New Year, New Work/Life Balance
New Year, New Work/Life Balance: 6 Ways to Create, Apply, and Measure a Work/Life Balance
Staci Hegarty, M.Ed, VP of Equity and Inclusion
Achieving better work/life balance is a common, and meaningful, New Year’s resolution, especially if you are a remote or hybrid worker. Many of us have undoubtedly found ourselves still sitting at our desks, dinner in hand, or having a prolonged night at the office beyond the standard quitting time. It is a worthy goal with usually unclear steps or structure to achievement. If this is a goal you have set for yourself in 2023, it’s important to determine a few things:
1. Your definition of work/life balance. It’s difficult to achieve what you cannot visualize. Would that mean working fewer hours? Working different hours? Having fewer tasks or responsibilities in certain areas of your life?
2. The root cause for why you feel out of balance. For example, have your working conditions changed as the results of a new role, staffing issues, new leadership, or a temporary high-priority project that is taking up more of your time? Perhaps there are changes in your personal life, such as a new baby, an illness, or a change in family income. Even a new pet can add additional responsibilities and cause a change to your routine.
3. What boundaries need to be set at work and at home. Most of us struggle with saying “no.’ In some workplace cultures, the word “no” is interpreted as not being a team player or dedicated employee. At home, it may be even more challenging to say “no” to the needs of our family/friends.
4. Where your needs fall on your list of priorities. We may find it difficult to take care of ourselves when we perceive that we are needed by others. It doesn’t take very long to find ourselves trying to pour from an empty cup, then criticizing ourselves for not being good enough when we feel tired, burnt out, or resentful.
5. How to know when work/life balance is achieved. This is a difficult goal to quantify, unlike weight loss or increased exercise or other popular resolutions. We know what imbalance feels like, but we may not truly know what balance feels like.
6. How to adjust your expectations. It is unlikely that you will achieve equality in how you distribute your time between your professional and personal life. Aim for equity, where each part of your life gets what it needs to thrive.
In Envision RISE training, course RISE-06 Harmonization: Demystifying the Entanglement between Work and Life shares:
‘Balance implies that things will become equal, which is not truly what we are attempting. We only have one life. Why would we think we can have a work life that is separate from our home life? We would be better served to find ways to harmonize all parts of our lives with one another, allowing for each to take center stage as needed, and then step back into the chorus when the time comes.’
With a little self-reflection and a willingness to create and enforce boundaries, our lives can become more manageable, more fulfilling, and less chaotic. No one can do this for us, we must be willing to do it ourselves.
For support on creating balance and managing organizational changes in the workspace, contact us at Envision RISE. We work to create a powerful integration and understanding of the relationship between your organization and your workforce.
Travis Shumake to Honor Father's Upset Win with Tribute Car at Auto Club Finals
TRAVIS SHUMAKE TO HONOR FATHER’S UPSET WIN WITH TRIBUTE CAR AT AUTO CLUB FINALS
NEW YORK, NY (November 7, 2022) — 40 years after his father Tripp’s upset Funny Car win at the 1982 World Finals, Travis Shumake will return to southern California with the same goal. In 1982, the elder Shumake was brought in by Funny Car legend Billy Meyer as a “blocker” to defeat championship contenders Don Prudhomme & Frank Hawley. The single-race deal and Cinderella story ended with Shumake in the finals against Kenny Bernstein after taking out both Hawley and Prudhomme earlier in the day at what would be the last World Finals held at the famed Orange County International Raceway. This weekend at the Auto Club NHRA Finals, Shumake wraps up a successful debut season racing the Randy Meyers owned and tuned Top Alcohol Dragster with the support of Envision RISE, an evolutionary platform that utilizes Organizational Change Management (OCM), Human Resource Management (HRM), and Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DE&I) to create a powerful integration and understanding between organizations and their workforce.
“Our partnership with Travis has created a direct path for us to connect in a unique way with the NHRA fan base and our clients,” said Envision RISE’s founder and CEO, Joseph Anderson. “Travis has been a huge supporter of our mission and has worked hard to demonstrate his commitment to becoming a top NHRA driver and an advocate for opportunity derived from hard work and respect.”
The second-generation driver will be channeling the spirit of his popular father and the surprise success of his 1982 win with a throwback paint scheme, helmet, and crew uniforms.
“I grew up watching a VHS of my dad’s magical day at World Finals. I still watch it. Regularly. I’m just as proud of his other wins and accomplishments like being in both the Cragar Five-Second Club and the 250 MPH Club but having the TV coverage and interviews make this race special. He’s been gone 23 years this Sunday and his finish line interview with Steve Evans is the only place I can go to hear his voice. I get to hear him, see him, and now I’m hoping my own finish line interview with Amanda Busick. Makes the hairs stand up on my neck.”
“I’m not just here to honor my dad, I’m here to win and wouldn’t mind facing off with one of the drivers in the hunt for the championship. We’ve got the car. Between me, Hunter (Green), Fiona (Crisp), and Matt (Sackman), this Randy Meyer “team B” car has been turning on win lights all season long. If the points stayed with the car this beast would be deep in the points battle.
Shumake grabbed a top 3 qualifying spot in Charlotte and posting a career best semi-final finish at historic Maple Grove Raceway where he won the first two rounds on impressive hole shots. This weekend’s Auto Club Finals will be his 4th national event and a chance for the New York City resident to close out his season on a high note and carry momentum into the off-season as he looks to expand his racing schedule in 2023.
“I’m chasing funding for 2023 just like everyone else but am starting to get excited about the future.” Said Shumake. “Right now I’m just enjoying the opportunity to learn from Randy and drive alongside Julie (Naatas). Add all the marketing help I’ve gotten from Megan (Meyer) into that mix, and you quickly realize I’ve been training under the best in the business all season long. I hope bringing big names like Sheetz and Envision Rise into the sport shows folks I am serious, committed, and certainly no flash in the pan.”
Shumake and the Envision RISE Top Alcohol Dragster will be on track twice on Thursday, November 10, running at 1:45 p.m. and 4:30 p.m. and teams will get a final qualifying run Friday at 2 p.m. Saturday will begin Shumake’s quest for victory with the first round of eliminations at 10:15 a.m.
About Envision RISE
Envision RISE was founded as a modern workforce development platform to create a non-divisive integration and understanding of the relationship between the needs of an organization and the requirements of the actual workforce. The platform provides a voice to the individual and a framework critical to long-term business sustainability.
Promoting a Culture of Calm During Chaos
Staci Hegarty, Envision RISE, Vice President of Equity & Inclusion
We are more than two years into the most intense period of change that most of us have ever experienced in the workplace, and for some of us, in our lifetime. After the initial shock, many organizations managed to adapt to life during COVID. Theses adaptations were far from perfect, and we are still working through it and learning from it. There is civil unrest across the US, which will not abate any time soon. The economy is teetering on the brink of recession, with inflation at a 40-year high and gasoline hitting record prices. The “Great Resignation” coupled with low unemployment pushed staffing levels to the breaking point. Many organizations are struggling to find their center. Those that have taken promoting a culture of calm during chaos seriously have been better able to weather the storms.
We are not our best selves right now.
And yet, we have done some of our best change management over the past couple of years. We were so confident in what we believed to be true for so long that we rarely questioned it. When forced to question almost everything, look what we discovered! We can be flexible in our work locations and still get results. We can engage in uncomfortable conversations about topics we were always told were off limits at work, which allows us to learn more about ourselves and our colleagues. The economic issues we experience are not in a vacuum; we are an inextricably connected global economy. Finally, we can demand better from our workplace cultures, or we can find a better workplace.
For those waiting to “return to normal,” I have bad news for you. There is no going back. The last few years exposed many truths about our workplaces and how we are affected by that culture. Crisis shows us our true selves.
Amid chaos, what was the prevailing emotion at your company? Did you find out that your organization is much more fragile than you realized? Or did you uncover innovation and resilience that was just beneath the surface of everyday life?
Understand more about your company by understanding its DNA. Your company’s DNA structures the ecosystem framework. Upon this framework is built the foundation for your culture throughout the employee lifecycle. When the DNA is fragmented, broken, or otherwise unstable, it creates an imbalance that compromises the health of the organization. Unhealthy organizations struggle to overcome the stress of change, especially unexpected change. The RISE Human Resources Management (HRM) DNA analysis helps identify the areas that need attention and strengthening. Combine the HRM DNA analysis with the Envision RISE comprehensive cultural assessment to create an actionable strategic plan for lasting organizational cultural transformation.
Hiring the Right Chief Diversity Officer the First Time
Staci Hegarty, Envision RISE, Vice President of Equity & Inclusion
Most people with the responsibility of hiring new employees have had at least one experience with a “bad hire.” I don’t love that phrase, it somehow places blame on no one and everyone without encouraging any accountability within the process. But for lack of a better phrase, I’m going to use it.
Bad hires are expensive for the company and the culture. Salary, benefits, maybe relocation, and training are all sunk costs for every new employee. The hope is that the new employee will contribute to the organization in a way that is productive, thus justifying these costs. A new employee likely left another job to accept this opportunity. They accept that there are costs to a new job, even if it is a higher salary. For a while, everyone is investing, and no one is really seeing dividends. Most of the time the investment pays off and the new hire works out.
When they don’t work out, there are consequences for everyone. Not just the monetary output from the company, but what a bad hire can mean in the long run. An underperforming employee often comes with a negative attitude, which has an impact on colleagues and customers. That negativity can spread quickly to employees who used to be contributors. There are expenses that are difficult to quantify, such as lost productivity during the initial training and learning period. Most projections are that when a new hire doesn’t work out, it is often a cost of more than $100,000 to the company in losses.
What happens when a “bad hire” is your Chief Diversity Officer (CDO)? The field of diversity, equity, and inclusion is notorious for high turnover and burnout. The qualifications for the role are often unclear. What kind of degree should the person hold, if at all? How many years of experience are appropriate (hint: stop looking for the “10 years of experience” unicorn, there aren’t many of us who meet that requirement)? For many organizations, this is a new role, with a vague job description, minimal budget, no staff, and a reporting structure that can be stifling for a DE&I expert to execute their duties. Yet the expectations for measurable, immediate change are high (if not impossible).
While sometimes they are reviled, other times they are encumbered with unrealistic expectations of patience, compassion, and forgiveness. A bad hire in this role can set your DE&I efforts back more than not having created the role in the first place.
Everyone in your organization is watching your CDO. They set the tone for what the cultural shifts will look like. They are responsible for the psychological safety of your employees, often while sacrificing their own. While sometimes they are reviled, other times they are encumbered with unrealistic expectations of patience, compassion, and forgiveness. A bad hire in this role can set your DE&I efforts back more than not having created the role in the first place. Before you hire, take the time to create a detailed and robust job description. Build a budget for the role, including a salary which is commensurate with the responsibilities. Take the time to vet any internal candidates thoroughly. Sometimes an internal hire makes perfect sense, other times it may not. This is not the time to be in a hurry to close the job requisition.
Finally, the entire leadership team needs to be aligned in their commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion. Your Chief Diversity Officer will be a member of the leadership team and must be viewed as such by his/her/their peers. If the rest of the team isn’t ready, take the time to work through it. This is where a third-party can help with an Executive Alignment program. These programs are reasonably short but can have a big impact on the effectiveness of your leadership team and your DE&I efforts.
Adding a Chief Diversity Officer to your organization is ideal for establishing a culture of belonging. Invest the time, money, and effort to do it well the first time.
