Work Life Welfare

I’d like to introduce you to your work life welfare continuum, or BIO. Once you have completed your schooling, if you don’t enter the homeforce (as a stay-at-home parent or carer), you will enter the workforce and you simultaneously slip into the work life welfare continuum. Let me explain…

For the sake of simplicity, let’s assume your time is divided into work and leisure. Many who are at the start of their career are happy to work long hours to earn their keep, develop their brand and grow their wealth and networks. At a later stage, as individuals move to expanding their close circles, the desire to work long hours diminishes as importance shifts to personal time.

You have likely already travelled along the work life welfare continuum. Regardless of your stage of life, you probably have made sacrifices or trade-offs in order to accommodate both work and leisure. As your life is finite, you are trading your time. The further along the continuum you are, the greater control you have, and the more you choose how you use your time.

You may have heard of the term work life balance. It infers a dichotomous trade-off between work and leisure. Leisure includes spending time with family and friends, not just lounging poolside! Following on from this notion is work life integration, blending work and leisure in a more harmonious way, but still confined to a set work schedule.

Further along the continuum is a concept I call optimum work life welfare. It ties in with Abraham Maslow’s notion of self-actualisation, whereby you are operating at full potential and are utilising your abilities in a meaningful way. In other words, you are the best version of you! You are working or operating at your optimum, benefiting others or serving society in some way.

Work life balance invokes have and have not, work life integration allows for an interplay of work and leisure, and optimum work life welfare allows you to design your own work life. It is flexible, fluid and malleable, allowing you to design a combination to best suit your individual needs and stage of life. Thus, you are in control of your time and how you spend it.

Optimum work life welfare is about designing a mixture of work and leisure to suit your personal circumstances and stage of life. It is the perfect blend of the two ingredients to suit your tastebuds.

The work life welfare continuum is thus, Balance – Integration – Optimum (BIO). Your BIO is as distinctive and individual as you are. You may wish to work your whole life once you are at the optimum welfare stage because it satisfies your needs and feeds your identity. Thus, retirement becomes a redundant concept because you enjoy working at your own pace, on your own terms.

What does your BIO look like?

Are there changes you would like to make to your BIO?

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