Overview
This section of the guide will help you to be more aware of why teachers need help to achieve the work–life balance they are looking for. It also considers what work–life balance means and what teachers need to do as they begin their work–life balance journey.
Introduction
Work–life balance is a fairly new term and yet the need to balance the demands of working life with the demands of life outside work in order to lead a satisfying life has always been with us. Teachers, like all professional people, have always had a lot to do, but over the years they seem to have managed reasonably well without guidance on work–life balance. People have always had to make decisions about what they can fit into their lives and how to manage conflicting demands, whether at work or in their lives outside work, and they seem to have done so without help to manage this.
So, here in the twenty-first century, why do you need guidance on work–life balance? The simple answer is that the changes which are taking place in the world of work make it more difficult for everyone in work to achieve sound work–life balance. More and more people are struggling to prevent work from swamping their lives. They need help if they are going to establish what type of work–life balance they want and to find ways of achieving the right balance for them.
You’re probably reading this guide because you think the same.
Changing times
Most of us, whether or not we are teachers, are aware that we live in a 24–7, 365 days-a-year, fast-moving economy. As users of services today we expect:
- services to he delivered on demand
- service quality to be improving constantly.
With the advent of new and ever-improving technology we also expect faster responses to enquiries and speedy action when we request activity from service providers, whether they are in the public or the private sector. We expect to be able to shop at any time of the day or night and to travel, transact and complete business and leisure activities anywhere, anytime. We demand same-day replies by e-mail where once an exchange of letters could have taken a week.
We are also beginning to expect our interactions with the public sector to reflect our experiences with businesses. We want to have our NHS x-rays and scans at the weekend, early in the morning or in the evening. We would like to visit the local library on Sundays and, with the advent of e-government, we expect to be able to view our neighbours’ planning applications on-line, any time.
As with the rest of the world, the educational world moves faster today than ever before. The demand for speed and immediacy of response drives education professionals just as these same expectations drive other parts of society. As a teacher you are no doubt aware of increased pressures on you to complete tasks quickly when dealing with parents, your LEA, the inspectorates and a range of other groups, including members of the public.
The demands for change do not stop there. As consumers and service users we also expect to see regular improvements to service quality. Not only do we expect services to be delivered quickly, we also expect services to be delivered to higher and higher standards. As a consequence, what was perceived to be good performance yesterday is only satisfactory today and will be unsatisfactory tomorrow.
These changes do not leave education untouched. As teachers everywhere know, raising standards is a key objective for education’s professionals.
Workforce reform, curricular reform and innovation, changes to Ofsted requirements, and so on, all bring change to teachers’ ways of working as they seek to raise standards. Thus, there is more pressure today on everyone at work:
- to work faster
- to be speedily responsive to the demands of service users
- to complete tasks to tighter and tighter deadlines
- to raise standards of service delivery.
As a teacher you will be aware of these pressures. As you try to deal with them you have probably found that work itself has expanded. There just isn’t time to complete work in defined working hours or in a ‘normal’ working day, so work takes up more and more of your life.
More work is now completed in time that once belonged to your life outside work. Home becomes just another workplace and work fills your waking hours. Work usurps the place of leisure and much-needed exercise, damages relationships and creates situations where you just cannot forget work and relax. Even when watching television the e-mails and the laptop call.
Work today is more likely than ever before to swamp your whole life. So there is a need – and that need is growing – to help teachers struggling with all these demands to find ways:
- to prevent work from taking over their lives
- to regain control if work has become all-consuming
- to lead a satisfying life.
Thus there is a need to give more attention to the concept of work–life balance, now.
But has anything really changed?
Some people will argue that this is nothing new. Professional groups have always eschewed a defined working week, working until the job is completed without reference to the clock. They have worked in their own time to keep their skills up to date and have often gained real pleasure from what they do. In such circumstances, it has been argued, work is a pleasure and as much a relaxation as any leisure activity. To contemplate preventing teachers from ‘working’ in this context would seem to be a nonsense. It would also be a move that many teachers would oppose.
Today, however, more and more teachers need to work outside the ‘normal’ working day in order to meet the next day’s deadlines. They are no longer working long hours because of their love of their subject or because of a desire to help learners; they are struggling to keep up with the growing demands of the job. They are working under increasing pressure, driven both by their own desires to do a good job and by the expectations of others to perform and to achieve. Taking work home and working a substantial number of hours at home in addition to working full-time in school has become the norm for many teachers.
These same teachers do not know how to redress the situation, even though they know that the quality of their lives and their relationships is suffering as a result of their approach to their work. They have poor work–life balance and do not know how to improve it.
Activity 1.1, which you will find at the end of the chapter, will help you to take stock of the ways in which you manage your working life at present. Complete the activity now if you would like to reflect on your approach to your working life immediately. Complete it when you have finished reading the section if you would prefer to do all the activities together.
Why does work–life balance matter?
The foregoing may be true but does work–life balance really matter?
Yes, it does. Work–life balance matters in a very practical sense because the lack of it can lead to enormous problems both for individual teachers and for schools. Poor work–life balance is often seen as the result of working longer and longer hours and extending the working week at the expense of all other activities. There is plenty of evidence from organisations such as the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) to suggest that excessive working hours lead to:
- increased work-related stress
- lower overall productivity
- more accidents
- more long-term ill health.
All of these outcomes are bad news for education as well as for individual teachers.
Recent attempts to curb the maximum number of hours people work via the Working Time Directive have not been introduced for altruistic reasons. They aim, among other things, to improve worker safety and to reduce work-related stress which is a real problem in the modern workforce, especially in managerial and professional groups. According to the HSE, about half a million people in the UK experience work-related stress at a level they believe is making them ill. Up to five million people in the UK feel ‘very’ or ‘extremely’ stressed by their work, and work-related stress costs society billions of pounds every year.
So, work–life balance really matters.
Work–life balance also matters because work is only one part of life. To concentrate on work to the exclusion of other issues, and especially health, leisure, relationships, and responsibilities and interests outside work, risks causing problems for teachers and their schools, sooner or later. For example, there are plenty of people who have succeeded in their jobs, in education and elsewhere, at the expense of their health and their relationships with their partners or children. Many of these people regret the choices they have made when it is too late to do anything about them – when their health has gone and when their families have found that not only can they cope without the support of the person who always puts the job first, but they also prefer things that way.
When they are in senior positions – for example as head teachers – these people often seek to impose their values and their working style on their staff, thus perpetuating their approach. In such circumstances, those who do not fit in with the head teacher’s preferred ways of working are m...
