Why It's Still So Hard To Find Work-Life Balance [Infographic]
As the hullabaloo over last week's introduction of the latest iPad electronic tablet from Apple Inc. shows, Americans love their mobile devices. Especially for work.
Eighty-three percent of office workers recently polled said that they regularly work from home or a location other than their office, with 46 percent saying that they use a cellphone or smartphone while 35 percent use a laptop.
As employees find it easier to do their work from anywhere at virtually anytime, the already blurred lines that separate our work and personal lives are becoming even less clear.
Yet, even as balancing the competing demands of home and work life for many Americans remains elusive, there is a growing expectation among workers for companies to offer programs that will help workers achieve a degree of harmony between their professional and home lives, says John Challenger, CEO of Challenger, Gray & Christmas Inc., a Chicago-based employment-services firm.
In an interview with AOL Jobs, Challenger says the expectation that employers will offer work-life balance programs has been fueled by younger workers, who have more casual attitudes toward work, and embraced by older workers.
"The very fact that you can telecommute, that you can work from home, work on the road wherever you are, carry your office with you, also creates a different kind of space in the day ... and a different kind of social contract among companies," he says.
What's more, Challenger says, there's no shortage of companies that want to appear on the latest trendy list of the "best places to work." Those include rosters of businesses rated highly by women as well as firms where employee satisfaction is high -- in part because they offer supportive programs to their employees.
To see U.S. workers' views about balancing their professional and personal lives, check out the infographic below by Mercer Insights
Next: Survey: Benefit Packages Influence Employment Decisions [Infographic]
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David Schepp
David Schepp has spent more than a dozen years covering business news for the electronic and print media, including Dow Jones Newswires, BBC News, Gannett Co., and most recently at AOL's DailyFinance. Nearly 10 years ago, he started writing a weekly People@Work column, looking in depth at issues facing workers in today's workplace. Follow David on Twitter. Email David at david.schepp@huffingtonpost.com. Add David to your Google+ circles.
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