What a relief it was for me to read that the American Psychological Association and the Society for Human Resource Management have started using the term “work-life fit” to replace “work-life balance.”

Although “work-life balance” was first used by the British in the 1970s, it was the Americans who popularized the term. The idea that one could balance “work” (career and jobs) and “life” (personal and family health, recreation, spirituality) concerns was attractive. The term became popular, with all kinds of tips on how this could be achieved, usually through personal changes.

The push for work-life balance came about with the emergence of workplace technologies. In the past (and to some extent even in the present), work was manual and, as the fad goes these days, “artisanal,” as in the making of furniture, or cooking and baking. 

Industrialization changed the workplace. Factories automated many procedures, with humans to man — or woman — the machines quite mechanically. Offices, too, were transformed. We could go way back to the entry of typewriters, which changed the way one handled correspondence, accounting and many other office procedures. Think of the other technologies that followed, from hand-held calculators to computers, from telephones to the Internet.

Many of these technologies actually tied people down to the factories and offices, requiring a working day with set hours, together with quotas and outputs. These new kinds of “work” posed many challenges for “life,” especially family life. Women, traditionally tied to the domestic sphere, were particularly challenged as more of them entered the workforce. While outside work gave them added income, they still had to handle many domestic responsibilities.

In the last 20 years or so, another wave of technologies brought new advantages and disadvantages to work. I’m referring to the information and communication technologies that include cellphones (or, more specifically, the multifunctional smartphone), computers and the Internet. 

These technologies have boosted productivity, but have also meant that employees are under greater pressure to produce and process larger and larger volumes of data and information.

These technologies have also opened new possibilities of working at home. I have my own personal example of writing columns. A generation ago, columns were handwritten (I am told this is still the case with some older columnists!) or typewritten, then had to be personally delivered to the newspaper office.

When I began writing columns for the Inquirer in 1997, we were in the fax era. I didn’t have to go to the Inquirer office twice a week to deliver the column — but there were oh so many problems with fax machines. 

“Pakiulit” (Please resend), our veteran editorial assistant Tintin Ang would plead, by phone, because the lines were garbled or crunched, or there was no text at all on the paper. These days, columns are emailed — which isn’t exactly trouble-free, like when my Internet or the Inquirer’s system has its tantrums.

“Homework” takes on new meanings with these technologies, and offices are now exploring the possibility of allowing employees a few days of working at home. There are people who work full-time at home, waiting for outsourced contracts for everything from accounting to reading X-ray plates. This does require discipline, though, with production targets clearly spelled out. 

But the challenges for work-life balance remained. The problematic word was “balance,” which has been (mis)interpreted in all kinds of ways. The most common was the idea that you could have an equilibrium all the time, more or less split 50-50. I have a friend who even calculated it thus: a week with 18 waking hours a day multiplied by seven, to result in 126 hours. Give 45 hours for the office (eight hours work, one hour lunch break a day) and 10 hours for going to and from the office (lucky her), for a total of 55 hours work. That still gives you 71 hours for “life.”

Hah! We know that the travel time varies: Leave really early in the morning and you have significant “savings,” but that means you have less time for the kids. Oh, the kids. Parents know that the time they need varies. Infants take up your night with feeding and irregular sleeping, but all that is a breeze compared with older children running here, there and everywhere and complaining, “I’m bored.” I don’t even want to think of adolescence.

“Work-life fit” proponents say a balance can never really be achieved. Our situations change from day to day and there are times when you have to sacrifice one or the other, and try to make up for it. But by using “balance,” we often end up with strong guilt feelings: How does she do it, looking so fit and happy despite five kids, and look how neat her house is. (I always probe, and confirm my suspicions that people like that have a fleet of nannies, housekeepers, gardeners and drivers.)

The keywords with work-life fit are planning and flexibility. It’s looking ahead and, when living from day to day, not going into panic attacks. As an anthropologist, I’d also say we need to junk many of the books and magazine articles from America talking about work-life balance and work-life fit. For example, how do you take long walks appreciating nature in Manila?

We have, for example, kinship networks to help out with the “fit” — although, fair warning, those networks can sometimes end up being the source of disrupted, damaged or destroyed plans.

Our weakest link in the Philippines (and, I suspect, even in the United States) are corporate policies. Surprisingly, government offices are more “advanced” in the way they allow “flexitime,” and all kinds of leaves (birthday leave, government leave to process government papers, etc.) and internal arrangements to “offset,” meaning making up for lost time. But flexitime systems do require close monitoring, or you end up with an entire IBM (“istambay buong hapon (idle the entire day)”) staff who don’t even have to ask for leave and instead say they need to deliver a package.

I got into researching on work-life fit because of my plans to do a survey of our faculty and staff (some 4,000 of them!), to find out just where they are with “life.” The terms “single” and “married” are deceptive: We need to find out how many dependents they have, how old the dependents are, and whether there are special children or elderly relatives with dementia or chronic diseases. We need to find out if the staff members are studying, and are at what stage (for example, doing their master’s thesis).

Once we get all the information, we need to check for the “fit” with work policies, and translate this to concrete advice for administrative supervisors. Government offices offer all kinds of training workshops but, as far as I know, none on being more compassionate, more collegial and more kind (without ending up a doormat). My biggest problem now is dealing with bullying, not among students but among faculty and staff. And yet I sometimes wonder if the meanness relates with dysfunctional life situations — people unhappy with the lack of fit between work and life.

All said, I’d even question the term “work-life fit.” Shouldn’t we aim for a day when work is seen as part of a joyful and fulfilling life?

By Michael L. Tan

(Philippine Daily Inquirer / Asia News Network)