Five Strategies to Foster a Healthy Work-life Balance

Have you seen employees who constantly stay late at offices to complete their work or even come to the office on weekends to finish pending work? These employees also appear exhausted and stressed out. What they lack is a healthy work-life balance.

The current global pandemic and the resulting need for remote work have blurred the boundary between work and life. A study by SHRM reveals, “45% of employees work even longer hours at home than at offices.”

Thus, it reinforces the importance of work-life balance for employees.

Work-life balance refers to individuals attaining equilibrium between work and personal commitments.

It helps employees stay organized, self-disciplined, and prioritize tasks during their working hours, which is also reflected in the quality of output produced. But, on the other hand, an imbalance in work-life results in stress, fatigue, and, ultimately, disengage employees. Thus, companies need to implement various strategies to foster a healthy work-life balance at work.

This blog will discuss some ways to facilitate work-life balance at work. Organizations can also use resource management software to achieve the same. Let’s begin:

Five ways to foster healthy work-life balance at work

Employees are the cornerstone of organizational success. Therefore, a business must ensure that their employees are happier and satisfied at their jobs since it lowers stress and the risk of burnout. Below are some ways to strike the ultimate work-life balance:

Offer work flexibility to restore work-life synergy

Working in rigid schedules with minimal breaks discourages and disengages employees and affects the work-life balance. Also, when employees are assigned multiple tasks beyond their capacity, it will result in stress and burnout. Thus, their morale and productivity can sink when the workplace stagnates and lacks vibrancy.

To fix these problems, employees can be given a choice to choose work timings and location based on their convenience. Flexible working reduces fatigue and stress, enhancing productivity and work quality. This will enable employees to have a better work-life balance by effectively managing their personal and work obligations.

Prioritize employee wellness to ensure physical and mental wellbeing

Implementing and managing an employee wellness program is a significant step in improving the health and productivity of employees. Organizations can conduct surveys to identify the employees’ wellness interests and introduce different packages and wellness programs. For example, they can organize regular fitness and yoga sessions or arrange a corporate massage therapy to help relax tensed muscles and to help employees relieve physical and mental stress. Also, employers can arrange health screenings, and vaccination programs, all of which contribute to employees’ well-being.

In addition, employers can make sure that their employees take short breaks throughout the day or encourage walks in the office to break out the monotony of a sedentary routine. All these practices will make employees feel more valued & belonged, which helps reduce stress levels and unplanned absenteeism. It will also enhance their engagement, create high employee morale, and boost productivity.

Ensure optimal utilization level of resources to prevent burnout

When employees cannot balance work and personal obligations due to excess workload, it affects their motivation and performance. When employees are overutilized, it results in stress and burnout. On the other hand, when employees’ skills are underutilized, they will be disengaged; and if persists, it will result in attrition. Therefore, managers need to assess their work schedules while assigning tasks and projects to prevent overutilization/ underutilization.

Managers can use resource management solutions that give insights into resource utilization levels across the enterprise. It helps them mobilize resources from low-priority tasks to billable/strategic work and maximize productivity. They can also implement resource leveling and smoothing techniques to adjust the workload and ease their schedules. Thus, it facilitates managers to optimize the resource health index and improve productivity.

Encourage employees to take paid time-offs and vacations

Constantly working without any breaks leads to exhaustion and burnout, impacting an employee’s productivity. It also affects the satisfaction level of employees since they spend more hours at work and eventually blur the boundaries between personal life and professional life. Therefore, it is vital to encourage the staff to take regular time off or use their leaves yearly rather than rolling leaves over or letting them lapse.

When employees relieve themselves from their work and relax, it increases their attention span and energy levels, thereby enhancing engagement and productivity. This also reduces unplanned absenteeism and results in better retention.

Initiate team building activities to reinforce positive work culture

If employees are constantly working without breaks and there is a lack of interaction and communication among teammates, it will stagnate the workplace. Therefore, managers need to implement team-building activities so that employees get to know each other beyond their job functions. These activities also help combat feelings of loneliness or isolation in both co-located offices and among remote workers.

Team building activities like company retreats, game sessions, recreational activities, happy hours, coffee meetings, and fun challenges help employees socialize. These practices reinforce employee morale, strengthen team bonding, and maximize productivity.

Corporate team events offer a great opportunity for your business to increase employee engagement and create a sense of belonging. Organizing such events can also help improve employee productivity and loyalty. Thus, it can foster collaboration among employees, promote team spirit, and build trust. As a result, it will further help strengthen your brand image by creating positive associations with your employees.

Thus, it is clear that a solid workplace strategy is essential to foster a healthy work-life balance in an organization. Digital workspaces often include security measures such as user authentication, encryption, and data backup to protect sensitive information and get more facts here https://www.reworked.co/digital-workplace/what-is-a-digital-workplace-definition-benefits-best-practices/.

How can resource management software help facilitate work-life balance?

The resource management tool, with its 360-degree visibility, gives information about current and future work allocations of the resource before assigning them to projects. This way, they can ensure that the right resources are allocated to the right projects and no resource is overwhelmed with the work.

Additionally, the forecasting capabilities will help predict the availability of the resources in advance. This allows managers to allocate resources based on their availability and capacity. Moreover, managers can track utilization rates of resources in real-time and identify any under/over utilization. Further, they can optimize employees’ schedules and ease the workload by implementing resource leveling and smoothing techniques. It also allows you to keep overutilization in check and negate burnout. When employees’ stress levels are at a minimum, they are more active and productive at the workspace.

Not just that, the tool helps improve work-life balance by giving employees the choice to select projects of interest. Managers can publish open positions mentioning specific details such as skillset, qualifications, experience, etc. These positions are notified to all relevant resources across the organization. Following this, they can validate and book them using the same platform. Since employees are working on projects of interest, they will be more engaged and will be able to deliver quality work.

All these features of the resource management tool collectively help facilitate work-life balance and enhance workforce productivity.

Conclusion

As discussed, an imbalance of work-life balance disrupts organizational workflow and productivity. It also affects employees’ mental and physical health and their personal life. The points mentioned above, when paired with the right resource management solution, will help employers foster work-life balance at the organization. It will also enhance employees’ performance and productivity, accelerating the success of your business.