A Strong Work/Life Balance is a thing…

Warehouse and Operations as a Career

Hey Team WAOC, everyone wrapping up the summer, getting the little ones back to school and trying to settle back into our routines? July was a whipping for me professionally. Nothing really got out of hand, I just got overloaded. I had a few 10 day classes come up, which was great, I really enjoy instructing those Logistics classes. I filled in or covered a couple of other positions for the company as well, again, nothing major, just my work week was expanded by several hours!

Today I thought we’d talk about our work/life balance, or is that even a thing! I’ve heard those words from quite a few of my associates over the last two months, and I’ve tried learning a little bit about it.

Another thing I’ve been thinking about is our responsibilities as employees. I know were always talking about being that employee and how that is our own responsibility but I’m realizing, in today’s world and workforce it’s more important than ever.

Ok, so worklife/balance. A lot of people are talking about it but what does it mean you may ask. There’s tons of information and articles on-line, just browse it, its worth checking out. In short, what it means to me may be different than what it’ll mean to you. I think it may have different meanings between different industries even!

I’m told it means, in short, how we prioritize our time between our jobs or careers and our outside or family life. There’s a lot that can tilt those scales though. Maybe we have a spell where we have to put in more hours at work. Kind of like my July, I was covering a couple of different positions and had several unscheduled classes sold that I had to give. Along with that I had my own job to do and my outside endeavors to accomplish as well. I was working an additional 2 to 3 hours each evening on the computer each evening, taking time from the personal side of life! Now I realized my situation was going to be short lived, not a permanent thing.

We all know that things are going to come up, life has a way of keeping us on our toes! All things have to be considered and weighed, I think.

A few things that’s going to mess us up could be working longer hours, taking on more responsibilities at work or at home, maybe caring for a family member or things that come up with the kids.

A bad work life balance can cause additional and unneeded stress in our lives, an unhealthy thing right!

We can ease that stress by trying to stay on top of those concerns, having some back up plans for taking care of the things we can plan for. Having a backup sitter or childcare facility, maybe a family member that can help care for a family member every now and then. A family call tree, or mass text tree in todays environment! Planning ahead can actually be a stress reliever.

In our industry, as we’ve learned, it is so important to be at work on time, be that employee to our employer. We may on some sort of productivity pay, we’ll need to be there each day to maximize our weekly earnings.

By planning out our lives and our responsibilities we can ease, no that’s the wrong word, we can make adjustments to that balance. If we’ve seeked out and found a position in an industry we love it’ll make creating that comfortable balance much easier to achieve.

And I think us as employers can help out here as well. I know of one production facility that offers free emergency child care to all of there associates. How do I explain this. So, you cannot bring your child every day, however for those occasional days where your provider is not available, or holidays when there closed, the company has you covered. I think your children can attend like once a week if needed and of course every holiday. Employers are starting to realize we all need a little help from time to time achieving that good work life balance.

As order selectors, putaway and replenishment forklift operators, receivers, unloaders and loaders, production types etc, we’ll struggle much more with those work life balances. We have jobs with responsibilities. If we’re not there our teammates have to pick up the slack, those cases still have to be moved. In these positions we will miss out on things at home from time to time. As we’ve learned pay is based on the willingness to work hard and accept more responsibility.

Achieving a great work life balance or even a balance tilted a bit in either direction can work for us.

Oh a quick story I just thought about. Last week I heard about a young lady who’d just been hired as a packer at a large facility. On her 2^nd day she asked to leave early to pick up her children. The supervisor didn’t have a problem with it so she left. The next day she just left early without speaking with anyone. When spoken to the following morning she stated that she figured it was alright to change her hours since the supervisor had told he it was ok on her 2^nd day. She did not have anyone to help out with the family responsibilities, and she felt like it was better to ask forgiveness than bring it up at the hiring process. That’s just not the way to do things. She was released as the company did not, could not actually, allow flex shifts or part time positions.

Ok, back to the subject at hand! I feel that if we love what we’re doing and planned out our careers that we would have worked out both work opportunities and our home opportunities, at least the ones we can expect every week, and be ready to make the needed commitments and accept the responsibilities that come along with our jobs.

There’s that word responsibility again! Let’s talk about that for a minute. I was speaking to a group of applicants a few weeks ago. We were discussing how heavy new responsibilities can be for light industrial leads and supervisors and an associate brought up how everyone has responsibilities. She was a reach lift driver. She shared that as an employee she had quite the heavy load to bare as well. She was responsible for her payroll punches, reporting any safety concerns, looking out for near miss opportunities to help reduce loss to the company. She threw out there how much skill it took to stage or putaway pallets on the 7^th level, not to mention the cost of the goods on those pallets. I loved that she brought up the importance of her experience and how it was her responsibility to watch over, not only the new hires, but make sure her peers took their jobs seriously and did the right thing all. The. Time.

And she’s correct. Every warehouse position comes with its own set of responsibilities. Safety is of course one of them but, as professionals, we all, every task needs to be approached in a safe and responsible way.

We’ll wrap it up for today, I hope I gave each of us something to think about today, or at least didn’t bore you! I’m hoping to get back on track myself, things seem to be slowing down a bit for me. I appreciate all the email’s the last two or three weeks, and for those that may have a question, send us an email to [e-mail] and we’ll be in touch.

Until next week, check up on your goals, are you on track with your 3^rd quarter plans? And above all please be safe at work and at home.