Balancing professional and personal commitments can be challenging for employees. The demands of work can impact family responsibilities, relationships and commitments to volunteering or hobbies. And personal commitments can impact an employees’ ability to fulfill their work responsibilities. However, managing this balance is an important aspect of employee engagement, productivity, and contentment. There are several factors which influence work-life balance including long working hours, insufficient time-off, overtime, and stressful working conditions.
Taking a pro-active approach to managing these issues may include:
1. Ask your employees
Conducting a survey of your employees to understand their preferences for schedules, hours, workload management and the general working conditions. Reviewing the survey results will help your business understand the needs of your employees.
2. Education
Providing education to employees about how to manage work-life balance through personal development training is a positive and pro-active way to manage your employees’ wellbeing. Training can include professional advice and tools to manage and review wellbeing.
3. Offer flexible hours
4. Promote breaks
Taking regular breaks is associated with better wellbeing. Encourage your team to take breaks from work and set the expectation that everyone prioritises their own wellbeing.
5. Regularly review workloads
Reviewing each employee’s workload is an important part of work-life balance. Team meetings can assist in allocating and sharing workload. Checking in with employees can avoid burn-out and reduce stress.
6. Flexible support for parents
Flexible working arrangements make life for parents much easier to manage. Parents have a lot of responsibilities and can feel overwhelmed by their commitments. Balancing work-life balance for parents is incredibly challenging, especially during the past two years of the COVID-19 pandemic. Offering equitable benefits for parents including parental leave, childcare, flexible hours and job-sharing would greatly benefit parents.
7. Lead by example
Encouraging work-life balance in your team may be as simple as setting the example by working reasonable hours, taking breaks, avoiding emailing after hours and showing your own balanced commitment to your work and personal life.
8. Encourage taking time off
Encouraging time off for your employees can avoid burn out and worsening stress.
Conclusion
Managing personal and family commitments is crucial for employees and with these simple strategies your employees and business can strike the right balance.
