Jobhop Jobhop's blog : How to Achieve a Work-Life Balance & Why It's So Important
Next week (2nd - 6th October) is 'National Work Life Week'. A campaign run by Working Families, it is an opportunity for all employers to focus on their employee's wellbeing at work.
What is a work-life balance?
Maintaining a work-life balance is about separating your personal and professional lives without allowing one to intervene with the other. Both are important, neither should be neglected.
In today's fast-paced business world, the ability to achieve work-life balance is becoming increasingly difficult. Employers expect more from staff, and we're increasingly putting additional pressure on ourselves to achieve greater results. But when did it become acceptable for our 9 to 5 working day to become 8 to 7? Many of us have allowed this to happen, whether it's through conforming to the workplace culture or feeling obliged to put in more hours, however, this shouldn't be the case. Maintaining a work-life balance is not only important for your personal health and relationships, but it can also improve the efficiency of your work performance.
Still not convinced? Check out the reasons why having a work-life balance is important below...
WHY IT'S IMPORTANT
- Minimises health problems
Believe it or not, stress is a large factor in the cause of sickness and disease. It's no secret that when you feel tired, you're more likely to fall ill. This can be anything from a minor cold to heart-related issues. Because stress has such a huge impact on your health, it's even more of a reason why finding and maintaining a work-life balance is very important.
- You won't burn out on the job
Work-life balance is important because it allows you to take a break from the pressures of your office, enjoy life outside of your workspace and separate work from home. If you find yourself bringing your work problems into your home life, it is time to develop a work-life balance. Try to come up with a time management plan that will help to avoid you burning out as a result of your professional demands.
- Helps you to develop and keep relationships
- Gives you time to learn and create new hobbies
With a work-life balance, you will have more time to learn and create new hobbies and time to do things for yourself. Whether you like working out, cooking, reading or playing a sport, with a work-life balance, you will have time to express yourself and do things you love outside of the office.
You only get one life, so live it to the fullest. Whatever happiness means to you, chase it. You don’t want to get to years down the line and realize you missed out because of work; time is something you can never get back.
HOW TO ACHIEVE A WORK-LIFE BALANCE
At work:
- Request flexible working
If you’re struggling to balance work-life commitments, why not ask for flexible working hours? You may be able to customise your working week to better suit your family commitments, lifestyle, or spend time on your life goals. Your employer may be open to flexible hours, and you may be able to work your full hours across fewer days, or work split shifts, so long as your standards remain high.
- Clarify your out of hours availability
Just because your colleague sends you an email at 10.30pm, it doesn’t mean that you have to check it and reply. Sit down with your colleagues and set specific ‘check-in times’, or designate specific hours like dinner time when you’ll be unreachable. You can also set up an ‘emergency only’ system where colleagues are only allowed to reach you by phone and only in really urgent cases. In most cases, issues that come up outside of normal working hours can wait until the morning, so let them.
- Take breaks in the working day
- Take time off
To be effective at your job you need to take a break from it once in a while. Sometimes solutions don’t reveal themselves until you’ve stopped trying to think of one. Unless it's absolutely necessary to meet a specific deadline, avoid working on weekends or holidays. If your company gives you holiday, take them – even if it’s just to read a good book or check out some local attractions. The same goes for sick days; if you’re ill, stay at home! Your body and your coworkers will thank you.
- Leave the office on time
- Plan the next day
If you plan ahead for the next day, and maybe even the next week, you should be able to limit the number of extra hours you spend in the office. Put together a list of priorities and tick off the tasks as you complete them – this should help to keep your focus. If you turn up at the office every morning and simply react to evolving events, you will find yourself still working way into the evening. And this will see your social time simply disappear.
At home:
Work from home
Every once in a while you may want to work from home on your laptop, tablet or phone if you've got access to documents, files, and work programs online. This can give you the chance to focus on your work without the office distractions, and save your commute time to the office and back, allowing extra time to be spent with your family. When your work is done for the day, you’re all set to enjoy your evening straight away.
Take up a new hobby
Another benefit of starting a new hobby is that you can spend time meeting new people and potentially even expanding your network. You won’t have time to build a strong professional network if you’re constantly chained to your desk, so improving your work-life balance could also improve your career prospects.
Put events in your diary
Don't stress about the small stuff
You need to keep a certain level of cleanliness in your home for the sake of your hygiene, but beyond that, it’s up to personal preference. If you tend to spend hours after the kids are sleeping to wash up or do housework, rethink what’s really important. Would you really rather spend your time cleaning than doing anything else on your list?
Delegate
Even children are capable of making a contribution, so set up a chore chart and make sure that everyone in the house is doing their bit. No, your son won’t fold the washing exactly the way you would and maybe your daughter will buy the wrong brand of milk, but pitching in is bound to strengthen your family’s connection and you will have more time to spend together.
Remember that you don’t have to attend every dinner party, watch every football game, host every play date, or help out in every school sports day. Chose the activities and invitations that really interest you or are absolutely required and say no to everything else. Most of the time, others won’t even notice. If they do, politely explain that you were unable to make it on this occasion but you're excited to attend when you schedule allows it.
HOW COMPANIES CAN PROMOTE WORK-LIFE BALANCE
Creating a great work-life balance for employees is now easier than ever. There are so many ways that businesses can help their staff to feel less stressed and more in control of their lifestyle. Here are just some of the things that a company could do in order to support improved work-life balance:
- Introduce flexible working policies
Offer your employees a range of hours so that they can choose to work the times that fit in with their lifestyle. We live in a 24-hour culture and most jobs don’t need to be done within the traditional 9—5 working hours. Families with children of school age often struggle with childcare before and after school, so offering family-friendly school hour shifts of term-time only working can be a great bonus for staff.
- Promote working from home
With Skype, email and mobile phones readily available, ask
whether it’s really necessary for employees to physically be in the office all
the time. Working from home has many benefits. Getting rid of commuting time
means that staff will actually have more productive time to complete work and
helps to reduce the inevitable stress of late buses, traffic jams and tube
strikes!
A lot of homeworkers
also can that having a chance to work away from office gossip and constantly
ringing phones means that they can get more done too. Working from home on an
ad hoc basis also helps companies to become more family friendly, as it means
that if children are at home because they’re ill, or employees want to watch
their child perform in the school play, they can do so without having to use up
their valuable holiday time.
There’s some really good and cost-effective technology available to suit businesses of every size so that people are able to work remotely, be able to access data, documents and systems quickly and easily, and still feel part of the team even if they’re working from home.
It could be that you instigate a regular weekly lunch out on Friday’s, or get a good corporate deal at a local gym so staff can have a quick workout during their lunch break. It might even be as simple as setting up a group of colleagues who go for a 20-minute walk at lunchtime to recharge their batteries and blow away the cobwebs.
Another way to get a good work-life balance is to make sure
that being at work is fun for your staff. Always make sure that they take time
out to enjoy themselves too.
Find time to develop a work-life balance and you will be amazed at how much more relaxed and refreshed you will feel!
JOIN Jobhop and spread the word.
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