Do you find yourself taking business calls long after you get home on the weekends? Does Saturday morning find you in the office checking work emails? You may have a problem with your work life balance. This happens to many women who feel like they need to be the best employee or boss and the best wife and mother. It’s hard to find a balance between your personal and business lives. You need to find a work-life balance that works best for you.
What is work-life balance?
Work life balance is something that you experience when you give equal time and energy to both your personal and business lives. Essentially, you stop prioritizing work or your personal life over the other one. This imbalance occurs when you’ve received more responsibility at work or at home. For instance, you received a promotion at work that takes more of your time or had a baby that also requires a lot of attention.
An imbalance between your work and your personal life can leave you tired and stressed at work and at home. Finding your work-life balance will help you feel better and be more productive when you work and when you spend time with friends and family.
Tips for improving your work life balance
Even after you’ve found yourself stressed and spending too much time on work or personal matters, there are ways to restore your work life balance and keep it in balance. You need to find a way to achieve this balance to be happy and successful. Here are a few tips for achieving your personal work life balance.
Set clear boundaries between work and personal
When your workday comes to an end, it’s time to stop thinking about work and taking calls from clients. Starting work means it’s time to stop worrying about your messy bedroom or what to make for dinner. It’s a good idea to keep a separate computer and phone for use at home.
At the bare minimum, you need to use different browsers and emails for your personal and professional life. If you work from home, it’s always more challenging to create these boundaries. You need to have set hours for work and ensure your family doesn’t interrupt you during those hours.
Go on holiday
When your work life balance is swung too far towards work, it’s time to take a vacation. When you’re on vacation or take a trip away from home, stop taking calls from work, and leave your work laptop at home. A whopping 768 million vacation days went unused by American workers in 2018, and you might have some of those days unused too.
It’s time to use your vacation days. Whether you take a single day and visit the local day spa or take the kids to Disney World, vacations are essential for maintaining work life balance.
Love Your Job
Do you hate what you do? If you answered yes, it’s time to find a new job that you do love. Doing something that you enjoy helps to relieve your stress levels and improves your overall mood at work and at home.
No job is perfect. When you’re following your passion and in a field you enjoy, there will still be stressful days and aspects of the job that you don’t enjoy. However, if it’s your passion, the hardships and challenges become less noticeable to you, and you believe that you’re doing something important to you.
Make Your Health a Priority
Whether it’s your physical or mental health, you need to make it a priority. You can’t be productive or engaged with your family and friends if you don’t feel well or you’re suffering from depression. If you need to take time off from work and let someone else pick the kids up from school so you can rest and heal, then that’s the best thing to do.
In some cases, making your health a priority is as simple as eating right and taking a yoga class. You need to make sure that you feel your best to do your best.
Unwind and relax
Don’t be afraid to take some “me time.” At least once a day, you need to turn off your phone, television and computer to unwind and relax. You can read a book or take a long hot bath. You need to step away from all of your responsibilities and concentrate on relaxing. It needs to be something that you enjoy even if that means lying in your bed petting your fur baby. It’s time for you to let all the stress of the day go.
Tips for helping your employees find work life balance
When you’re in charge of a team or run your own business, you can help your staff maintain their own work-life balance. You’ll find that employees who practice work-life balance are more attentive and productive throughout the workday. You might think that it’s up to each person to find their own balance, but you can help them in a few simple ways, including:
Set the tone
As the boss or manager, you set the tone for the people who work for you. If you’re sending texts and emails at all hours of the day and night, your team will believe that they’re expected to answer them at these times and follow your lead. You can help them find a work-life balance by having one yourself and not encroaching on time when they should be at home or tending to their personal life. If they’re sending you texts and emails at odd hours, encourage them to only work during working hours. Your employees follow your example in this case.
Find out what each employee needs
While you might have a husband and three children or only a puppy waiting on you at home, each of your employees will have different situations. This means that for each of them work-life balance has different requirements. It’s essential that you talk with all of your employees and understand their work and personal needs.
In some cases, you might be able to help an employee with work-life balance by letting them work from home a couple of days a week. Some employees may want to work fewer days per work but more hours per day. It’s essential that you keep an open mind and try to be flexible to help your employees achieve work-life balance.
Ensure your employees understand their benefits package
When you’re interviewing or hiring a new employee, you spend time defining the benefits your company offers. However, you probably don’t discuss those benefits often with your current staff even when you add or change benefits. Some benefits may help your employees achieve a better work-life balance. It’s a good idea to talk to your employees about all their benefits from time to time and encourage them to make use of them.
Work-life balance is essential to keep you and your team relaxed and productive in both your personal and professional lives. With a little effort to define your boundaries and devote time to work and your personal time, you can improve the work-life balance of both you and your staff.
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