Yesterday, Kris Dunn posted an article on HR Capitalist about work/life balance.

The gist: HR isn’t responsible for it.

The truth: Employees are responsible for their own work/life balance, and if they want more money, promotions and fame, they’re going to have to work harder than those around them.

I agree, but I don’t think work/life balance is about working less.

To me, work/life balance is the ability to do great work and get all of your other priorities accomplished, too. That means giving people the freedom to choose when and where to do their work so they can best balance every aspect of their life.

Sometimes you need to be in the office to get something done (I’d argue that’s really the case far less than managers would like to believe). Sometimes it doesn’t matter.

Sometimes all you need is an internet connection and a laptop or cell phone. Sometimes those aren’t options – when you’re at the dentist, for example – and you work at night.

The point is, people are working. Work/life balance isn’t about doing less work. It’s about having the freedom to choose when and where.

That’s something HR can influence.

(So what do you think, am I way off-base here? Are the number of hours worked part of work/life balance, too?)

Click here to read Kris’s full article

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In case you missed it, last Thursday I joined Leanne Chase from Career Life Connection, along with hosts Steve Boese and Shauna Moerke, to discuss work-life blend.

It was a great discussion, with a lot of awesome comments from the people who called in. If I had one complaint, it would be that the format lends itself to sound-byting more than it does in-depth discussion.

Here’s the call in a nut-shell: There’s no such thing as work-life balance. It’s about finding the blend of work and life that works best for you.

You can check out a much more robust (and better written) summary by Leanne at Career Life Connections, or listen to the call for yourself.

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In the last issue of his newsletter, Chris Brogan noted:

Companies and departments within companies work with the mindset that they should continue existing… With this in mind, realize that the changes you want to make will always die in committee. Realize that the shifts and the adaptations that need to happen for your business to compete will rarely come from within the organization. Understand that promoting from within, while noble, is going to kill your company because you’re pushing innovation to the side.

Have you ever created a really cool program only to have it die on the vine as 20 “key-stakeholders” (man, I hate that term!) analyzed and ripped it apart? Or worse yet, they approve it, but ask you make 117 changes before it goes live. And the program with all the required changes is nothing like the program you actually created.

I can’t say I agree with Chris that changes from inside always fail. But I do think that creating something mind-blowingly innovative is very challenging, particularly if you work in HR, where we thrive on the status quo.

What’s a renegade HR pro to do? You could always do it the Cali and Jody way: Launch a small, covert pilot within the company, but swear everyone to secrecy. Then, when the program works and you have the data to prove it, seek approval to role it out to the whole organization.

It could totally blow up in your face, but it’s crazy enough that it just might work!

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Work/life balance is one of those annoying and overused buzzwords that finds it way on a bingo card during boring meetings.

Trying to balance your work and life implies a few things:

1. Work sucks, so you need to much sure you leave enough time for life.
2. Work and life are distinctly separate.

Does work suck? Sometimes. It doesn’t always have to, though.

And as for work and life being distinct and separate… Do you stop thinking about work at five (or whenever your shift ends)? Do you stop thinking about your family and friends when you go in to work?

I prefer to think of work and life as a blend. The key to being happy at work and in life is to find the right blend of the two. The lines are blurring, with telecommuting, flexible work arrangements, and the controversial results only work environment (ROWE).

Tonight at 8 pm eastern, I’ll be speaking along with Leanne Chase of Career Life Connection on the HR Happy Hour, hosted by Steve Boese and Shauna Moerke.

There’s a chance (no promises) that Cali Ressler and Jody Thompson, the creators of ROWE, may make an appearance. Which should be interesting, since I both love and hate the results only work environment.

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(If you miss the live call, you can download it later)

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One of the unintended consequences of giving employees sick days and not letting them work from is that people come into work when they really shouldn’t.

People want to maximize the number of days they have off, and they don’t want to spend them stuck at home while sick. I’d imagine that organizations that use a paid time off (PTO) bank with no distinctions between sick, personal and vacation time struggle with this even more.

So what happens? People come to work when they’re pretty sick – not horribly ill, but relatively sick – and spread their germs to everyone else in the office. They don’t function quite as well, and neither do the people they get sick.

Of course, they function well enough to get some work done. They’re just not top notch. Why not let them work from home?

They get to keep their time off for when they can really enjoy it. You get work continuity and a healthier workforce.

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Yesterday’s post on pay for performance – and Dan Pink’s Ted Talk – generated some lively discussion in the comments section.

Based on some of the comments, and the discussion that followed, I think I may not have been as clear as I could have been in my post.

Keep reading…

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There’s a mismatch between what science knows and what business does.
- Dan Pink

In his recent presentation at TED, author and business consultant Dan Pink talked about two things I advocate heavily on Renegade HR – data based management and intrinsic motivation (and inspiration).

In the talk, Dan blows apart the notion of pay for performance as a way to increase employee performance. In fact, he says, pay for performance actually hurts performance for most tasks.

Keep reading…

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