Balance
When my wife was pregnant with our children, we both worked for the same school district. When the first of my girls was born, I learned that the district made spouses share parental leave for the birth of a child. This meant that the 12 weeks allotted for parental leave had to be split between us. I took one week and went back to work. It didn’t feel great, but the rules were the rules.
I never really got over that experience. My employer’s policies had, in effect, forced me to choose between my income and the well-being of my family. When I became a Principal, I vowed never to make my staff have to choose between their health, their family, and their work. A lot of people around me don’t understand my approach to ensuring that my employees have a healthy work-life balance, particularly because I work in education. If you need a day or two to take care of a sick parent and you work at Morgan-Stanley, they’ll make due, but when you work in education, the students are showing up whether you do or not. My flexibility in this regard inconveniences some people some of the time…but we all get sick, have emergencies, and have the propensity to just become emotionally overloaded with the demands of our lives. I extend that same flexibility to everyone.
Cynical folks assume that employees will take advantage of my approach to almost always saying yes to their time off requests…and I’m sure some do. There will always be those who take advantage of any system. However, I’m not worried about them. I’m worried about the hard working, dedicated members of the team who come in early, stay late, and work weekends. If they need time to take care of themselves, my answer should nearly always be yes. And it often is. If a few folks who take advantage of my approach, then so be it. I’d rather pay that cost than pay the cost of creating or enforcing a system that forces you to choose between your health and your income.
My approach to ensuring that everyone has a fairly healthy work-life balance has resulted in pretty high staff morale, a healthy sense of teamwork, and the understanding that I actually value my employees as human beings and not just as members of the team. The last point is far more important when your work is primarily to take care of (teach, keep safe, etc.) other people’s children. How can you do that effectively if you can’t find the time to take care of yourself or of your own family?
You can’t.