Though life-work balance and work-life balance appear similar terms and concepts these two emphasise different aspects of this balance. Life-work balance refers to the balance between all aspects of one’s life, including work, personal relationships, leisure activities, and self-care. It indicates that all these areas of life are at same footing and should be given equal importance priority and consideration.

Whereas work-life balance gives primacy to work and balances the rest of activities around it. It suggests that it is important to find a balance between the demands of work and the need to have time for personal pursuits and relationships, primacy being that of work.

As a CEO, one assumes that that one must keep abreast of everything that is going on and be on top of all issues, while running an organisation.

For such CEO, delegation becomes difficult and so is maintaining balance between life and work. Overwork and related stress is increasingly becoming an issue in India, especially for CEO level executives.

Relax and rejuvenate

Being the face of an organisation, besides 24x7 availability, the CEO needs to attend matters from shareholders’ returns to board governance matters, from government/regulators queries to customer complaints, from employee grievances to positioning in media. Needless to say a gruelling schedule takes it toll on the health and well-being of any person, and that is neither desirable nor can it go on indefinitely.

While there have been deliberations about work-life balance what needs is emphasis on life-work balance and need for CEO to relax and rejuvenate

A study published in The Lancet, one of the most reputed medical journals, looked at 600,000 workers in multiple countries over a period of eight-and-a-half years. It concluded that “The people who worked 55 hours a week had a 33 per cent greater chance of having a stroke than people who worked between 35 and 40 hours a week”.

CEOs work an average of 60 hours per week. At times they clock 120 hour weeks especially during important work stretches.

The average number has variation, while some clock about 50 hours a week, others clock over 80 hours leading to stress, burnouts and unsustainable schedule that leads to health complications.

Such excessive work may lead to several health issues including fatigue, obesity, sleep disorder and cardiovascular disease thus impacting CEOS ability to perform their duties effectively.

A study of General Electric employees by Tom Nicholas William J Abernathy Professor of Business Administration at Harvard business school shows how the stress of chasing professional success can shorten an executive’s life. Besides deteriorating health the consequence of not balancing life and work could impact:

Social life: If life work balance is not ideal, it affects the family and the social pillar of support is damaged.

Productivity: Not balancing life and work, can lead to mental fatigue, concentration issue and lack of creativity

Reputation: Constant pressure can reduce focus and lead to flawed decision-making.

Talent loss: There are increasing cases of mid-age CEOs suffering burnout.

Interconnectedness

In most cases such issues could be sorted if one segregates and earmarks time for life beyond work hours. While compartments may no be feasible always, a possible goal could be integration where instead of keeping watertight, separate compartments one could look at life and work as interconnected components. Being contended and happy in personal life, is likely to make the CEO energetic and focused at work.

Modern-day CEOs take the challenge at work head-on, they don’t realise that life in general isn’t always easy and everyone struggles, because nobody gets it right every time and all the time. Therefore the CEOs need to be less demanding on their own selves and show compassion to their own self.

It is time CEOs in India defines their own balance and the moment they do it, balance will shift to life-work from work-life. While there is no single solution to achieve life-work balance one needs to start. Life-work balance is a method to harmonise the demands of work and personal life.

Therefore it requires the CEO to prioritise and manage time effectively by determining tasks that can be handled by others.

Delegation can increase the level of flexibility team members have and free up time of the CEO. A large number of CEOs fail to delegate either in the fear of losing control or because competent people are not available to take over the delegated task. And even routine time-consuming matters tend to come to CEOs and there is no prioritisation to dispense with quantities in favour of quality.

This adversely affects the productivity and decision-making ability of the CEO, thus putting undue pressure on the individual. Several tasks do not have a clear responsibility and authority matrix and delegation becomes impossible.

The writer is MD & CEO NCDEX. Views expressed are personal

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