Integrating Work and Life : The Wharton Resource Guide

Rating:
Summary: Excellent work/life reference guide with exercises
Review: This collection of articles and exercises provides "cutting edge" resources in the work/family and work/life areas. The articles cover everything from flextime to recognition of the work and family issues faced by expatriates. This information is becoming more and more important in organizations throughout the world. A glance at the annual Fortune or other magazines that focus on the best companies to work for indicate the attention being focused on these issues. Interestingly new graduates are now asking these questions about the companies they are considering working for--and companies that ignore this may find themselves less able to hire the professionals they need (and the market for these folks continues to get tighter). The guide is expensive, but collecting up the work captured within it would be incredibly time-consuming and the coverage might not be as thorough. Although it is probably intended more for a human resources professional or teacher conducting training or informing employees and managers about work/life issues it could be a useful guide to assess your own ways of balancing and integrating you work and nonwork life. There could be application for a parent or church group to use the guide as well. If you hired a consultant to inform you on these issues and/or a trainer to conduct this training it would cost a lot more and you would have to bring them back again and again. One thing that was not addressed in the guide was what I will call "family friendly backlash" found in books like The Baby Boon, but I think this guide moves beyond this controversy by focusing on work AND life, not just work AND family. It is important to recognize that these are not just issues for people with small children, but issues that impact all working people.