For those of us navigating the professional world for the first or second time, this space can be full of confusing practices that don\u2019t make a lot of sense. The words \u201cYou should take an hour lunch! We all need a break; meal time is not work time\u201d are all too often spoken by that supervisor who can\u2019t find the time to take their own lunch break. The 9AM expected start time is the known standard in many work places, but when the entire office is in at 7:30 it\u2019s hard to tell who is early and who is late.<\/p>\n
These days in the professional field, the concept of Work-Life Balance is incredibly polarized. There are the employers that value and preach this concept in favor of mental\/social\/emotional benefits while acting accordingly in the office. There are also employers that fully acknowledge the demands of their establishment and don\u2019t even pretend that their employees have a healthy Work-Life Balance because it\u2019s simply all work, work, work, work, work. And finally, the companies in the middle. These employers really hope you\u2019ll leave early to go to the gym some days, encourage you to get sleep when you need it, and preach the importance of the occasional personal day. But they also cast side long glances when your lunch was a full hour, your start time isn\u2019t before the standard, and you\u2019re the first one out of the office \u2013 at 7PM.<\/p>\n
The stress level at this contradictory type of workplace rivals that more straightforward \u201cno eat, no sleep, no personal time\u201d lifestyle your college bestie at EY experiences. This added level of stress that comes from navigating a hypocritical landscape on top of a typical work load can be totally exhausting, but it doesn\u2019t have to be.<\/p>\n
At the NewCo Detroit Conference last month, I was introduced to a new type of \u201cworkstyle\u201d \u2013 Work-Life Integration (abbrev. WLI to appease my love of abbreviations and all things concise). WLI is a new type of outlook on your entire life \u2013 not just the portion of it spent at work. Work-Life Balance (WLB) implies that there is something about your work that is just so terrible you must have to do some extra great things in your personal life just to break even in terms of happiness. That sounds miserable. On the other hand, an employee practicing WLI understands that the 5\/7ths of your life spent behind a desk should be a cohesive and enjoyable part of who you are, not just what you do.<\/p>\n
Dan Schawbel, writer for Forbes, said it best when he wrote, \u201cNow, the new phrase is \u201cwork life integration,\u201d where professionals have to blend what they do personally and professionally in order to make both work. Many professionals, especially boomers, aren\u2019t prepared for this major shift because it\u2019s happened so fast, just like the speed of technology, that it\u2019s been hard to take a step back and come up with a better solution. Millennials, on the other hand, have already started to adapt to this reality. They\u2019re on Facebook talking to their friends at work and answering business emails when they leave the office.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n So here\u2019s the supervisors who don\u2019t take a lunch break, but answer texts from friends throughout the day. Forget about the sidelong glances from your cubicle mate when you\u2019re spending a hot second on Facebook. Here\u2019s to the millennials that answer emails at 11pm on a Friday night, but schedule personal appointments in the middle of the day.\u00a0Pay no attention to your friends\u2019 disappointed looks when you take a work call at dinner Saturday night. And here\u2019s to the over 1 hour long lunches that make up for the e-mail fire that had to be put out on a Sunday afternoon.<\/p>\n Cheers, Work-Life Integrators.\u00a0Try not to take too many conference calls during happy hour…<\/p>\n -Kayleigh<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" For those of us navigating the professional world for the first or second time, this space can be full of confusing practices that don\u2019t make a lot of sense. The words \u201cYou should take an hour lunch! We all need a break; meal time is not work time\u201d are all too often spoken by that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":210,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15661","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.challengedetroit.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15661","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.challengedetroit.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.challengedetroit.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.challengedetroit.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/210"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.challengedetroit.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15661"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.challengedetroit.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15661\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.challengedetroit.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15661"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.challengedetroit.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15661"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.challengedetroit.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15661"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}