Work Life Balance
By Jill Wykes
How often do we hear about busy people complaining about how difficult it is to
find a balance between working and their personal lives? Is work/life balance
actually achievable?
Travel agents
have
historically
been
disadvantaged in this respect. Working long
hours to deal with changes to files, or waiting for
suppliers to get back to them, or working with
clients who are only available after office hours.
Dealing with call backs from tour operators and
then trying to locate clients at night or on
weekends and holidays. Assisting corporate
clients who have a sudden change in plans. Or
how about mall hours? Endless evenings and
weekends.
Retail call centres are open even longer …often 7
days a week, requiring shift work and odd hours
from their agents.
The shift in the travel industry towards home
based agents goes a long way to solving this
problem for the many agents who are signing on
to this trend. Perhaps work/life balance is one of
the reasons 50% of the agents in the U.S. and the
U.K. are home based.
Working from your own home office affords
many personal benefits and puts you back in
charge of your life, both personal and
professional. It gives you control. The kind of
control you will never have as long as you work
for somebody else.
I can personally attest to this, because as I write
this, after 20 years working in a large travel
corporation, I am sitting on my sofa, coffee at my
side, watching the sunrise. A few short years ago
I’d have been in the shower, rushing to dress
professionally, put on make up, do my hair (all
the while, checking my blackberry to see if my
bosses need anything) and get in the car to race
to the office, sitting in traffic along the way.
I am not a travel agent, but the trend towards
home offices is not exclusive to travel. A growing
number of Canadians now work from home in
many different professions.
Home based agents will tell you many reasons
why they are happier working from home. They
can be home when their children come home
from school, weekends are free if they want
them to be, they have regained the hours they