Promoting Healthy Work-Life Balance Among Employees, Part 2

The previous blog installment focused on personal practices and habits that may help community college student affairs practitioners in balancing their workloads and personal lives.  Your community college can also create policies to promote a healthy work life balance.  Demands can rapidly increase and shift at a community college.  The college can create policies to support their employee’s quality of life despite these demands.  For the policies to be integrated into each department, they must ultimately be embraced by all levels to create an environment in which they are accepted as an indispensable aspect of a positive work environment.   

Some examples of work/life balance policies can be found at Delaware Tech Community College, Middlebury College and SUNY.  These include:

• Temporary schedule adjustments that allow employees to make up time not worked earlier in the pay period.
• Alternative work schedules that allow employees to work different times than the standard department work times on a consistent basis.
• Compressed work weeks that allow employees to work fewer than 5 days each week or a half day one day.
• Leave revisions that allow employees additional time or flexible time for life events, medical issues and professional development.
• Telecommuting on specific days or during specific time frames to complete time sensitive projects. 
• Child care centers that offer employees reduced rates and pick up/drop off times agreeable to their particular work schedules.

The main point for the employee and the college is to recognize when problems exist, take control of the situation, and try something different.  We must be willing to confront the work/life balance issue and take the necessary steps to make the changes.  Once we make the changes, we can see what works and what doesn’t and adapt accordingly to positively affect everyone’s personal well-being.  As discussed in these two blog posts, promoting healthy balance between work and life is the responsibility of both employees and their employers.

Jeff Rose is the Assistant Dean of Student Affairs at Delaware Technical Community College and also serves as a Mid-Level Professional Representative on the NASPA Community Colleges Division Board.