Balancing career

1
Balancing career

• Balancing
• roles
• time
• ways of being and doing
• Balancing a womans concern?

2
Balance a post-modern concept

• Economic necessity
• Change in traditional role patterns, values and
  personal and societal expectations
• Personal Growth
• Personal Well-Being

3
Ways of looking at balance

• Personal, Organisational or Societal
  responsibility
• Balancing roles
• Balanced ways of being in the world
• (mastery-intimacy/agency and communion)
• Removing the barriers between private and public
  life

4
Balancing roles

• Work with
• Family (children, parents, extended)
• Leisure
• Training
• Voluntary service

5
Work-family integration

• Work and family are not always at conflict
• Work has potential to enrich family life
• Resources
• Networking
• Flow on effect of growth experiences
• Family has potential to enrich working life
• Instrumental, emotional, informational, appraisal
  support

6
Dual career families

• Little effect on quality of marriage but
• Work family conflict with women taking majority
  of responsibility for homemaking and childcare
  (second shift)
• Restricted career achievements
• Competition and jealousy
• Identity problems
• Impact on children?

7
Role balancing

• desire organisation skills goal setting
  time-management health and stamina
• does your partner share and/or support your
  desire for balancing?
• Is your job the right job to balance?
• Is your organisation supportive?
• Balancing through sequencing or doing all at once?

8
Role balancing Organisational support

• Flex time
• Job sharing
• Child (dependent) care
• Promotion criteria (assumptions)
• Culture

9
Why do we struggle to maintain a balance?

• Agency and communion the mastery-intimacy
  balance

10
Agency and Communion (Bakan, 1966)

• Duality of existence
• Two basic opposite motivational directions
• Agency refers to existence of organism as an
  individual self-protection, self-expansion,
  self-assertion, achievement, pride, formation of
  separations and mastery of the environment
• Communion participation of the individual in
  some larger organism union openness, love,
  caring, dialogue and intimacy

11
Mastery-Intimacy

• Mastery
• emphasis on logic
• concern with tasks
• high standards for others and self
• desire to be in charge
• valuing autonomy
• activity and productivity focus
• confidence

• Intimacy
• emphasis on feelings
• concern with people needs
• desire to collaborate and be interdependent
• making deeper connections
• process focus
• tolerance for weaknesses

12
Consequences of striving for mastery and
avoidance of intimacy

• Energy focused on work
• personal life experienced as mundane
• striving for mastery in all activities
• relaxation difficult productive vacations,
  competitive leisure activities workaholism
• Intolerance for weaknesses and mistakes and need
  to control others task oriented
• Few personal friends and close relationships
• Feeling rushed and overloaded reluctance to ask
  for help avoidance of conflict

13
Why do we seek mastery over intimacy?

• Childhood ideal image
• Public rewards
• Insecurity
• Organisations enhance this need
• internal competition
• externalised sources of performance criteria
• career models that emphasise vertical growth and
  autonomy

14
Consequences for organisation of imbalance
mastery-intimacy

• Unsustainable employment practice
• Competitive, rather than co-operative work
  environments
• Control- and therefore knowledge -dependent
  systems
• Selfish (unethical) career behaviour
• Burn-out lack of work-satisfaction motivation
  mistakes

15
Private and public work-spheres overlap

• Work factors such as degree of control peer
  relationships and job-demands have significant
  effect on family functioning
• family functioning, well-being of children,
  positive relationships etc. have significant
  effect on functioning in paid work
• Despite data supporting this interdependence
  organisations still reward individuals who are
  able to keep their family life hidden

16

• Study keeping ones private life entirely
  separate was still one of the main criteria of
  success
• Study where flex and childcare options are
  available employees experience severe pressure
  not to use these

17
Organisational costs of separation

• Dissociation of skills
• Dissociation of ethics
• Schizophrenic employees distrust
• Benefits of connection
• Organisational commitment
• Sustainable HR practice
• Joint solutions are created
• Crisis avoidance

18
What do you need to know?

• Role balancing (balancing what we do)
• How to
• Balancing ways of being
• Why is this important?
• Why is this difficult in an organisational
  environment?