Written by Paul Slezak, Area Manager, Aquent Sydney

We often hear people telling us how important it is to strike a perfect Work Life Balance. You might have been asked, “How often do you already find yourself exhausted on a Monday afternoon?”, “How often do you take your work home with you?”, or “When did you last miss an important family event due to your work commitments?”. These questions are all designed to convince us to have more choice and control over our working lives, and to switch off and leave it all behind us at the end of the day.

But what if the answer to each of the questions posed above is actually “never”?

Could this possibly mean that you have found your perfect Work Life Balance?

For those of us who are fortunate enough to have found the perfect balance between a successful career, commuting to and from work, juggling external studies or sports commitments, raising a family and somehow still being able to relax (or even getting away on holidays!) without letting work invade our personal life, perhaps there is a new career-based utopia to strive for …

… The “Work-Work Balance”.

So what exactly is the rationale behind this relatively contemporary workplace phenomenon? Basically it comes down to the idea that while you are at work you know what you are doing, you know what your colleagues are doing, they know what you are doing, your boss knows what you are doing, you are enjoying what you are doing, you are motivated and challenged by what you do … I am sure you get my drift.

As an employer, if you are able to achieve the Work-Work Balance within your office environment, this will result in retaining highly-skilled team members, reducing recruitment costs, raising staff morale, and decreasing absenteeism (and even presenteeism – another workplace syndrome which I will explain later). As an employee, achieving and maintaining your Work-Work Balance will ensure that you are better equipped to handle any increasing work-related pressures, prevent feeling the downward spiral or any signs of burnout, identify new opportunities that will re-invigorate your job and career, and result in being really happy with your job.

It’s a well-known fact that satisfying, stimulating and self-fulfilling jobs are fairly difficult to come by. And once you have found the perfect job that you have been searching for, often the challenge is to maintain the high levels of motivation, ambition, drive and commitment to doing the best job possible. There is a saying that “finding the perfect job is a full-time job in itself”. To take this theory to a higher level, consider the idea that perhaps maintaining the challenges in and passion for your perfect job could also be a full-time job in itself. You might say that this is far more easily said than done.

I beg to differ.

Consider the following important steps to achieving your Work-Work Balance:

• Enjoy what you do
• Accept responsibility and accountability for your own tasks
• Remain focused on the job at hand
• Organise your time effectively
• Strive for open and honest team communication
• Increase the quality of your own individual activity levels
• Reduce unnecessary negative stress
• Always know what lies ahead in terms of personal growth and your own career development
• Spend time on interesting and challenging projects
• Don’t dwell on trivial non work-related issues

You need to look after Number One. We all appreciate that work takes up far too much of your time for you to stay where you are if you are not 100% happy. Some employers may say Number One is the Client, others may say it’s the Supplier, and others may go so far as to say it’s the internal Stakeholders.

When it comes to your career, you are Number One and if you look after your own best interests (by focusing on the Work-Work Balance “Action Plan”), job satisfaction will remain high, you will have fun at work, achieve personal and financial goals, and in turn you will deliver a top level of service to your clients, suppliers and internal stakeholders. After all, there is nothing worse than experiencing a classic case of the downward spiral – where you dwell on non business-critical issues, where you have no idea of what is expected of you now or in the future, where you think all your clients have turned against you, and where you start feeling very unchallenged and under-valued. You then start beating yourself up and rapidly lose interest in a job which you once really enjoyed. You may then feel burnt out, throw your hands up in despair, start calling in “sick”, or even worse, coming to work and doing nothing at all (being totally unproductive) – which is what I referred to earlier as presenteeism.

Most workplaces value initiative. You may feel very comfortable “cruising” along in a role where you often tell yourself you could carry out your job with your eyes shut. To be honest you will quickly find yourself disgruntled, cruising along the “highway to the danger zone” of boredom, low motivation and ultimately reach a dead end.

Get out of your comfort zone.

Consider putting your hand up and taking on an additional challenge. Learn something new and different. Take pride in doing the best you can.

Your employer may cover your mobile phone bill every month, they may provide your team with lunch every Friday, and you may even be lucky enough to have a company-funded parking spot in the CBD. However these morale boosters do nothing for your motivation if you are not achieving your goals, feeling challenged and continually inspired by what lies ahead for you.

Paul Slezak is the Sydney Area Manager for Aquent (www.aquent.com/mcs), a global firm that specialises in staffing solutions for the creative, marketing and communications industries. Through a network of nearly seventy offices in fifteen countries, Aquent services in the areas of print and Web design and production; advertising and media, marketing, public relations and business support. Paul also speaks and trains on career and recruitment issues and can be contacted on (02) 9264 1888 or e-mailed via pslezak@aquent.com