Work-life Balance and How to Improve It

Currently, only one in four employees say that their company supports their wellbeing. What’s more is that only one in five employees say they feel physically and mentally healthy!

With work happening often outside of the traditional office, it’s not easy to step away mentally to unplug and unwind. The effects of burnout are very real, impacting organizations across industries on a daily basis – reducing employee productivity, engagement, and retention. The journey to balance and improved wellness starts here, with a look at why work-life balance matters and how you can improve it for yourself and your company.

The importance of work-life balance

Think of the times you’ve felt most productive at your job. They were probably when you were satisfied, engaged, and rested, both mentally and physically. You had the energy and motivation to complete your tasks and even go beyond the baseline requirements of your position to make helpful suggestions, assist coworkers, and contribute to improving organizational culture.

Now think of when you’ve struggled on the job. At least some of those times were likely the result of work demands that prevented you from caring for yourself and taking the time to do things that mattered outside of work. It’s difficult, if not impossible, to give your employer your all when there are so many ongoing concerns outside of work that you don’t have the time or energy to address.

It’s rare to find an organization today that doesn’t at least mention work-life balance when?recruiting and onboarding team members but, are organizations actually addressing it in the day to day? Fortunately, there are steps that both you and your organization can take to prioritize and restore work-life balance.

How to improve work-life balance

While you can’t control the stressors you face on and off the job, you can control habits that enable you to better respond to them. Try these practices to preserve work-life balance even in the most challenging circumstances:

• Make mindfulness a part of your daily life.?
• Build healthy physical habits.?
• Use your PTO and take advantage of any flexibility your organization provides.?

Of course, your organization plays a big role in work-life balance, and there’s much they can do to foster a healthier balance for you and your fellow team members. Encourage your organization to adopt the following practices – or, if you’re in leadership or an HR professional, work towards adoption yourself:

• Work to build a better culture.?Organizational culture?is at the root of work-life balance. Your organization can start changing its culture for the better by?developing wellness initiatives, training leadership and HR on the importance of work-life balance, and giving employees the flexibility they need to thrive in the modern world.
• Listen to and act on feedback. Your company should provide channels for anonymous, honest feedback, like?pulse surveys?and always-on, intelligent?HR chatbots. And it should?adopt a platform?that makes it easy for managers and HR to?analyze that feedback and turn it into action.
• Make showing appreciation easy and fun. Recognition is the?biggest driver of employee engagement, and it’s a great way to make the “work” part of the work-life balance equation weigh just a bit less.

Start on the road to a better work-life balance today

Work and life don’t balance out naturally, and when your job takes more and more of your time and energy, it can be hard to see a way out. You can practice healthy habits yourself and make the most of your situation, but true change must occur at the organizational level.

You can also learn more about building a great work culture and other best practices here.