I voice my opinion about work-life balance a lot, I know and this article reminded me of why it’s important (the link is below, read mine first :))

It’s talking about life in the corporate world, mostly and it translates differently to our world – that of small business.

I’ve long advised my clients to consider part-time employees, particularly Mum’s with young children. In my opinion, you get a qualified and capable person, if you are prepared to pay the price of part-time and of sometimes losing her to kiddie sickness. And you get someone stable long term. And you get someone with brains and ability better than you end up paying for because your employee is happy to find something fulfilling that fits with her need to work school hours.

I may be going on a bit but the gist of it is that somebody wanting to work less than full time is not necessarily less committed. Or that commitment to work is not necessarily needed.

Surely, we only need our staff to be committed to doing a good job while they are here?

A good friend of mine (in fact, my friend’s Dad, Ray Noyes) said to me once, something that has stayed with me since I was 17:

“We work so we can pay the mortgage. Real life is the rest of it”

I’m paraphrasing but I’ve caught the sense of it.​ We don’t work for fun or because it’s our passion. We work to make money to live – our staff do and we do too.

We should remember this. It’s important.

​So encourage your team to not work too much and try to do it yourself, too. You might like it.

(Shit, so might I!)

Here’s the article, from the Guardian http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/jun/09/we-dont-live-to-work-we-work-to-live-why-dont-we-say-so?CMP=fb_gu