We all agree work-life balance is important. In the past, we’ve managed this balance by leveraging the seasonality of our industry.

I’ve said it, and I’ve heard my clients say it to our crews: “Hey guys, you’re not going to have a day off for two months. But after that, you’re going to get a good chunk of time off so you can get caught up on life.” Sound familiar?

Pre-pandemic, our industry’s norm was feast or famine. I’ve worked with companies in which every single employee achieved work-life balance through that seasonality. There were weeks when almost nobody was at work because everybody was taking time off to catch their breath.

However, in a scalable model, your core team can’t experience work-life balance the same way.

Work-Life Balance in the Scalable Model

A scalable organization, and certainly a post-pandemic production rental company, doesn’t experience the seasonality we used to have.

There are a couple of reasons for this:

1. Demand is higher throughout the entire year, and we’re seeing more busy months. Event planners are having trouble finding space in the calendar, venues that are accessible, and people who are available. We aren’t seeing slow seasons and busy seasons anymore — we’re seeing full years.
2. Scalability requires us to staff our companies for the slow season, not the busy season. If you’ve cut out a lot of the direct labor from your business to embrace outsourcing, it means your core staff is busy all the time. They don’t have a slow season anymore; they’re selling and planning all year round. You need to treat them differently because they now have regular, full-time jobs.

A scalable model takes away the direct work that piles on during the busy season — because your core team doesn’t go out and do shows.

Instead, your core team does the same job each day on-site. They sell, plan, and procure events. They manage all the people and processes that go along with this, regardless of how many trucks are out in the field and how many show crews are out doing events.

Today, work-life balance means their job is manageable all the time, so you need redundancies in place. People need to take vacations, and it shouldn’t matter when they take a vacation because redundancy fills the gaps. The seasonal burden is now on outside direct labor, which is handled by procurement and performed by your subcontractors.

The Problem I Still See

I’m still seeing companies that are trying to hire for what I call hybrid positions. A hybrid position is a job in which an employee has office responsibilities, departmental responsibilities, management responsibilities — oh, and they have to go out and do shows.

This is anti-scalability. It also pushes away your best candidates.

Truly embracing work-life balance means:

1. Your office people have a work-life balance built around an office worker model, which includes scheduled vacations.
2. Your show people — when you have them — have a work-life balance built around show schedules. For show people, work-life balance means when they’re not on a show, they’re off duty. They get to go home until the next show on their schedule.

Rather than everybody having a blended work-life balance where all jobs are hybrids, implement office work-life balance and field work-life balance. That way, everybody gets the best from their world.

Plus, it becomes much easier to recruit and retain people because you have a work-life balance option to put on the table and a process that allows it to happen. Everybody wins.

Conclusion

One of the best ways to leverage work-life balance is to lead with it.

If you’re recruiting someone, if you’re sitting down to have a performance review with an employee, or if you’re doing a compensation review, lead with work-life balance.

If the candidate you’re recruiting is used to the old, seasonal work-life balance model, tell them you have a better work-life balance model at your company. If you’re focused on retaining employees, ask them how their work-life balance is and what you can do to make it better.

What I’m getting at is this: Work-life balance can quickly become your most valuable recruiting and retention tool.

Use it to your advantage.