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Merja Ylä-Anttila’s tips for balancing the career and family life
In the latest podcast of the New trends in occupational healthcare series of the Mehiläisen Pisto podcast, Mehiläinen Working Life Services’ Director of Major Clients Andréa Alvarez-Tarjasalo discusses with Yle CEO Merja Ylä-Anttila about the management of day-to-day life, stress and reconciliation of work and family.
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How can you balance your career and family life
As the CEO of Yle, Merja is responsible for the organisation of 2,800 employees. Her calendar is filled with tasks related to traditional management as well as different board of directors and committee meetings, and there are rather few empty slots. But there is always room for the important and current matters, thanks to Merja’s secretary who helps her to manage the daily life and schedules.
The busy years (ruuhkavuodet) often refer to time when the children are small and daily life revolves around them. However, other things may also cause pressure and challenges in balancing between work and other parts of life. Merja names one example: the desire to support aging parents. In other words, busy years may be caused by different situations in life.
Merja says that good things have happened in reconciling the career with the starting of the family, such as the pending family leave reform and investments in day care. There is still room for improvement in terms of supporting the balance between the working and family lives and measures are needed from society as well as the employer. When the important aspects outside work are in order, the employee has more to give at work.
How to cope with the stress caused by working life?
Merja says that she feels less stress than people in general. One reason for this is that she finds her work inspiring and stimulating:
“I get energy from my work and people around me. I try to make sure that I have “charger” people around me, who give me energy.”
The meaningfulness of work plays a key role in coping with stress and Merja thinks that it also gives her power to take things further at Yle.
Merja has experienced strong stress in working life when she has been forced to make heavy decisions during her career, such as letting employees go as a result of cooperation negotiations. Merja feels that she has received the best support in pressure situations from a mentor with whom she has reviewed stressful situations and solution alternatives.
Lately, sickness-related absences caused by mental health problems have increased drastically, and one of the reasons for this is, according to Merja, the changed concept of working time.
“Especially in creative work and in work requiring brain capacity in general, people are always at work and this raises their stress levels.”
As it becomes increasingly harder to distinguish between working hours and leisure time, the importance of recovering is highlighted in various discussions concerning working life. For Merja, the best way to recover is to leave the environment causing stress and spend time with friends and family. In addition to relaxing in your free time, it is important to take care of your recovery during working hours. Merja admits that this is challenging for her:
“Together with my mentor, we have talked about leaving “pondering breaks” in the calendar, but unfortunately it is easy to forget them when the calendar is nearly full.
In addition to the “pondering breaks”, Merja recommends the new kinds of meeting practices, such as walking meetings, which bring variation and exercise to the day.
Merja’s three tips for surviving the busy years
- If possible, a good spouse who shares the family responsibilities with you.
- Patience. Do not hurry, do not feel guilty for your choices. If you want to be home with your small child as much as possible, other things can wait.
- Courage. Take responsibility, do not be afraid of the busy years, as they will pass. Intermediate levels towards a leading position are important in terms of your career and, therefore, you should bravely seek new team responsibilities, for example.
