Work-life balance has become a struggle in the current business environment. The changes in the world of business in the past few quarters have lead to a number of opportunities for leadership within companies all across the country.
These companies are all dealing with providing work-life balance for employees.
What I find with business leaders, leadership groups, board of directors and investing groups is that they’re always burning the candle at both ends. They’ve either started a business from scratch, have taken over a business or just merged and acquired a business, so they generally have a pretty heavy workload.
The world is crazy these days. People everywhere are working and trying to raise a family, go to school, do household tasks, etc. That’s why work-life balance is so important.
Unfortunately, a common mistake employers make is not being sympathetic to the situations of their employees.
When employers don’t have empathy for employees, they usually don’t offer any opportunities for a better work-life balance, such as flexible schedules, telecommuting or ROWE (Results Only Work Environment). This is a mistake.
In a situation without empathy, employees tend to get burned out because they’re working so hard to produce numbers or meet objectives without any relief.
Steps to Improving Work-Life Balance
I’ve had some recent discussions with the leadership in a few companies around the country, and here are some things they’re doing to provide better work-life balance:
- Doing a monthly employee climate survey—One company does this to determine which projects are being worked on and which are being pushed aside because employees are picking up slack.
They also determine where their employees are missing targets, where budgets have been tightened and how their workforce is doing overall.
Doing a survey monthly will help you do a “temperature gauge” of your employee base. This will give you a feel for who is being overworked, how it’s affecting the workplace, what kind of productivity levels are happening and if those levels are meeting your company’s business objectives.
- Ask employees to take some days off—Although you really can’t force an employee to take time off, many companies are making in mandatory for employees to take at least one day off a week in order to alleviate their workload and keep them from burning out.
- Offer alternative work options—Some options could include working four 10-hour days and getting the fifth day off; ROWE; telecommuting, etc.
- Recognize the signs of burnout—Burned out workers will often look stressed and/or bring their personal lives to work with them. They sometimes start to detach from everyone and get irritated easily.
The main thing to remember about providing work-life balance is this: It’s hard to find good employees these days, so why let a perfectly good employee burnout? You’ll not only be losing the employee, but you’ll incur costs from having to recruit, hire and train again. You’ll also likely lose time.
You’ve invested a lot of time, money and energy into training your employees so they are up-to-speed with your business. Protect that investment by providing employees with work-life balance.