Nearly two weeks ago, Facundo, a lawyer who lives in Buenos Aires, decided he would work fewer hours. He used to wake up at dawn and could not see his 3 months old baby awake. After a 12 hours working day, he would return home to find his little girl asleep again.

“I realised that in work life you get many opportunities, but raising your child happens once in a lifetime”, he says.

How many times have you thought you needed to change your routine in order to achieve work-life balance? If you reflect on this almost on a daily basis, maybe it is time to take the first step: you need to have enough time to spend with your family, on your hobbies and the things you are interested in.

Even though new technologies have simplified the way we work, they have also made organizations get used to demanding answers 24/7, “enslaving” many employers. Answering e-mails during resting hours, receiving labour messages in social networks or finishing a presentation doing remote work on a resting day. Each of these situations has become extremely usual.

Latin America is not unfamiliar with this. According to the International Labour Organization (ILO), 67 % of developed countries and the European Union have established a compulsory limit on working hours of 40 hours a week. In Latin America, only 9% of countries have set the same limit.

Furthermore, certain private consultancies state that Latin American people may waste up to four hours per day to get from their home to their jobs and back. Quite an odyssey if you are trying to achieve work-life balance. Above all, the famous habit of “warming up the chair” is as dangerous as an excessive work load. “Frequently, leaving the work place on time is poorly seen, which creates a culture of staying until late in the office”, says Maria, a 31 years old engineer who works in an oil company in Buenos Aires’ downtown.

“Work-life balance does not mean the same neither for every worker nor for every job”, says Jamele Rigolini, an economist specialized in human development and poverty who works in the World Bank.

However, why do all of us feel overloaded? Why cannot we achieve work-life balance?

In order to answer those questions, we need to look back a bit in history. ”Women entering the labour market led them to develop a double agenda, having to balance work and family life. Men used to be more disconnected”, says researcher Patricia Debeljuh, director of the Family and Company Conciliation Centre in IAE Business School.

According to a World Bank research called “Gender Equality in the World of Work Matters”, women’s participation in the Latin American and the Caribbean’s workforce has grown 35% since 1990. The study came to the conclusion that by 2010 the levels of extreme poverty would have been of 30% if it weren’t for the increase of women’s labour incomes.

“Nevertheless, currently both men and women from Gen Y -many of whom were born in the 80’s-want to establish new rules. They noticed that the price their parents had to pay for not achieving work-life balance was too high”, explains Debeljuh.

If you are with your family, be with your family. 

“I am usually grumpy at home because my job is too exhausting”. “My family complains because I do not pay them enough attention due to work overload”. “I can make my partner/children/family do not feel unattended even though I have a lot of work to do”.  

These are a few statements that could be used to answer the survey of the campaign ”Make the click today”, developed by the Argentinian Advertisement Councils, which aims to reflect on the current work-life balance situation in order to create consciousness about the importance of our relationships in daily life.

“It is a paradox, we work to provide well-being for our loved ones, but they actually get the worse of  us as we are tired from work”, explains Debeljuh, who gave advise in the campaign.

“Work-life balance is a matter of ethic and productivity”, says Rigolini, “the needs of the worker may be adapted under certain conditions, and by doing so commitment and performance improve”.

Several companies have decided to make their working day more flexible and grant favourable conditions to balance work and family life.

The role of companies

“Twice a week I telecommute, which saves me time and money (I do not spend money on lunch, do not pay transport, and the company pays me back for internet expenses) and stops me from being physically tired  do to going to the office”, says Victoria, who works in a multinational consultancy with offices all over Latin America. She states the policies of the company to grant flexibility are very valuable.

Debeljuh encourages the introduction of the concept “Corporate Family Responsibility”, where companies acknowledge employees’ families as stakeholders. “When a company hires a technician, an analyst or a manager, it must understand that it is a person with a family”, he states.

“Companies are getting the habit of having a comprehensive look on people” says Virginia Meneghello, director of the commission of the campaign and Manager of Organizational Culture in Telecom, a telecommunications company.

For example, “policies must give place to new masculinities, by re-thinking paternity licenses”, but, for Meneghello “work-life balance is not strictly related to time, but also with other initiatives, such as providing economic services for employees”.

Despite the fact that many companies in Latin America have started to acknowledge the advantages of having motivated workers, experts such as Debeljuh  consider that “the State must provide support through legislation as several employers are not sensitive to their workers’ reality”.

According to Rigolini, “the State plays a key role in supervising and promoting workers’ rights” and he points out the importance of campaigns that aim to make workers aware of what are their rights and the reason for that. “There are things, such as having a 12 hours working day that cannot be seen as normal by an employee”.

In the meantime, on the other side of the Atlantic, several companies have seen that the reduction of working hours has proven to be successful. Since 2008, the company Iberdrola, established the intensive working day, which lasts 6 hours and 15 minutes, with 45 minutes of flexibility to enter or leave work. According to the company’s directors, among other benefits, productivity has improved and over half a million annual working hours have been gained, reducing absenteeism on 20% and labour accidents 15%.

Source: El País