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The following is a selection of books on work / life balance – issues and suggested solutions to the issues. - 2009 Guide to Bold New Ideas for Making Work Work
- Balancing Acts
- Briefcase Moms: 10 Proven Strategies to Balance Working Mothers' Lives
- CEO of Me: Creating a Life that Works in the Flexible Work Age
- Dare to Change Your Job and Your Life
- Finding your S.m.i.l.e.
- Flexible Work Arrangements in CPA Firms
- Harvard Business Review on Work and Life Balance
- Life At Work
- Life Matters Creating a Dynamic Balance of Work, Family, Time and Money
- Mass Career Customization
- Making Change – Beyond Flexibility
- Never check E-Mail in the Morning: and Other Unexpected Strategies for Making Your Work Life Work
- Off-ramps and On-ramps - Keeping Talented Women on the Road to Success
- Promoting Your Talent – A guidebook for women and their firms (second edition)
- Stop Living your Job, Start Living Your Life: 85 Simple Strategies to Achieve Work/Life Balance
- Strategies for Reshaping the Workplace
- Telework: A Critical Component of Your Total Rewards Strategy
- The Myth of Work – Life Balance The Challenge of Our Time for Men, Women and Societies
- Tick Tock … Who Broke the Clock?
- Top Talent - Keeping Performance Up When Business Is Down
- Who's in charge anyway?
- Work Life Balance in the 21st Century
- Work-Life Effectiveness
- Work Life Integration: Case Studies of Organisational Change
- Workplace Flexibility – Innovation in Action
- Other suggested reading
2009 Guide to Bold New Ideas for Making Work Work The purpose of When Work Work was to study and document the emerging trends in finding new ways to make work "work" for all of us. Here are some of the findings: Many of us feel deprived, that we simply don’t have enough time with the people in our lives who are important to us: - 75% of employees report not having enough time for their children, up from 66% in 1992; and
- 61% report not having enough time for their husbands or wives, up from 50% in 1992.
Given the feeling of being pressed for time, it is not surprising that the vast majority of employees view having flexibility as an extremely or very important factor in deciding whether to take a new job. - 39% of employees rate having the flexibility to successfully manage work and personal or family life as extremely important, and another 47% rate it as very important.
Yet only 50% of employees in the U.S. strongly agree that they currently have the flexibility they need to successfully manage their work and personal or family life. So employees want effective and flexible workplaces, but what about employers? Why should they want them? We found that, considered together, the following five factors (which employees in the study were asked to rate on a four-point scale from strongly agree to strongly disagree) create a reliable scale for assessing “work-life fit”: - I have the schedule flexibility I need to successfully manage my work and family life.
- My work schedule/shift meets my needs.
- I have the co-worker support I need to successfully manage my work and family life.
- My supervisor cares about the effect of work on my personal/family life.
- My supervisor is responsive when I have personal/family business.
We next examined how the degree of work-life fit (with employees who agree or strongly agree with these statements having a higher work-life fit) affects a series of outcomes of importance to both employers and employees. Overall, employees who have a high work-life fit fare much better than employees who have moderate or low levels of work-life fit. They are more highly engaged and less likely to look for a new job in the next year, and they enjoy better overall health, better mental health, and lower levels of stress. Read the complete guide at: http://familiesandwork.org/site/research/reports/2009boldideas.pdf Balancing Acts
More than 250 Guiltfree, Creative Ideas to Blend Your Work and Your Life Barbara A. Glanz The word balance often strikes fear, guilt, and frustration into the hearts of working adults. This book, with simple, creative ideas shows how to nourish family, friends and self every day while on the job. It provides good examples of practical ways of blending the key spheres of life. Suggested retail price $14.95 Briefcase Moms: 10 Proven Strategies to Balance Working Mothers' Lives Lisa Martin Briefcase Moms presents a combination of coaching philosophy and practical working mother advice. A complete program of self-discovery and intentional change, it provides you with the tools and a plan to map your path to balance.
Practical, entertaining and inspiring, this book is for individuals who want success in all areas of their lives. In a down-to-earth and engaging style, Lisa shares her 10-step program and helps you make the right choices, take action and coach yourself to live the life you want. Suggested retail price $19.95 CEO of Me: Creating a Life that Works in the Flexible Work Age Dr. Ellen Ernst Kossek and Dr. Brenda Lautsch You are the CEO of your life. You can establish the new rules that will help you achieve true balance between work and the rest of your life. And if you don't do it, nobody else will. Now is the time to take control, and this is the book that will get you there. Drs. Ellen Kossek and Brenda Lautsch help you identify which of six worklife "patterns" you fit into and how to move towards a pattern that's more productive and comfortable for you, one step at a time. Wharton School Publishing Suggested retail price $26.99 Dare to Change Your Job and Your Life Carole Kanchier This book challenges readers to confront their lives in basic, honest ways. Providers a hands-on guide to change, growth, and redirection. It is based on interviews and professional analyses of more than 30,000 adults from all backgrounds. Suggested retail price $27.95 Finding your S.m.i.l.e. Anthony Pennimpede, CA This book is for those who are searching for more. The "more" could mean getting more from your career, more from your relationships, or simply getting more out of your life. This book, in conjunction with the AP3 Media website (www.AP3media.com), will help you find what you're searching for (the thing you want "more" of). It will help you discover your hidden potential, develop that extra self-confidence, and improve your life. The tools will help you achieve your goals and serve as your guide on your path to success in your career and your life. Suggested retail price $25.99 Flexible Work Arrangements in CPA Firms Issued by the AICPA in conjunction with Barney Olmsted Use flexible work arrangements to attract the best applicants, retain and motivate personnel, improve the seasonal compression of workloads, and serve clients better. Highlighting the growing interest in this program among public accounting firms, this insightful book presents an overview of the various types of flexible work arrangements, and salary and benefits guidelines This publication is intended as a resource for those employed in public accounting firms. Sample topics include: - How Flexible Work Arrangements Can Improve the Bottom Line
- Flexible Work Arrangements Explained
- Flextime
- Compressed Workweeks
- Regular Part-Time
- Job Sharing
- Work Sharing
- Flexplace (Telecommuting)
- Leaves and Sabbaticals
- Other Models
- Salary and Benefits
- Managing Flexible Work Arrangements
- Checklists for an Office at Home
- Sample Policies
- Sample Request Forms
- Suggested Readings
To order, call 888-777-7077 and request product number 090425. The suggested retail price $24.95 USD. Harvard Business Review on Work and Life Balance With articles ranging from an in-depth look at the "mommy-track" to perspectives on telecommuting, this book will help HR professionals and employees at all levels understand the oftentimes delicate balance between our professional and personal lives. From the preeminent thinkers whose work has defined an entire field to the rising stars who will redefine the way we think about business, The Harvard Business Review Paperback Series delivers the fundamental information today's professionals need to stay competitive in a fast-moving world. Suggested retail price $19.95 USD Life at Work
Beyond Compensation and Benefits Published by WorldatWork In the early 1900s, government's goal was to pass laws to just make employees' lives at work a little more equitable. Now, in this new millennium, employers are taking control of the workplace and "equitable" is going beyond the concepts of compensation and benefits. This book serves as a primer for anyone interested in learning the ABCs of those intangible aspects of the workplace: acknowledgement, balance of work/life, culture, development and environment. Suggested retail price $29.95 USD Life Matters Creating a Dynamic Balance of Work, Family, Time and Money A.Roger Merrill and Rebecca R. Merrill The Merrills, time management experts who co-authored First Things First with Stephen Covey (The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People), expand their range here to cover creative ways to successfully balance four major aspects of life: family, money, work and time. The premise of their program rests on what the authors call three gotta do's-validate expectations, optimize effort and develop navigational intelligence. For example, if you have determined for yourself and your family that financial security is important (validate expectations), it is necessary to take steps to achieve this (optimize effort) by, say, getting out of consumer debt. Navigational intelligence is the ability to make appropriate decisions when unpredictable events arise that may interfere with your focus. The Merrills borrow a paradigm from their earlier book that divides tasks into four quadrants; urgent, not urgent, important and unimportant. Drawing on personal anecdotes, the authors show how this division can facilitate making choices that balance the requirements of a family life with earning a living. Suggested retail price $21.95 Making Change – Beyond Flexibility Lisa D’Annolfo Levey, Meryle Mahrer Kaplan and Aimee Hororwitz
2008 Catalyst This series of two publications describes Catalyst’s Work Life Effectiness (“WLE”) approach , why it is good for businesses and employees, and how individuals can support WLE in their daily work. a. Making Change – Beyond Flexibility
Work-Life Effectiveness as an Organizational Tool for High Performance
This book explains the framework and concepts of WLE and shows how organizations can incorporate it into their business strategies. b. Making Change – Beyond Flexibility
Creating Champions for Work-Life Effectiveness
This book describes how leaders, managers, employees and human resources practitioners can become WLE champions. Both publications can be obtained through the Catalyst website, www.catalyst.org, at a cost of $15 USD per publication. Mass Career Customization
(Harvard Business School Press, 2007) Cathleen Benko and Anne Weisberg Many of today's business leaders typify the traditional work force while the vast majority of tomorrow's leaders do not. The workforce has changed while the workplace has not. Sweeping changes in the way we work, live and build our careers are here to stay. Mass Career Customization offers a corporate lattice model that responds to these realities. Cathleen Benko is the chief talent officer at Deloitte and Touche USA and her book is a prescription for workplace change based on her experiences at D&T, where an internal study found that their flexibility policies were doing only half their job. This book is also supported by a website, http://www.masscareercustomization.com/about_mcc.html. This site has online features and interactive exercise. Suggest retail price US$29.95 Never check E-Mail in the Morning: and Other Unexpected Strategies for Making Your Work Life Work Julie Morgenstern Maintaining control in today's hectic workplace is a challenge -- everything is lean, competitive, and uncertain. What does it take to survive? Through the mastery of brand-new strategies, Morgenstern shows you how small changes in your thinking and behavior will help you achieve the seemingly impossible -- boost your value, increase your job security, and afford you the time to still have a life. Suggest retail price $17.50 Off-ramps and On-ramps
Keeping Talented Women on the Road to Success (McGraw-Hill Ryerson College Division, 2007) Sylvia Ann Hewlett and Carol Buck Luce With talent shortages looming over the next decade, what can companies do to attract and retain the large number of professional women who are forced off the career highway? By documenting the successful efforts of a group of cutting-edge global companies to retain talented women and reintegrate them if they've already left, Off-Ramps and On-Ramps answers this critical question. Working closely with companies such as Ernst & Young, Goldman Sachs, Time Warner, General Electric and others, Sylvia Ann Hewlett identifies what works and why. Based on firsthand experience with these companies, along with extensive data that provides the most comprehensive and nuanced portrait of women''s career paths, this book documents the actions forward-thinking companies must take to reverse the female brain drain and ensure their access to talent over the long term. List price $36.95 Promoting Your Talent – A guidebook for women and their firms (second edition) Nancy R. Baldiga, CPA Issued by the Work/Life and Women's Initiatives Executive Committee of the AICPA. The author, Nancy Baldiga, CPA interviewed over 50 women, human resource directors, and managing partners to see what their firms were doing to ensure staff retention and advancement of women CPAs. This book contains the observations, reflections and recommendations on how women CPAs can promote their talents or their firms can promote the talented staff they have. The second edition also includes additional information, perspectives and recommendations from women CPAs working in business and industry. In Promoting Your Talent, you'll find suggestions, tips and ideas on: - Utilizing innate skills for practice development
- Effective networking
- Positive mentoring
- Changing the business model to promote talent
- Addressing the culture
- Developing flexible work arrangement strategies
- Plus — advice for young women CPAs
This guidebook is perfect for every firm and every woman CPA who is looking to enhance her career in accounting. To order, go to: www.knotia.ca/store/. The product number is 02020 and the suggested retail price is $24.50 USD Stop Living your Job, Start Living Your Life: 85 Simple Strategies to Achieve Work/Life Balance Andrea Molloy In this ramped-up world, there never seems to be enough time. Everyone wants to "have it all," but time constraints challenge people to juggle career pressures with social, family, and personal commitments. Stop Living Your Job Start Living Your Life is a roadmap for remaking one's life to match those most heartfelt priorities. Packed with interactive tools including 50 Action Tasks, 25 Action Questions, 18 Hot Tips, and Four Quick Quizzes, it empowers readers to control their responsibilities instead of having their responsibilities control them. Offering realistic and practical solutions to everything from decluttering space, managing finances, staying committed, and pursuing dreams, Stop Living Your Job Start Living Your Life helps create a sense of balance, achievement, and enjoyment in everyday life. Suggested retail price $16.95 Strategies for Reshaping the Workplace Angelina B. Laycock In her book, Strategies for Reshaping the Workforce, Laycock introduces the reader to the concept of the Work-Life Movement, explaining its historical background and how it affects companies today. She then lays out the major components of the Work-Life Movement and in subsequent sections you are taught how to: a) Guide the changes b) Use new approaches in managing people. Laycock then focuses on the two major Work-Life Options, dependent care and flexible scheduling, explaining each in great detail and how they impact on an employee's life, both at work and at home. Suggested retail price $14.95 USD Telework: A Critical Component of Your Total Rewards Strategy Published by WorldatWork Telework is a critical component of an organization's total rewards strategy for attracting and retaining top talent. Unfortunately, its success depends on using it for the right positions and the right people, as well as implementing an effective infrastructure. Without a well thought strategy, programs fail, managers become resentful and employees are frustrated. This book helps organizations to successfully implement or expand telework programs using practical steps and sample templates. It explains in detail: - How telework supports the total rewards model in attracting, motivating and retaining employees
- How telework can support additional important operational goals of the organization, as well as those of the HR, management and technology functions - all critical for operating a successful program
- How telework programs fit into a business continuity plan
Suggested retail price $34.95 USD The Myth of Work – Life Balance The Challenge of Our Time for Men, Women and Societies Richenda Gambles, Suzan Lewis and Rhona Rapoport Many regard the ways in which paid work can be combined or ‘balanced' with other parts of life as an individual concern and a small, rather self-indulgent problem in today's world. Some feel that worrying about a lack of time or energy for family relationships or friendships is a luxury or secondary issue when compared with economic growth or development. In the business world and among many Governments around the world, the importance of paid work and the primacy of economic competitiveness, whatever the personal costs, is almost accepted wisdom. Profits and short term efficiency gains are often placed before social issues of care or human dignity. But what about the impact this has on men and women's well being, or the long-term sustainability of people, families, society or even the economy? Drawing from interviews and group meetings in seven diverse countries – India, Japan, the Netherlands, Norway, South Africa, the UK and USA – this book explores the multiple difficulties in combining paid work with other parts of life and the frustrations people experience in diverse settings. There is a myth that ‘work-life balance' can be achieved through quick fixes rather than challenging the place of paid work in people's lives and the way work actually gets done. As well as exploring contemporary problems, this book attempts to seed hope and new ways of thinking about one of the key challenges of our time. Suggested retail price $110;.99 Tick Tock … Who Broke the Clock?
Solving the Work-Life Balance Equation Warren Woods and William Guillory This book approaches the "time-life" dilemma in a radically different way--your personal and work life are one, inseparable whole! This book clearly outlines the seven-step process of bringing your life activities in alignment with your innermost values--those values that are enduring over your lifetime. They include family, faith, success and service to others. The book contains "real life" stories of the authors' and others' experiences. Suggested retail price $7.95 Top Talent
Keeping Performance Up When Business Is Down Sylvia Ann Hewlett
Harvard Business Press, 2009 If you think the downturn has already hurt your business, imagine what would happen if you lost your best people. Make no mistake-- the massive layoffs and rising unemployment that have rocked the marketplace do not mean that star performers have nowhere else to go. Based on cutting-edge research, this memo reveals what you must do now to keep your top talent on board and firing on all cylinders. The pragmatic steps include non-monetary rewards and stress busting behaviours. Who's in charge anyway?
How parents can teach children to do the right thing Kathy Lynn This book provides a clear road map for parents who want to focus on the tough but rewarding job of raising children to be responsible, self-disciplined adults. Through anecdotes and real questions parents sent to her columns, Kathy Lynn teaches practical parenting skills that can begin paying off immediately. Suggested retail price $19.95 Work Life Balance in the 21st Century edited by Diane M. Houston As the twenty-first century begins, UK employees work the longest hours in Europe. Workplace stress and home responsibilities are among the top five causes of absence from work. Yet work-life balance has emerged as a key concern for employers, policy makers and the media. This edited volume contains findings from 14 research projects within the Economic And Social Research Council's Future of Work Programme. The research examines the notion of employment flexibility and the effects of gender and care responsibilities on work and work performance. Conflicting needs of employers and employees and the gender divisions in work and family life call into question the feasibility of achieving the Government's aim of work-life balance for everyone. Suggest retail price $134.95 Work-Life Effectiveness
Bottom-Line Strategies for Today's Workplace Karol Rose This book builds a strong business case for designing, implementing and enhancing work-life programs. It outlines facts, uncovers trends and reinforces the significance of a frequently overlooked and underappreciated component of total rewards. The book encompasses a broad range of work-life and HR-related topics, such as how to: - Develop a work-life strategy
- Conduct a needs assessment
- Implement dependent care programs
- Encourage workplace flexibility
- Design management training initiatives.
Suggested retail price $49.95 USD Work Life Integration: Case Studies of Organisational Change Suzan Lewis, Cary L. Cooper Developments in IT and communication technology, coupled with the global 24 hour market, have led to boundaries between work and personal life becoming ever more blurred, while work/life policies and practice struggle to keep up. This book aims to challenge traditional thinking on work life balance, and to explore different ways of promoting change at many levels. It provides a historical overview of the topic, critiques contemporary approaches and offers creative ideas for integrating work and personal life in local, national and global contexts. Suggested retail price $120.99 Workplace Flexibility – Innovation in Action World at Work // Alliance for Work-Life Progress
2008 The road to flexibility is well travelled. This resource is designed to take readers on a tour of existing resources. It is designed to offer answers to organizational questions, testimonies to alleviate organizational concerns, facts to counter common by erroneous myths, and options for introducing organizational skills that are needed to create a fluid, flexible work environment that delivers the agility required to survive and thrive in today’s fast-changing economy. Free e-Book http://www.worldatwork.org/waw/adimLink?id=26715 Other suggested reading, from the article “The Art of Relaxation” from the Institute of Chartered Accoutants of Alberta Newsletter “Spotlight” For more on how to de-stress, head to your local library or bookstore for this random selection: Work to Live: The Guide to Getting a Life, by Joe Robinson. Berkley Publishing Group, 2003. Don't Sweat the Small Stuff and Its all Small Stuff: Simple Ways to Keep the Little Things from Taking Over Your Life, by Dr. Richard Carlson. Hyperion, 1998. 60 Second Stress Management: The Quickest Way to Relax and Ease Anxiety, by Andrew Goliszek. New Horizon Press, 1992. The Art of Self-Renewal: Balancing Pressure and Productivity On and Off the Job, by Dr. Barbara MacKoff. Lowell House, 1993. Career Success/Personal Stress: How to Stay Healthy in a High Stress Environment, by Christine A. Leatz and Mark W. Stolar. McGraw-Hill, 1992 |
