and food joints on campus.

 

You lucky *****. I only get one free meal per shift.

 

I did have flexible working arrangements and freedom to leave/come in at whatever time I wanted.

 

My job is insane, at times, but I also have a ton of benefits that most other people do not have. The one thing I don't have is paid family leave, but NY State is actually phasing that in this year at least in part (it's the best in the country, but nowhere near Euro-zone coverage).

 

Very flexible working conditions for me (still holding onto my old job I held while at Uni for the time being as I job shop for a role related to my degree).

Mine: penalty Rates, freedom to pickup and give away shifts, freedom to leave early, rostered days off, extended breaks if I want.

 

Do you have your own private jet?

 

I do not. I'm also talking about "most American workers" not "I'm in the 1% and live in a gilded tower"...

 

most benefits but obviously not flex time and stuff like that since i work at a hospital

its pretty good over here

 

25 days leave plus 8 bank holidays. Can work from home when I want. I tend to do this at least once a week, sometimes 2. Most of the management team don’t come into the office on Fridays. Also handy for hangover days.

 

Oddly enough, I lost getting overtime when I got promoted - well, real overtime at least. Since my schedule went from weekly to monthly, OT was unlikely anyways, but if I did, I'd get vacation time only... a separate type of vacation time that doesn't add to my regular vacation time, and expires after six months.
Needless to say, any request made to me to work overtime is met with ".... no."

 

My set-up is pretty damn good, but it wouldn't mean much if it wasn't used.

Maintaining your work/life balance is half having a good employer and smart bosses and half developing the work habits to also keep it on an even keel.

 

That's how they get you!

 

I work at a distillery. I get health insurance and that's about it. And free booze every once in a while, but I don't drink often enough to need to keep that much alcohol in my home.

 

Is that a benefit for your work life balance though? My understanding was that was part of a strategy to keep people at their place of work for longer hours?

Jesus.

 

True, but it does save me a lot of money and time prepping dinner.

 

How is your privacy, Vivec?

 

Oh no doubt, and I miss just having a variety of bread and condiment options so I could at least make toast at work (Which we had at Macquarie Bank - oh, and Tim Tams. ) But I worry that it'll end up taking the best years of people's lives because they're at work from 8-9 every day.

Privacy is a bourgeois concept. There are no secrets from the State, the party, and the workers.

 

Oh, see, here's the great thing. I can just take an extra box during lunchtime, fill it up, and take dinner home, so I don't have to stay past my normal time.

It's pretty fine, why?

 

I'm jealous. In our current office location, there's nowhere convenient to eat, except the occasional food truck - and we're still held to a strict 30 minute lunch.

 

Why though?

I just said to my team, and I do this consciously because I need them to start doing the same - "hey guys, my meetings all got cancelled so I'm heading home to work for the afternoon." I need to do this because they keep coming up meekly to me and saying "a friend is in town, do you mind if I take a long lunch and make up the hours another time?" and I have to say "Yes, I mind. Take the lunch, don't stress the hours, there are plenty of times where you've done more than you're required."

I honestly have a phenomenal team of people but they are all senior managers so I don't mind them deciding how they make up their hours. But every time I show them trust (I had one guy whose wife had a 3 day conference in NZ and he wanted to work remotely from there and he was really nervous about asking until I said "yes" before he'd finished his pitch) i get dividends from it. Tenfold.

Unless it's a peak service time and staff aren't servicing customers, I say let them have a longer lunch now and then. And also, lunch hr = standard terminology!

 

In all fairness, they did actually institute a policy recently that any staff - down to the call center agents - can request to have an hour lunch, with an extension of your work day by half an hour; but they are rather strict for the lunches. We get paid the same as managers, but we don't have some of their privileges. However, one of the stranger policies is that the managers have no job protection, whereas everyone else below them does.
Our boss does give us a great deal of leeway, but we're also constrained by the often arbitrary rules of state government work, unfortunately.

 

Yeah that's a really strange situation. Your emoji is apt.

Timing of the Economist is on point...

"Europe has 9 of the world's ten most productive nations, despite spending August on holiday".

 

I work an insane shift. I typically wake up around 3:00 in the afternoon (more on that later), sometimes earlier if it’s the weekend. I then go to my pizza delivery job until about 9:00, later in the summertime. I then come home and spend some quality time with my wife.

Around 12:30 AM, I leave the house to go to my newspaper delivery job, getting home about 6:15 most mornings. I then get a couple hours of free time to play video games, then it’s off to bed to start a new day that afternoon.

I haven’t taken a day off from the newspaper gig in almost 6 years. My evenings off from pizza delivery vary from week to week, but I try to make the most of them whenever I get one.

It’s a super busy schedule, but I’ve found the perfect balance between work, sleep, play, and family time.