Work-life balance standards are continually evolving around the world. Professionals are looking to spend more time on different personal activities. On the surface, it seems that this can hurt their work performance. But, an improved employee work-life balance can help businesses grow.
In this article, we’ll explore the topic of work-life balance for employees. We’ll cover why it is important for your company, and take a look at a few ways you can improve it for your team.
What is work-life balance?
Let’s quickly go over what employee work-life balance is. This is simply the relation between someone’s work and personal life. It mainly involves how much time an employee dedicates to each. But, the intensity and stressfulness of one’s work can play a role in it too. A healthy work-life balance gives people enough time for various personal activities. Popular examples of this are spending time with friends and family, as well as working on hobbies.
Why is employee work-life balance important for business growth?
A healthy employee work-life balance can help your business grow in many ways. It can increase your team’s productivity, improve talent acquisition efforts, and more.
Increase productivity
Studies have shown that ensuring a healthy work-life balance leads to greater job satisfaction. This is especially true if professionals can find time for both family and health needs. Improved job satisfaction will then lead to greater engagement at work. This will help your team focus on their tasks more easily. They will be able to avoid distractions and complete their duties effectively. Engaged professionals will also enjoy their jobs more. This will encourage them to stay at your company much longer, improving your talent retention efforts.
Better talent retention
Employee work-life balance is valued by lots of people across the globe. Once professionals land a position with a healthy balance, they will want to retain it for longer. Enhanced talent retention will help your business save time and money. A high employee turnover will require you to train new members more frequently, which is no easy task. Training new staff will take time away from your company’s core tasks, slowing down its growth. This is why focusing on retaining talent, especially high-performing employees, is so important.
Improved talent acquisition
Closely tied to our last point, talent acquisition is another important thing for a business. The best professionals in any industry will demand the best conditions. This includes employee work-life balance, which is in the spotlight of more people than ever. Offering the perk can help your firm attract the best experts in your sector. This can greatly accelerate the growth of your business.
How is work-life balance measured?
To ensure a healthy employee work-life balance, you have to measure it first. The most popular ways of doing this involve various trackers. This includes time tracking software, which can help you see if your employees are overworked. Doing this is pretty simple as the signs of overworking can be very obvious. One example of this is extended working sessions with no breaks. Many overworked professionals also work at unreasonable hours of the day.
Besides detecting overworking, a quality tracker like WebWork can help maintain a healthy work-life balance. This brings us to our next point of discussion: how to improve employee work-life balance?
How to improve employee work-life balance?
Improving employee work-life balance seems easy. Simply decrease the amount of time your team works, and you’ll see an improvement. But, there’s more to it than that. Let’s explore a few ways you can enhance work-life balance for employees more effectively.
Remote working arrangements
The first strategy we’ll look at won’t reduce the work hours of your staff. Instead, it will take away time from an unproductive activity: commuting. Offering remote working can even allow your employees to work for longer. But, the enhanced work-life balance of such arrangements makes this unnecessary. By working from home, professionals can be more productive. They can complete more tasks in the same amount of time. As discussed earlier, this will provide your organization with many benefits.
Flexible schedules
Flexible schedules are most often used with remote arrangements. They can help professionals dedicate time to various personal events and tasks. This can include dropping off or picking up children from school, arranging doctor’s appointments, and more. Moreover, flexible working hours can also help employees work when they’re most productive. This will greatly enhance productivity, helping your company’s performance.
Set clear boundaries
Overworking is one of the greatest obstacles to achieving a healthy work-life balance. Setting clear boundaries between work and personal time is an effective way to overcome it. This is especially important for remote or hybrid workers, as working at unhealthy times of the day becomes too easy. To do this, first track when your employees work. You should then set up notifications to remind your team to stop working when it’s too late. Alternatively, you can use a time tracker that can stop tracking outside of work hours or when an employee has worked too much.
Better time management
A good time management strategy can help your team grow, while a bad one will waste a lot of your resources. Wasting time will mean that employees will take longer to complete their tasks. This can become a problem when tight deadlines are at play. An impending deadline will create a stressful situation for your staff. This stress can impact a professional’s personal life by affecting their mental health. To avoid this, you can use a variety of time management methods. Most of these won’t need much to be implemented. But, making use of a time tracker like WebWork can help you greatly.
Concluding remarks
Employee work-life balance plays a major role in the growth of a business. It is important to ensure optimal team performance. Fortunately, measuring it and maintaining a healthy work-life balance isn’t challenging. You can further simplify your efforts by using a time tracking solution. It will help your employees perform their best without sacrificing personal affairs.
