“Balance activity with serenity, wealth and simplicity, persistence with innovation, the community with solitude, familiarity with adventure, constancy with change, leading with following.”
— Jonathan Lockwood Huie
In today’s busy world, prioritizing between work and personal life can be a huge challenge. Work-life balance is an important aspect of a healthy work environment. It is an important concept in the business world as it helps to motivate the employees and increases their loyalty towards the organization. This comes at a time when their work responsibilities are also increasing, resulting in a conflict between personal and work commitments and increases stress.
“I believe a balanced life is essential, and I try to make sure that all of our employees know that and live that way. It’s crucial to me as a manager that I help ensure that our employees are as successful as our customers and partners. I also think that employees these days expect less of a separation of work and personal life. That doesn’t mean that work tasks should encroach upon our personal time, but it does mean that employees today expect more from the companies for whom they work. Why shouldn’t your workplace reflect your values? Why is ‘giving back’ not a part of our jobs? The answer for us is to integrate philanthropy with work.”
―Marc Benioff, chairman, and CEO of Salesforce
By making a good balance between work and life, it helps to increase productivity in the workplace as the employers are relaxed about their personal commitments. Understanding the importance of work-life balance helps the organization increase employee satisfaction and performance.
ENCOURAGE TEAMWORK
Offering a flexible schedule or work from home options not only helps improve work-life balance but also the importance of teamwork. Scheduling plans to advance foster employees to work together to complete the tasks and hit deadlines.
REDUCES ABSENTEEISM
A flex-time reduces rates of absenteeism.
ATTRACTS TALENT
Organizations that care about work-life balance is often perceived positively by top talent. Such an approach may also positively impact recruitment and retention efforts.
“Find your balance and stand with it. Find your song and sing it out. Find your cadence and let it appear like a dance. Find the questions that only you know how to ask and the answers that you are content to not know.”
— Mary Anne Radmacher
A poor balance between work and personal life may not only affect employees but also affects the organization they work for. Employee stress can increase to the level of burnout, resulting in lower productivity at work, and may also experience poor personal and co-worker relationships and reduce job satisfaction.
Many employers would like to improve the work-life balance of their employees. There are plenty of ways to improve work-life balance.
- Giving employees information about what a healthy work-life should be.
- Allowing employees to work from home.
- Providing flexible working hours for employees.
- Placing a restriction on work hours, by not allowing employees to work past a certain time or number of hours in a week.
- Focus more on the employees’ productivity instead of hours worked.
- Making sure that employees take a short break to help employees to feel fresher and more relaxed.
- Making sure there is enough staff to share the workloads and avoid putting too much work on the staff.
- Ensure management and supervisors also enjoy a healthy work-life balance.
- Giving employees time off for things.
- Thinking about how much holiday time and day-off you will give to your employees.
- Provide an enhanced and equal benefit for every employee.
- Implement a Health Cash Plan, to provide support for staff when they are unwell.
“Most people chase success at work, thinking that will make them happy. The truth is that happiness at work will make you successful.”
— Alexander Kjerulf
Most organizations are increasingly recognizing the importance of helping their employees to achieve the ability to maintain a healthy between work roles and personal responsibility.
Achieving a better work-life balance is to think about the current demands of your professional and personal life.
TRACK YOUR TIME
Achieving a balanced life begins with analyzing the present situation to serves as an eye-opener relating to work and personal lifestyle.
DETERMINE YOUR PRIORITIES
Spend time on reflecting on what is important and listing your top priorities at work and personal life.
SET SPECIFIC GOALS
With the list of priorities, you listed turn them into concrete and measurable goals.
SCHEDULE SCRUPULOUSLY
Most successful people plan their work and work their plan, which turns priorities and goals into reality.
ESTABLISH BOUNDARIES
Setting a fair and realistic limit by clearly communicating these boundaries to your supervisor, co-workers, partner and family on what will and will not do both work and life.
TAKE CARE OF YOUR HEALTH
Health should always be No. 1 priority. Taking good care of yourself physically, mentally, and emotionally to make you a happier, more engaged, and more productive person.
NURTURE YOUR FAMILY/RELATIONSHIP
The greatest source of inner satisfaction is making your personal relationship a priority, your productivity and effectiveness on the job will actually increase.
MAKE TIME FOR YOU
It is important to schedule a time for your own renewal besides work, health, and relationships.
LEAVE WORK AT WORK
Develop a mental on-off switch between work and home to establish a transitional activity between the two realms.
EXERCISE YOUR OPTIONS
Organizations today are creating policies and programs that facilitate work-life balance. These arrangements benefit employees to work more productivity at the same time cutting stress and freeing-up valuable personal/family time.
WORK SMARTER NOT HARDER
Time-management practices can cut stress and save up an hour a day with the help of advanced technology, works become more organized.
“We have overstretched our personal boundaries and forgotten that true happiness comes from living an authentic life fueled with a sense of purpose and balance.”
— Dr. Kathleen Hall
An organization that recognizes these benefits and implements policies to promote a work-life balance is one that will not only see an increase in the productivity of their workforce but which also sees increased retention of staff and reduction in costs associated with high turnover.
