Competency Affects Work Life Balance

Shawnee Love   •  
January 31, 2013

In the past couple blogs, we have contemplated how company culture and manager expectations influence work life balance.   Today I want to look at how work life balance is affected by the choices we make when hiring and promoting.

When hiring consider the candidate’s level of competency. Hiring someone under-qualified means they are going to have to work harder to get up to speed than someone who is already competent, and like it or not, much of that working harder involves simply putting in the time and effort to get better.  If you add in the pressure of work needing to get done and deadlines needing to be met, then that under-qualified person will have to work extra hours to finish and hence their work time and personal time  go out of balance.

One solution when hiring someone who is less than competent is to set lower expectations and targets to fit that person- a training position in effect.  This training position will offer the employee excellent career growth opportunities, but prevent the employee from becoming overwhelmed.  However, if that incompetent employee is already working with you and/or you don’t have the time or budget to reduce expectations, it becomes time to have a conversation.  Please stop by next week for pointers on discussion work life challenges with employees.