How to Recognize & Reward Employees: 150 Ways to Inspire Peak Performance, Second Edition

Chapter 10. Give Them a Life

It has been a long time since the old work/life model prevailed: the one with one breadwinner (male), one homemaker (female), and 2.5 children enjoying the fruits of their father’s hard work and their mother’s steady attention. It disappeared with the convergence of several factors: the loss of hundreds of thousands of well-paid manufacturing jobs that supported the model, the full-scale onslaught of women into the workforce, and the emergence of family units that bore little resemblance to the 1 + 1 + 2.5 group. Added to those social factors were on-the-job pressures that included the push for ever-greater productivity; the twisting, bending, and upending of the traditional top-down organizational structure in response ...