Month: February 2011

making work life balance work

Posted on by Becky Green (was McMichael)

Nice TED talk on work life balance, courtesy of Nigel Marsh, for a Friday afternoon.  In summary:

1. Gimmicks like dress down Friday don’t work. We are working long and hard hours in jobs we hate, buying things we don’t need to impress people we don’t like. That is the hub of the issue.

2. Governments and corporations won’t solve the issue for us – take control for the type of life we want to lead.  If we don’t design our lives, someone will design it forward.  Never put the quality of your life in the hands of ANY corporation.

3. Plan your day — be realistic, you can’t do it all, elongate the timeframe in which we judge the balance.  A day is too short, after we retire is too long.

4. Approach balance in a balanced way. Being a fit 10 hour a day office rat isn’t balanced, it’s just more fit. Attend to all areas….the small things matter.  It doesn’t have to be a huge upheaval – with the smallest investment in the right places, big changes can happen.  If enough people do it, we can change society’s definition of success from who dies with the most money wins to the measure of success being a life well lived.

I would add, make time for each area of your life without interruption.  When you’re home with the kids, turn off the blackberry/computer. When you’re at work, make sure you can focus properly on the job in hand without distractions. And the single most important thing about good work life balance in my opinion is find a job you love and it will feel a lot less like work which can only be a positive thing.

social media, the CIPR way

Posted on by Becky Green (was McMichael)

Before leaving for maternity leave last year, I was invited to be part of the CIPR’s social media panel along with:

  • Daljit Bhurji ACIPR – Managing Director, Diffusion (@Daljit_Bhurji)
  • Mark Borkowski – Managing Director, Borkowski (@MarkBorkowski)
  • Rob Brown FCIPR – Managing Director, Staniforth (@robbrown)
  • Stuart Bruce MCIPR – Managing Director, Wolfstar (@stuartbruce)
  • Dominic Burch – Head of Corporate Communications, ASDA (@dom_asdaPR)
  • Simon Collister – Head of Non-Profit and Public Sector, We Are Social (@simoncollister)
  • Gemma Griffiths – Client Director, Racepoint (@GemGriff)
  • Katy Howell – Managing Director, Immediate Future (@katyhowell)
  • Marshall Manson – Director of Digital Strategy, Edelman (@marshallmanson)
  • Danny Rogers – Editor, PR Week (@dannyrogers2001)
  • Julio Romo MCIPR – PR and Communications Consultant, twofourseven (@twofourseven)
  • Philip Sheldrake – Partner, Influence Crowd LLP (@sheldrake)
  • Stephen Waddington MCIPR – Managing Director, Speed Communications (@wadds)
  • Robin Wilson – Director Digital PR & Social Media, McCann Erickson (@robin1966)

The panel aims to work across the CIPR to identify new opportunities, including social media measurement, publishing best practice social media guidelines, informal workshops to engage CIPR members with experts, and a series of interviews with some of the world’s leading social media thinkers and practitioners. Lots has happened in 2010 and lots more is planned for 2011.

I attended my first meeting last week and some things to look out for in the short term are:

CIPRtv – the monthly TV channel from the CIPR covering topics such as Big Society, digital democracy and providing a chance to see some of the industry’s leaders in the spotlight.

Social media guidelines for practitioners, currently on the wiki and due to be released in updated form early April.

The CIPR’s April conference on Social Media – information coming soon here

We’re currently formalising our plan and outputs for the coming 12 months and I’ll publish it here as well as on the wiki when it is ready. In the meantime, keep up to date by following the CIPR’s twitter feed and wiki or dropping any of us a line.