All about work-life integration and how it differs from balance

Figuring out how to balance your personal needs with your professional ones can feel impossible. But what if, instead of striving for work-life balance, you aimed for work-life integration? The latter is a concept that can transform the way you think about your personal life and your professional life, as well as the way you manage your everyday tasks.

What is work-life integration?

Let's start by defining the idea of integrating the things you have to do for work with the things you have to do at home. The concept of work-life integration allows you to blend all your responsibilities, from caring for children to attending a webinar. But why should those things remain in separate boxes, particularly if you're working from home? The lines between personal and professional time have been blurred, due in part to the lasting effects of the pandemic.

An example of work-life integration is cleaning the kitchen at home while you participate in a conference call. You don't necessarily have to be seated at your desk to listen to what others are saying on the call, and you might feel distracted by the other chores you have to do at home. By tackling both, you can integrate both sides of your life while accomplishing two tasks on your to-do list.

During the pandemic, when schools and childcare facilities closed indefinitely, working parents had no choice but to integrate. Kids often popped up on professional video calls, and participants understood, as many of them were in the same boat. People who had never worked remotely before stayed home, often working at kitchen tables or while seated on sofas. They had to integrate their personal and professional lives, but even as life has slowly returned to normal, many workers want to continue with work-life integration.

Work-life integration vs. work-life balance

You've probably heard the term work-life balance, which refers to the equilibrium between personal time and time spent on work tasks. A person with a good work-life balance can prioritize the demands of their job equally with their life outside of the workplace. This individual might establish designated work hours and never respond to work-related communication outside those hours.

But work-life balance can feel unattainable, particularly for those who have shifted to remote work. When you work from home, it's much harder to establish a clear line between work time and home time. It all blurs together, whether you're emailing a colleague from your phone after logging out of your work computer or catching up on a big project after the kids have gone to bed.

Another challenge of work-life balance is that your needs can change daily. Your personal needs wax and wane, and during certain times, you'll need to devote more of your attention to your home life. When major projects come up at work, you may log extra hours to complete your tasks. By taking the approach that you can integrate your work and home life, rather than balance it equally, you might find that it's easier to achieve your goals.

While both work-life integration and work-life balance are means of balancing your needs and the needs of your workplace, integrating all sides of your life might allow you to achieve greater balance. You don't necessarily have to draw clear lines between your personal time and the time you spend “at work.” Instead, you allow each side to thrive as they coexist with one another.

"While both work-life integration and work-life balance are means of balancing your needs and the needs of your workplace, integrating all sides of your life might allow you to achieve greater balance."

Benefits of work-life integration

When considering whether you want to integrate the various aspects of your life, it's helpful to consider the advantages of work-life integration.

Eliminate a competitive mindset

When you're trying to achieve a balance, you might feel like different parts of your life are competing for your time and attention. If you give more to your home and family life, your work will suffer. By investing more time in community outreach efforts, you won't be able to attend to your mental and emotional needs. But integration effectively eliminates the competition by bringing all the facets of your life and needs together. You don't have to allocate time to each category. Instead, you can identify new ways to bring your activities together.

More flexibility

The traditional workday is slowly dying off, and workers simply don't want to commit to working for a consecutive period every day. Taking an integration-based approach provides employees with more flexibility in their work schedules. If a person's duties don't require them to be on and available during a set period of time, why not allow them to work when they want?

Of course, not all positions lend themselves to this approach, as some jobs involve taking calls or communicating with clients during specific hours. But for those who have more flexibility in their tasks and when they need to accomplish them, providing the chance to integrate their lives might be appealing. For example, if a worker has children who attend school, they might work for an hour or two before the kids wake up. That parent could step away from their desk to eat breakfast and take the children to school, then return to their work tasks during school hours.

Better productivity

The Digital Worker Experience Survey, conducted by Gartner in 2021, showed that more than 40% of remote workers felt they were more productive with flexible working hours. When deciding when to work, you might feel more energetic and motivated in the morning. Another person might have a drastically different schedule and prefer to work at night. When employers are flexible with their workforce, they often see productivity rates increase.

How to implement the work-life integration approach

If you're ready to ditch the idea of balancing your personal and professional life, here are some steps for integration:

Explore what you want: Before you make a change in your life, it's helpful to decide what you want to achieve. You might consider your current stress level and how integrating different parts of your life will reduce that stress. But what matters is what you want to gain from the shift and whether your job can support it.
Try different approaches: If you have trouble doing two things at once, the example of doing a household chore while on a conference call probably won't work for you. Instead of looking at integration as one size fits all, try experimenting with different options. You could try using your lunch break to exercise instead of rushing to a class at the end of your workday.
Don't allow guilt to creep in: When you're used to working long hours, you might feel guilty about this approach. But integration isn't a luxury, nor is it something you should feel bad about trying to achieve. Instead, focus on the positive and how the changes you're making will benefit you in all facets of your life.

As you decide what you need to achieve work-life integration, you can determine the right approach for your unique situation. Your needs are worth it, and you can take control of your life and the time you spend on different activities. If your employer doesn't support your efforts, it may be worth exploring other opportunities. Upload a resume and start looking for companies that put their employees' needs first.