| Work & Life Balance |
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When we were in corporate life everyone was clear about the expectations. There was a notional working day and our spouse and children knew when we’d be around and when we’d be at work. Working for ourselves is not as clear cut, although we can attempt to replicate the “working day” one of the reasons many people change is to give up the 9 to 5 and have more flexibility in their life – it just has to be managed rather than taken for granted. If you are starting your business from home is your family ready to have you working at home? If your partner has been used to having the family home all to themselves they may feel you are invading their space. If your partner still works in a corporate environment perhaps they will expect all those chores that used to fill the weekend to be completed while “you’re at home” - leaving the weekends for some real leisure time for the whole family. There are many benefits to working from home. No travelling to the office, more quality time with children - easier to work more flexibly - perhaps start early in the morning, take time out to take the children to school, or perhaps play a sport during the day and then work later into the evening. Working from or at home extends your choice if you balance it correctly. There are also disadvantages. Remember if you work at home and have customers/clients visit you the impact on the family could be considerable. (Dave has some funny stories on this based on his wife’s psychotherapy practice.) If you have children, or even dependent parents, they may have no concept of work happening at home and expect your attention “because you are there”. Remember that properly exploiting modern technology can ensure that the quality of service to your customers is not adversely affected by choices you make to achieve an enhanced quality of life. See our equipment section. One of the reasons many people give for leaving corporate life is work-related stress. The dream is that life will be less stressful running your own business – but “it ain’t necessarily so”. On the other hand we have to recognise that some stress has a positive effect – think of the satisfaction of achieving a goal against a tight deadline – the adrenaline rush is a physiological response to stressors. Work-related stress is about excessive and negative stress usually caused by, or made worse by, something to do with your work or working environment. Much work-related stress is caused by poor management and certainly the failure to tackle work-related stress is a significant management failure. Prolonged or intense stress can lead to ill health. Ill health linked to work-related stress is the second most common type of ill health in the UK. The good news is that good management prevents a significant amount of work-related stress, and costs nothing. So now your are your own boss how are you going to manage stress; yours, your employees’ and your family’s. The first thing to do is to identify the likely causes of stress and identify what steps to make to mitigate or offset them. There are some books which look at a stress audit but again you may want to use a mentor or a counsellor to help you process your own situation, or even contact us. Some key issues are identified below: Before you set out on this new journey it is important to consider, if you have a choice, is running your own business the right decision for you at this time or should it be later. Is there anything hanging over you from your previous situation that you really should clear up before you start something new? Have you left a previous company because of workplace problems? Perhaps you were unfairly dismissed - has the legal process been resolved? Can you cope with the pressure of waiting for the resolution of the legal process and taking on a new career? Are you rested enough to start a new business - check this burnout test (opens in a new window)? Do you need career counselling and do you fully understand what your own strengths and weaknesses are? You might want to consider this career profiling workbook from Medical Forum (opens in a new window) - although it is aimed at the medical profession the principles are the same for everyone - to determine if you are in the right career. Maybe you should consider having a proper profile done, for example the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator tests can help you avoid making the wrong choices and some maintain they give strong positive indicators. If you understand your own strengths and weaknesses perhaps you are considering working with one other person. Have you thought about whether your personality and theirs are compatible? Do the strengths of one of you compensate for weak areas of the other to give you all round strength or are you too similar? Perhaps the tests from Humantrics (opens in a new window) might be helpful in determining you and your partners true characters before joining forces? Getting any of these wrong will be a source of stress. Perhaps you say that you never suffer from stress? You are running a small business, perhaps its just you to start with, and you need to be aware of these issues as they can significantly damage your performance and consequently damage the business very quickly. Perhaps by understanding about stress and stress related illness you can avoid it. In case you haven't thought about it some of the symptoms of excessive stress in humans are shown below. It is important to remember that different people react in different ways which is one of the reasons why it is such a challenge for managers. The main indicator is that a change occurs in one of these observable behaviours:
Running your own SME or consultancy can be fun if you remember to manage yourself, your environment as well as the business ensuring that the work/life balance is adjusted to suit your individual circumstances and aims. A key line in Dave’s business plan is his goal – “Two days earning, two days learning and three days just for fun!” There are further resources under the Useful Links that you might find useful. |