Work-life balance vs. Life-work balance

Earlier this year, we delved into the demands of the labor force for a better work-life balance.  One of those largely proposed schemes was a 4-day workweek. We know too well that it cannot be done overnight.  In fact, certain laws have to be amended to accommodate it.

However, before we can even start deliberating the pertinent laws, a global survey was conducted by Remote earlier this year. There being not much changes yet being done in the country, we fared poorly. We ranked 59th among 60 countries included in the survey, another bottom-dwelling performance. If there is a consolation, it is the fact that the USA ranked 55th, or just four notches better than us.

Remote is an international recruitment and placement firm. It “evaluated average working hours per week, minimum wages, annual leave policies, sick pay, maternity leaves, healthcare and other factors in 60 countries with the highest gross domestic product.” The study aims to represent how the "businesses of each country look after the lives of their employees and put life before work." With such objective, they “deliberately avoid using the term work-life balance (preferring the reverse, life-work balance) because they believe the traditional term has a problematic undertone.”

Actually, the result simply validates the moves of some multinational firms after the pandemic. To recall, a number of executives in the USA urged their employees to go back to their offices as the pandemic subsided. Among others, Jamie Dimon, CEO of JPMorgan, declared himself a “remote-work skeptic; Mark Zuckerberg stressed that engineers get more done in the office; and Google’s Chief People Officer told their employees that office attendance would factor into performance reviews.” Thus, the USA fared poorly too in this survey.

Yes, this was the call despite the Survey of Business Uncertainty (jointly ran by The Atlanta Federal Reserve Bank, the University of Chicago, and Stanford in 2023) revealing a different result. In such survey, workers across generations were asked, “Looking forward to five years from now, what share of your firm’s full-time employees do you expect to be in each category (fully in person, hybrid, fully remote) in 2028?”

The survey revealed that working fully in person will further decrease in the next five years while both hybrid and fully virtual/remote will rise. Hybrid though is the most preferred.  Simply put, when they talk about their “pursuit of happiness”, what they really meant is “work-life” balance. And hybrid, they say, is the most appropriate.

However, while, generally, the labor force (across generations) pushes for “work-life” balance via a hybrid of in person and remote, the younger generation’s preference is quite different as revealed in a Bankrate survey (Bankrate, LLC is a consumer financial services company based in New York City) released in October, 2023. In such survey, as “workers reconsider their work-life balance post-pandemic, 92% of young people say that they would make sacrifices in exchange for a four-day workweek.” According to Sarah Foster, a Bankrate analyst, “Younger generations have obviously lived through major economic events like the coronavirus pandemic, which blurred the lines between where you work, how you work, how much time you spend doing it.”

Remarkably, the same survey revealed that “older generations also showed a strong interest in the four-day workweek with over 86% of Gen X and baby boomer workers saying that they’d be willing to give something up in exchange for a shorter week.” What separates them (older workers) though from the Gen Z and millennial workers is that 61% say they would work longer hours to attain a four-day workweek. This simply means, a compressed workweek.

In us, if we should embrace this scheme, there shall be a lot of hurdles to overcome. For one, this means working beyond eight (8) hours without the corresponding overtime pay. There is also a twelve-hour a day workday limitation to look into. Moreover, if a company is currently operating on a three-shift schedule, will this mean that it shall be reduced to just two shifts a day? So, scheduling should also be a challenge.

While we agree that either “life-work balance” or “work-life balance” is mutually beneficial, we must recognize that there shall also be legislative challenges that our lawmakers must address to. First and foremost, the country’s labor laws must be amended to allow a 4-day workweek. More importantly, given that productivity is still a big concern in the country, the government must make sure that no one (whether employers or employees) abuses the new work structure, if considered