Teleworking, the best solution for reconciliation according to the Spanish
Work and motherhood, or paternity, are not easy to combine. Caring for a child while attending a job is a task that is available to everyone and for which conciliation plays a very important role. Achieve that companies initiate policies that allow their employees to dedicate themselves to their children during the first months of their lives.
The lack of conciliation work is one of the problems faced by couples who consider having a child. A study conducted by Wave Application He explains that the rigidity of schedules and precarious salaries are the main obstacles to forming a family. The solution? According to the Spaniards they are allowed to work from home.
Improvement in schedules
According to the data of this study, workers in Spain greatly value a job that provides them with a flexible schedule with which to deal with circumstances such as paternity. In the same way, 60% of respondents explain that they would like to have a job in which they could perform their duties from home when they needed it.
In fact, three out of four Spanish workers would like to have a job they could do from home to put a solution to the conciliation labor. Another measure in this sense would be the inclusion of a policy that measures the person's efforts in objectives and not assistance. In this way it would be possible to combine the exercise of a position with the upbringing of a baby.
Measures for conciliation
While companies opt for conciliation policies, from home you can work for it with some measures such as the following:
1. Plan. The first step in reconciling family and work is to be clear about what tasks lie ahead of us. Therefore, it will be necessary to make a list that allows us to organize ourselves and decide the order of importance and the times that each task needs. It will be the most effective way to allocate the space and time corresponding to the achievement of each task without making mistakes. Although all planning involves investing time, in this case, it will not be a waste of time but a time well spent. Thus, each one, knowing the tasks that are pending, will be able to dose their effort and their resources in a more effective way.
2. Prioritize tasks. It is necessary to give them an order of importance. Although at the end of the day, of the week or of the month, all the tasks that you had pending must be concluded, deciding which one you do first or to which one you dedicate more time and effort is necessary to distinguish what is really important from what is recommended. For this, it is necessary to differentiate between three types of tasks: essential, desirable and unnecessary:
- The essential tasks: they are the priority tasks, those that we must do in a compulsory way to avoid negative consequences, such as: going to work every day or going to the doctor when one is bad.
- The desirable tasks: they are the tasks that, sometimes, we position with priority for the conciliation of family and work life, but in reality they are not strictly necessary. They are those tasks that we would like to do but we should not put them first of importance, such as: washing the car before a social event, taking children to many extracurricular activities, organizing a complicated meal for friends.
- Unnecessary tasks: they are the tasks that suppose a complication added to the day to day and contribute a very small benefit. For example: go through various stores to find a party dress when we have others at home that could be worth to us, dedicate hours to get ready before leaving.
3. Do before the important thing that the urgent. Those tasks that we consider urgent will always occupy the first place within our priorities to reconcile. On the one hand, many of those urgent things, at times, are important things but not "life or death", that is, they are desirable tasks that we have become essential. Secondly, those urgent issues can cause, in turn, that we are unable to see other important issues that, for not having a date and time of delivery, we leave for the end. In this sense, it is necessary to remember that it is worthwhile to enjoy some important things and relegate some things that seemed urgent.
4. Ask for help, delegate. Sometimes, covering everything is impossible. On these occasions, it is necessary to ask for help. On the one hand, this decision requires a previous exercise of humility, that is, to recognize that a single person sometimes can not solve all the problems. In addition, it will require an exercise of confidence since, to delegate means to trust in another person what, surely, we would like to do but the lack of time does not allow us. Finally, asking for help requires self-confidence to recognize that asking for help is not synonymous with "useless", but with an intelligent person who knows how to manage their resources and understand their needs.Thus, delegate to someone else some of the tasks of the day to day will be a responsible way to face the overload of tasks.
5. Give up perfection. Many times we not only want to cover everything, but we also want to make everything perfect. However, time is limited and forces us to renounce perfection. When a person has an overload of tasks, it is probably because he / she tries to do everything at the highest level. However, although it is always important that things are well done, we must know that, sometimes, to get to do 10 a task, we suspend in all others.
6. Eliminate the feeling of guilt. Failing in a task is something normal that can happen to us at any time. Sometimes, the objectives will not have been realistic enough, in others, laziness or bad organization has forced us to leave something pending. In all these cases, it is best to do self-criticism but without being too harsh with ourselves, accepting that failures and unfulfilled goals are part of everyday life.
7. Be happy. The first objective of day to day should be happiness. Therefore, when planning how to cope with the overload of tasks, we must bear in mind that the quality of life and health should never be relegated to a second place. Thus, tasks are a means to make life more comfortable, achieve goals, those that bring us closer to happiness.
Damián Montero
