Balancing work and personal responsibilities is often not an easy task. However, this can be especially challenging for business owners, managers, and anyone else who has a demanding schedule. If you’re one of these people, you might frequently find yourself in less-than-ideal situations—checking email at night, delaying family obligations for work, and more. However, in the long term, the negative effects of these will compound and lead to burnout. One of the best ways of preventing this ahead of time is what we’re going to be covering today: work-life balance strategies for business owners and beyond.
Why Work-Life Balance Strategies Matter for Business Success
While it may be tempting to think that working non-stop will get you better results, this is often not the case. Prioritizing work over your personal life can lead to a number of negative effects—especially in the long term. As you overwork yourself, you’ll slowly get burnt out. Burnout will then affect your productivity, holding you back from performing your best.
Another thing to be aware of when assessing your work-life balance is your impact on your team. As a leader, it’s important to set a good example for your staff. Consequently, by valuing a healthy work-life balance, you can improve the performance of both yourself and your team.
Over time, implementing work-life balance strategies for yourself will expand their impact on the rest of your team. Your staff will value their personal and work responsibilities equally, which can have a number of benefits. Chief among these is an increased employee engagement rate, which will enable your staff to perform their best. They’ll also remain more loyal to your business, allowing you to save on recruitment expenses in the long term.
Having established why a healthy work-life balance matters, let’s now explore a few work-life balance strategies you can implement yourself.
7 Work-Life Balance Strategies for Business Owners and Anyone Else with a Busy Schedule
Various work-life balance strategies can help you draw a clear line between your work and personal time. The ones we’re going to be covering in this guide are the following:
- Set Boundaries Between Work and Personal Life
- Delegate Tasks and Teach Your Staff to Delegate
- Make Use of Technology to Improve Your Work-Life Balance
- Take Breaks Regularly and Emphasize Their Importance for Your Staff
- Take Advantage Flexible Working Schedules
- Set Business Goals in a way that Fosters a Healthy Work-Life Balance
- Foster a Culture that Values a Healthy Work-Life Balance
Let’s explore these in-depth now and cover how they’ll help you maintain a healthy work-life balance over the long term.
1. Set Boundaries Between Work and Personal Life
Setting clear boundaries between your work and personal life is the first step to establishing a healthy work-life balance. This is a strategy that anyone can use—regardless of their position. Without them, work can take over your entire life and lead you to the previously mentioned overworking and burnout.
The simplest way to use this work-life balance strategy is to set strict work hours. If your work ends at 7 in the evening, then you should stop all work-related tasks at that time. This may be challenging if you work on a personal device—especially at home. However, there’s a solution to this.
Having a dedicated work device that’s only for work tasks is another excellent boundary to set. If you’re not using teleworking or remote working arrangements at your business, this is likely something your staff already enjoy. You should take advantage of it too, which will allow you to switch to personal time at the end of the workday more easily.
2. Delegate Tasks and Teach Your Staff to Delegate
Delegating is an important skill for all leaders. While you may strive to control everything in your business, there’s simply not enough time in the day for that. Handling everything yourself will lead you to overwork yourself in no time. So, it’s important to know how to offload less important tasks to others in your team.
Besides delegating tasks yourself, you should also teach your staff—especially your management team—how to delegate. This will help them free up time for themselves, which they can use for a variety of things. Besides dedicating time toward more important tasks, they’ll also be able to enjoy an enhanced work-life balance.
3. Make Use of Technology to Improve Your Work-Life Balance
A wide variety of tools can help you in your journey to a better work-life balance. Many of these are productivity and management suites, however, they can help you separate your work and personal lives as well. An excellent example of such a tool is feature-rich time trackers, like WebWork. These often allow you to set dedicated work hours and disable tracking work time out of schedule. This is especially excellent for the first work-life balance strategy we covered—setting boundaries.
A high-quality time tracker will have lots of other benefits for your business as well. They’ll help you manage your company’s tasks, boost your team’s productivity, and do much more—all of which will help your business grow.
4. Take Breaks Regularly and Emphasize Their Importance for Your Staff
An important part of a healthy work-life balance is periodic breaks. These will help you recharge your energy and continue performing your best for longer. If you have trouble taking breaks, you may want to use a time management technique like the Pomodoro. This involves cycles where you work for 25 minutes and then rest for 5. Using productivity tools like the aforementioned time trackers can be beneficial for this work-life balance strategy as well.
Besides taking breaks, you should also emphasize their importance to your staff. If you notice any of your team members forget to rest, you should remind them to take breaks regularly. You should teach them about the negative effects of work overload and encourage them to maintain their performance in the long term.
5. Take Advantage Flexible Working Schedules
Sometimes, certain work or personal tasks cannot be delayed to avoid mixing the two aspects of life. The solution to such situations is pretty simple: flexibility. A flexible work schedule will allow you to complete both your personal and work responsibilities—without sacrificing either. Because of this, flexible work hours have become one of the most sought-after benefits for professionals across the globe.
By offering a lot of flexibility to your staff, they’ll be able to improve their work-life balance. The perk will also enable you to boost your talent acquisition efforts and hire more affordable or higher-quality talent for your business. Learn more about the importance of employee benefits in our dedicated guide.
6. Set Business Goals in a way that Fosters a Healthy Work-Life Balance
When setting goals for your business, aim for something that’s both ambitious and achievable. Your targets should push your team’s capabilities, but not by much. Make sure you and your staff don’t need to overwork themselves, especially for long periods, to achieve your goals. You should plan your objectives with the long-term future of your firm in mind—for which sustainability is key.
7. Foster a Culture that Values a Healthy Work-Life Balance
The final work-life balance strategy we’re going to cover combines all the others we looked at in this guide. By valuing a healthy work-life balance and demonstrating that to your team, it’s much easier to ensure your staff won’t overwork themselves. A high-quality time tracker where your team can see how much and when their teammates work can be especially useful for this. Seeing that there’s no one checking emails or working on other tasks outside of work hours will help both you and your team enjoy personal time uninterrupted.
Concluding Thoughts: Taking Advantage of Work-Life Balance Strategies Effectively
Implementing work-life balance strategies effectively can have a measurable impact. By setting boundaries and drawing a clear line between the two, you can make sure that your work tasks don’t get in the way of personal ones. Valuing a healthy balance between work and personal time will also set a good example for your team to follow. This will help ensure that your company will perform well in the long term.
