Now that I’m a manager, I’ve found that it’s partly up to me to ensure that my reports have good work/life balance. I’ve seen other supervisors ignore this issue, expecting that work should be the only thing that matters to employees, and the department is a revolving door.  Here are some of the methods I’ve used or seen used effectively:

• Make expectations clear, while giving my reports the freedom to achieve tasks in the timeframe and manner that works best for them.  This means that if it’s the day before a holiday and all the work is done, I might suggest they take off early.

• Help them find the time to undertake activities that are personally meaningful to them, like going to a friend’s wedding the weekend before a project is due, or signing up for a creative writing seminar that takes them out of the office for an hour each week. 

• Give employees laptops, cell phones, and Blackberries to make it easier for them to balance the needs of work and family.  Again, what’s important is that the work gets done, not whether it’s completed in the office during the hours of 9 to 5.

Other measures that organizations are putting in place to encourage work/life balance are flexible schedules and telecommuting.  Flextime arrangements such as reduced or part-time or compressed schedules (for example, the employee works 40 hours from Monday-Thursday and takes Friday off) are becoming more common and accepted as companies acknowledge the struggles families with two working parents face in caring for children.  Flexible scheduling sometimes incorporates job sharing, in which a full-time position is split between two people. 

There’s no doubt that seriously advocating work/life balance is a challenge for today’s managers.  What are your strategies?