Why work and family balance is still an issue in 2023

How do we balance the responsibilities of work with family/? In 2023, this question feels old and trite, but to millions of people, it’s still a daily struggle—one that impacts not just their wellbeing, but that of the people around them and the efficiency of the organizations they work for.

October is National Work and Family Month—an annual event to remind employers about the business benefits of supporting work-life effectiveness programs. And it’s a reminder of programs that still aren’t addressing the root cause of work-life balance. What will?

Shifting the narrative away from personal failure

Brigid Schulte, the director of the Better Life Lab at New America, has studied that question for more than a decade. As the author of the New York Times’ bestseller Overwhelmed: Work, Love and Play When No One Has The Time. One of the biggest problems, Schulte told me during a recent conversation, is that we still cling to myths about work-life balance—for instance, that the lack of it has somehow “become our fault—that if you’re feeling overwhelmed, it’s down to you to manage your stress better.”

Schulte’s takeaway is that both organizational systems and individual behaviors are at the root of the work-life balance challenge. Take, for instance, how many workplaces assess productivity: they look at time spent at work, instead of outcomes of that work. This is based on the outdated idea that the more time you spend grinding, the more effective and productive you are. That’s since been debunked by research, but it hasn’t stopped organizations from continuing to reward employees who burn the midnight oil. If you work at an organization that’s set up to reward this behavior, you’ll probably end up struggling to balance your work and life through no fault of your own.

Redesigning work so it is effective and productive

These systems don’t emerge on their own. Leaders and managers build them. That means they also have an important role to play in redesigning policies, practices and systems so that they encourage greater balance.

This is where leadership coaching can play a critical role. For managers and employees alike, coaching can help people find their agency in a situation that can often feel overwhelming or hopeless while acknowledging what is out of their control.

Beyond that, coaching can help managers and leaders learn to create environments where all workers can thrive. It can help leaders identify where they might be able to change the system itself, challenging the status quo and advocating for structural change.

This means not only changing their behaviors, but changing policies, practices or systems.

That may sound overwhelming, but even simple changes can make a difference. For instance, organizations can mandate that employees take their full PTO, or put a minimum suggested number of days in place for organizations that have an unlimited PTO policy. Employers could start assessing work-life balance as part of someone’s performance review, encouraging them to consider it as just as important to their productivity as whether or not they hit their key metrics.

And managers could begin weekly meetings with a short check-in on someone’s work-life, asking them to rate how they’re doing from 1-10. Not only does this normalize our collective experiences of often feeling overwhelmed, but it opens up conversations that can help employees prioritize and focus, hopefully alleviating some of the strain.

Read more: Using benefit accounts to support the work-life relationship

Sometimes, reframing can be a powerful tool to help us all think differently about this challenge in our own lives—which is an important first step. For Schulte, that involves expanding our definition of what counts as work, so that we can lead bigger, more fulfilling lives. “Work isn’t just time in the office, but it’s the contribution we make to our families, our communities and our society,” Schulte says. “A good life is one that involves both great paid work that fulfills us but also the thrill of the ordinary moments.”

Elizabeth Weingarten is both an applied behavioral scientist and Head of Behavioral Science Insights at people development platform Torch.