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Sara Ritchie

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This Labour Day weekend, I took a trip to Montreal. My former roommate, who I was staying with, is a fashion designer working fulltime, however on the side she and her best friend are launching their own fashion magazine.

While in Montreal, I attended the Betsey Johnson fashion show, which my friend was covering for their magazine. Normally, this would be strictly a fun event for her so after the event, I asked my friend what she thought, and although she thought it was great, she indicated that she was exhausted from running around getting everything arranged for their magazine. Because she's working full-time and working on the magazine in her spare time, this event made her realize that moving forward, she's going to have to work very hard to find a good work/life balance if she doesn't want to get burnt out.

Now that the Labour Day weekend is over, kids are going back to school and the slower pace of the summer will gradually fade into a distant memory. Falling back into the routine of work, school and extracurricular events can be a challenge for even the most organized person. With increased demands on time and energy from business and personal activities, your staff may find it hard to maintain a good work/life balance.

With the baby boomers heading into retirement, a new generation of workers with different work ethics and expectations and the forecasted labour shortage for some industries, organizations need to create strategies now to address how they can support their employees in finding good equilibrium. Human Resources and Social Development Canada has a link on their website, which highlights how crucial it is to the success of any organization for their employees to be able to have a good work/life balance. With information for individuals, managers and organizations the site provides advice on how to implement policies and procedures within organizations, as well as provides innovative ways to support employees even if senior management isn't on-board or your resources are tight.

Employees who are out on stress leave, demonstrate decreased productivity or are experiencing bad attitudes or bad relationships with other co-workers may be experiencing burn out due to not having a good work/life balance.

Working together, management and employees can develop a unique strategy for your organization to handle employees' different needs.

As you develop and integrate this into your working day, whether it's supported organization wide or just for the employees that you manage, it's a good idea to create a forum that initiates open communication about what is and isn't working - then, revise and adjust if necessary.

By working with everyone involved, you can help ensure the policies you create are relevant and conducive to your staff and your organization.

By giving your staff the ability to add input and be part of the process they will recognize that in order to achieve this goal, they have responsibility within its success.

These days, everyone is on the go from one place to the next. By supporting your employees in creating a balanced routine between their work demands and their personal demands, you can have more productive employees, encourage more responsibility and increase loyalty.

That's almost as exciting as the hot pink vintage dress I found in Montreal!

Sara Ritchie has worked for the past 10 years in the finance industry in Saint John, Montreal and Toronto. She can be reached at sararthewriter@gmail.com. Her column appears on Saturdays.