Work life balance is so yesterday

Beverley Head
Wednesday, 23 November 2011 17:56

Forget the term work life balance - tomorrow's world is all about 'work life blending'.

Speaking at an event in Sydney today three technology vendors which specialise in the supply of software and services for running business functions, including HR and payroll management, banded together to explore the challenges that employers face courtesy of factors such as an ageing and increasingly unionised workforce; a mutating occupational health and safety landscape; and the arrival in the workplace of digital natives bristling with their own technology connected to clouds.

ComOps, Entity Solutions and Sage MicrOpay executives warned employers that it was 'almost as if a perfect storm was coming.'

This was compounded according to ComOps CEO-elect Daniel Sheahan, who said that productivity growth had slumped this decade. 'As a software vendor where we design software to deliver productivity gains, that's pretty significant for us,' he said.

Companies which failed to recognise and tackle the issue risked going broke he warned.

Matthew Franceschini, CEO of Entity Solutions pointed to a new world of work where the concept of work life balance was replaced by work life blending, where the boundaries blurred. As a result 'Employers and HR managers need to adapt their policies,' he said.

However Craig Osborne, the managing director of Sage MicrOpay noted this required an attitudinal shift. 'The underlying issue is trust. If I can't see someone in the workplace am I going to get the job done?'