In the chapter «Work-Life Balance from the Perspective of the Second Vatican Council», Drs. Consuelo León and Nuria Chinchilla point out that, in «Gaudium et Spes», one of the Pastoral Constitutions of the Council held fifty years ago, the Council addressed some of the issues that concern us today. The authors specifically refer to the entry of women into the labour market and the fact that more than half the actively employed population has family obligations. The Catholic Church predicted the need to establish work-life balance decades before it became widely acknowledged at the beginning of the current century.
“Work-Life Balance from the Perspective of the Second Vatican Council” is co-authored by Drs. Consuelo León, the Director of the Observatory on Family Studies and Communications Manager of the Institute of Advanced Family Studies (IESF), and Nuria Chinchilla, a lecturer at the Universidad de Navarra’s IESE Business School. “The family and the workplace are areas of personal and professional development that mutually reinforce each other while they contribute to the creation of prosperity and social sustainability", according to the authors. Their work suggests that, when companies give their employees the opportunity to achieve work-life balance, both employee performance and productivity are enhanced. The additional benefit for company is that employees are offered a new and attractive incentive without economic cost to the company.
In addition, the authors maintain, “The political and business community should promote work-life balance and shared responsibility as an exercise in healthy social responsibility while recognizing the social and economic sustainability at stake”.
At the end of the chapter, the authors state, "The family is an area that enriches people's lives". Regarding employees as mere components of an assembly line is to underestimate their value. “We all have family responsibilities. Companies must treat employees as collaborators if they wish to obtain a genuine commitment from them”, add the authors. “All of this must be realized within a context of faith, which allows us to envisage the fairest and most promising scenarios imaginable", they say.
In October 2013, Dr. León took part in the International Theology Congress, Second Vatican Council: Historical, Doctrinal and Pastoral Perspectives, at the Universidad de Navarra’s Faculty of Theology. The Congress gave rise to a book of the same name, to which Drs. León and Chinchilla contributed the chapter "Work-Life Balance from the Perspective of the Second Vatican Council".
