We hear so much these days on buzz words like ”work/life balance” and “work/life flexibility.” What’s the difference? In my mind, “work/life flexibility” is the attempted solution to patch up the real problem: “work/life balance.”

Having been an independent consultant and fitness trainer, the biggest draw for me was to be able to set my own work hours and arrange my schedule like “flex time” and “compressed workweek” if you’re familiar with corporate flexibility programs. To me, a flexible work schedule was “work/life balance.”

However recently, after reading through work/life balance-related comments from 1300+ employees from an annual company “pulse” survey, it dawned on me that the root of the work/life balance problem is the increase in workload and pace. The sad thing is, regardless of the availability of a flexibility program, at the end of the day, you will be working longer hours than before in order to meet the heightened expectations. 

As a result of the increase in talent burnouts and collaboration on a global level (time zone differences for conference calls), companies are increasingly focused on work/life flexibiltiy initiatives. Don’t get me wrong, I still believe in the benefits of flexibility programs; and in fact, given the pace of life, I don’t think corporations would be able to survive the talent war with offering enterprise-wide flexibility options, such as flex time, telecommute, etc.

With the increase in “free agent” mentality, especially in the Milennial population, companies need to find ways to attract and retain talents by offering them the opportunities to explore other interests at the same time. An example of such program would be on/off ramp, paid and unpaid leave of absence.

With that said, I still believe that the root of the problem is really work/life balance. The truth is that we have NO balance. With the availability of remote access technologies and the Internet, we are expected to be ON at all times. There is no mannerism when it comes to emails. It’s quite common that company email exchanges continue on afterhours, in fact, it is harmlessly encouraged, and expected.

I don’t think we can ever return to the good ol’ days of 8-5pm with two 15-30min breaks, where things moved rather leisurely. On the other hand, how far will this work/life integration go? While work flexibility programs do ease the pains of the workload by providing more options for employees to decide “when” and “where” to work, they at the same time perpetuate the work/life integration, not balance.

Flexibility options such as part time, remote work are ironically muddling the boundaries of work and personal hours. Since we’re doing what were considered traditionally two separate things now all at once, we at times feel like we’re contributing less hours to work, therefore working even more hours in return. We are tricked by ourselves.

I’m really struggling here. I’m no longer feeing crystal clear as to exactly which side is the “good” side…