Work-Life Integration:

Work-life balance refers to a set amount of time spent working each day compared to a set amount of time you put aside for your personal life. For example, you might work a 9-5 job, get home at 6pm, and have the evening to spend on self-care, personal admin, or family time. While there’s nothing inherently wrong with this approach, in the modern world of work, it is often impossible to strike a perfect work-life balance. It also suggests that work time and family time are entirely separate entities and aren’t interchangeable, which for many, just isn’t the case. Work-life integration, on the other hand, refers to the blend between your personal and professional life, rather than completely separating the two. In this article, we’ll look at how this approach can help to optimise growth and success both in and out of the workplace. 

Work-Life Integration: Where to Begin…

Assess Your Situation

If you’ve decided that you might be interested in work-life integration, then you’ll need to consider which areas you could benefit from making changes, be it spending more time with family or better managing a work project. Take some time to think about what areas in your life are imbalanced or causing you stress, then make a list of what your priorities are. Ask yourself, “What would an ideal week look like for me?”. Once you’ve done this, you can create a plan that incorporates what you need to make this integration happen.

Use Your Time Wisely

Working 9-5 is ideal for some, but for others, this schedule might not be conducive of their best work. Where possible, and this might mean an official arrangement with your employer, (see below) try and work within the timeframe where you’re most productive and able to focus. This might be early in the mornings or later in the evenings and perhaps that leaves you with enough time to do the school run (if applicable) when 3 o’clock comes around.

Embrace Flexibility

Work-life integration involves being less rigid than you would following a traditional work-life balance approach. This might mean finishing work later in the evening because you took a few hours out of your normal schedule to attend a family event, for example. Alternatively, the week ahead at work might be busier than usual so you might have to accommodate for this by working additional hours and then perhaps reducing these the following week.

Group Similar Tasks

Grouping similar tasks, also known as ‘task batching’ or ‘habit stacking’, during the day can be particularly helpful if you initially struggle to embrace a more blended approach. For example, you might have both personal and professional phone calls to make in one day. You could focus on all of these in the morning, for instance, rather than leaving personal phone calls until the evening, when you might no longer be in that headspace.

Speak to Your Employer

While there are definitely some changes you can make independently, your workplace can also play a key role. Perhaps you might already work according to a hybrid model, but you’d find it beneficial to switch your office days to accommodate for other family commitments, for example. While being clear about what you’d like is great, it’s also a good idea to be mindful that some accommodations are not always possible.

4 Benefits of Work-Life Integration

1. Enhanced Creativity

Improved wellbeing from work-life integration can mean your ability to think creatively can be positively affected. This is largely due to making more time and working more flexibly to pursue things that truly excite you such as hobbies and interests.

2. Reduced Stress

Work-life integration can reduce stress and contribute towards your personal growth and professional success for many reasons. For one, you’re more able to evenly distribute your focus on various aspects of your life, as you make more of an effort to better incorporate both. Additionally, work-life integration can improve your time management, as you make the effort to incorporate more of what you want and feel less dictated by deadlines that might not have previously aligned with the times you’re most productive.

3. Promotes Continuous Growth

Personal and professional growth is important to many of us. This might include getting better at a hobby or meeting a monthly target. With a now more flexible schedule, you encourage lifelong learning, now that you have time for hobbies or personal projects, or vice versa.

4. Stronger Relationships

Having a support network is invaluable to many of us for several reasons. From a personal perspective, having a supportive group of friends, partner, or family means someone to share happy times with, or to have a shoulder to lean on when things get tough. In the workplace, having a support network is equally important for increasing job satisfaction, innovation across the team, more confidence in team meetings, and improved motivation, to name just a few reasons.

Better managing your working and personal relationships can be a great way of improving these both. As you find ways to make more time to prioritise these, you may notice a positive impact on your overall wellbeing. This can allow you to be more present and engaged in both areas of your life, creating stronger connections and a more supportive environment.

Finding the right approach for you is a completely personal decision and may take some time to get there. This may also change based on factors such as stress levels or how busy you are, which may drive you to merge your personal and professional more or cause you to create more definite boundaries. If you’re interested in other approaches to your working and home life, take a look at our previous article Your Best Work-Life Balance Depends on Your Personality.