Last week we came across three interesting articles – making a case for work-life integration rather than work-life balance, women’s fear of being ‘found out’ as less deserving of their jobs, and the invisibility of disabled people a year on from the Paralympics.

Offering work-life balance to employees has become widely accepted as one of the ways to maintain a diverse workforce. However, writing for HR Review, Mary Fitzpatrick argues it’s not so much work-life balance we need as work-life integration. Technology has changed the way we work, increasing expectations of availability outside core working hours and blurring the line between work and life. Work-life integration, as a concept, acknowledges that “Family situations are more fluid, job roles are changing, working hours are stretching, and the division of parental responsibility is evolving.” It persuades employers to put policies in place to support such intertwining of work and life.

Emily Maitlis, a journalist and presenter at Newsnight BBC, has written about the fear women may have of being ‘found out’. It’s the fear of “thinking they’ve pulled the wool over their boss’s eyes to get a job they don’t deserve”. By questioning their own credibility and ability, women often keep putting themselves down. Another piece of advice from Emily for women – “I wore a lot of high heels professionally along the way – who knows, perhaps they helped. But I live life in running shoes wherever possible: it makes you much, much faster.”

Over a year after the Paralympics, BBC Ouch asks ‘After Paralympics are disabled people invisible again?’ Francesca Martinez, an award-winning comic who has cerebral palsy, says, “Attitudes have been polarised and disabled people are either brilliant athletes or work-shy scroungers and of course there’s a huge group who lie in-between those two…” Another issue disabled people still face is the day-to-day struggle of getting out and about. Tony Heaton, sculptor and wheelchair user, says, “It’s amazing that in 1969 we as a society managed to put a man on the moon and yet we still can’t get a wheelchair user from one railway station to another nearly 50 years later… You have to come to the conclusion that it is a lack of will to create a more accessible world, not lack of technology or design skills.”

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