For Canadian business people, finding harmony between their careers and personal lives is showing signs of improvement. According to the Regus Work-Life Balance Index, there has been a 16 per cent rise among Canadian business people who feel their work-life balance has improved over the past two years.

Despite spending more time working in 2012, respondents said they are enjoying their jobs more today, and the majority (65%) feel they have enough time to spend at home or on personal pursuits.

Overall, 71 per cent of respondents said they enjoy work more and believe they are achieving more than they did two years ago.  Compared with countries around the world, Canada ranks fifth in overall work enjoyment in 2012 behind Mexico (81%), Brazil (81%), India (80%) and South Africa (76%).

Achieving a good work-life balance is important to ensure growth and development in a country and helps businesses attract and retain top talent. And Canadian businesses are listening – with over 43 per cent of respondents reporting that companies are doing more to reduce the time employees spend commuting compared to 2010.

“More and more people are looking for an improved work-life balance and flexibility in the workplace,” says Wes Lenci, vice president of Regus Canada. “One such measure that is becoming increasingly popular is helping workers reduce tiring and unproductive commute time through the introduction of more flexible working practices.”

Additional findings from the Regus Work-Life Balance Index include:

• The 2012 Canadian Index score for Work-Life balance is 113, below the global average of 124 and lower than the United States (123), India (139), China (149), Brazil (151) and Australia (129)
• 71 per cent of respondents believe they achieve more and enjoy work more compared to two years ago
• 65 per cent  of business people say they are happy with the amount of time they spend at home or on personal pursuits
• 43 per cent of respondents felt companies are doing more to reduce the time employees spend commuting compared to 2010

The Work-Life Balance Index brings encouraging news that business people in Canada believe their work-life harmony is improving, confirming reports working hours remain below the OECD average (http://oecdbetterlifeindex.org/countries/canada/). Moreover, worries about job security have decreased from the start of the economic downturn in some sectors and a recent Regus Business Confidence Index confirms that Canadian business confidence is stabilizing.

The Regus Work-Life Balance Index
The Regus Work-Life Balance Index calibrates job satisfaction indicators and respondents’ views on their overall work-life balance with data on real-life practice such as working and commuting from a global survey of over 16,000 professionals, including 252 Canadian professionals, in more than 80 countries from the Regus global contacts database. The Index calibrates this data and is benchmarked against a base point set at 100 in 2010. The survey was managed and administered by the independent organisation, MindMetre, www.mindmetre.com