Work life balance is all about how effectively you adjust your day to day activities in order to achieve a sense of balance between your work life and personal life. Work is demanding, you are expected to show up for a full time job and complete your tasks, though it’s good to excel at your career but when it bleeds in your personal life it can affect your mental and physical well being. The poor balance between the work and personal life not only affects the employee but the organization as well. Also, employee stress can increase to the level of exhaustion resulting in lower productivity of work, and reduced job satisfaction.
There are number of ways in which organizations can help in encouraging a healthy work life balance for their employees:
Flexible working options
Offering employees flexible working options can help them in designing their working pattern that better fits their personal commitments. Flexible working options include allowing employees to work from home, as more and more companies are becoming technologically advanced. In the present digital era, employees can work from almost every location with the use of their laptops and smart phones and also could access their work related emails. Apart from that, flexible working options further include compressed working hours and job sharing.
Allow unpaid time off for life events
Leavesthat come under Leave policy of an organization are paid ones but if the situation warrants employees to take the leave, that becomes bit complicated, be thoughtful about your employee’s family emergency and their desire to better themselves.
Develop a culture of Collaboration
Even though we pride our self in the work, we can’t do everything on our own. When you see that one of your colleagues is struggling, offer to take some work off their plate. Even if you have still got something to do.
Your colleagues will undoubtedly notice your kind gestures and chances are they will return the favor, taking work off your plate sometime in the future. Just because collaboration is routine does not mean it should go unnoticed. Show gratitude when your coworkers help on a project. A simple thank-you can do the trick and make everybody happy.
Ask employees for guidance
If you feel that employees are failing to maintain the balance in their work life then try consulting them about what changes around the workplace might help. Employers should try to measure employee satisfaction with regular meetings either as one on one discussion or group discussion, anonymous surveys and employee engagement at different levels.
Encourage short breaks
It is important for employees to take frequent breaks throughout the day, sitting still and staring at screen for straight 8 to 9 hours is not good for human body as there exist a number of health issues associated with it. Taking regular breaks at work can make employees more focused and productive and less burnt out. Moreover, millennial employees embrace mobility at workplace in order to de-stress and heal themselves back to normalcy.
Reliable working environment
Maintaining a structural consistency has been proven time and time, that lets the employees know what to expect at workplace on day to day basis. It makes the workplace more reliable as it can reduce the stress that employees feel at home, and will also help them to streamline their activities in a better way.
Balanced employees tend to feel more motivated and less stressed out at work. Employees with positive work life balance are able to do better job at work that subsequently increases individual as well as organizational productivity. Organizations that offer employee friendly policies and flexible working environmentare able to attract and retaina huge base of talented manpower while creating happy employees.
