There was an interesting post by Ryan Paugh the other day over at Employee Evolution, entitled “Big salaries are the easy way out”.

For those of you who haven’t come across EE before, it’s tagline, “The Voice of Millenials at Work” is actually almost too limiting. While I do happen to fall in this demographic, one of the recurring themes touched on at EE is that of finding the right work-life balance or blend.

This post highlights an interesting point on motivation. While this is looking at ways to motivate your employees to be more productive, in some ways, I think that the things on this list, such as providing more services, making it fun and interesting, and rewarding performance (not necessarily in a financial manner), are things that more employers need to consider.

Referring back to last week’s post on the Health Canada study, according to one of the authors, Chris Higgins, one of the major keys to reducing the costs associated with poor work/life balance is “sensitizing managers.” These things can be great recruitment and retention tools, and if you drill down, if a manager and organization is sensitive to these options, they are all things that can help their employees find and maintain a balance.

If you are able to include benefits like gym memberships and flexible hours, and “benefits” like specific, relevant praise and actual meaning to a person’s work, suddenly their job doesn’t become the onerous chore that one has to get through in order to live; it can be a fun and engaging part of one’s life! When you look forward to doing something, that’s half the battle in getting it done.