Achieving a good work-life balance can help us express better performance levels, improve our health, and cultivate hobbies and passions that are critical to our well-being. Over the years, work-life balance has been managed by acknowledging an underlying trade-off: in order to achieve positions of excellence in one’s job or set up a healthy family, one has to choose between one’s career or one’s private life. Today, there is a different prevailing attitude: we desire, whatever the cost, to pursue both goals. Based on research and studies conducted over the past four decades, this book identifies roles and strategies that can be adopted by the four leading players in the reconciliation process: individuals, businesses, bosses and the society in which we live. Taking into account managerial concerns, the author provides entertaining examples and valuable pointers for attaining an excellent work-life balance, eliminating the guilt we experience when we take time off from work and promoting conditions that enable the greatest number of people to strike a new balance.

Marcello Russo teaches Business Organization at the University of Bologna and heads the Global Master’s in Business Administration programme at the Bologna Business School.