Click here for a full transcript of the episode.

For years, we talked about work-life balance, but lately work-life integration is gaining more traction. Work-life balance focuses on keeping your work life and personal life separate but equal, while work-life integration is centered on the belief that they must coexist in harmony.

Work-life balance served a purpose: to create awareness around people spending too much time at work. The unintended consequence is that it created an adversarial relationship between work and life. We start to demonize work as something that takes us away from what we really want to do.

Dan Bruder advocates work-life blend; he believes that work can serve as an opportunity for us to learn, grow, and develop as human beings, and the tools we take from work can be applied at home. HR professionals and business leaders can help employees blend their work and life by creating connection within the organization and fostering connections between people.

Technology can prevent us from connecting, but it can also help us connect. Dan’s software uses AI to survey employees at all levels of the company about the company’s strengths and weaknesses, what they see impacting the company, and what solutions they suggest, building more of a connection with the company. It can also be used to create peer groups that can help each other grow and make friends at work.

In this episode’s listener question, we’re asked whether retention is different in corporate versus nonprofit settings. In the news, we discuss the effect of traditional and flex time hours on employees’ sleep.

Mentioned in this episode:

• Purple Ink
• Powered by Purple Ink
• Susan Tinder White Consulting
• ”Work-Life Integration Is the New Work-Life Balance. Is Your Team Ready?”
• Blendification
• The Blendification System: Activating Potential by Connecting Culture, Strategy, and Execution by Dan Bruder
• Dan’s TED Talk,”Blendification of Work and Life Builds Communities”
• Dan on LinkedIn
• Email Dan
• ”19 Employee Retention Statistics That Will Surprise You”
• ”Why Flextime Is an Important Tool to Support Employee Well-Being”
• SHRM credit evaluation
• The JoyPowered® Shop
• JoyPowered® on Facebook
• JoyPowered® on LinkedIn
• JoyPowered® on Instagram
• JoyPowered® on Twitter
• Email JoyPowered®

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