7 Ways to Improve Company Work-Life Balance

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Steve Thompson

March 3, 2022

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The emerging concept of work-life balance calls for employers to allow employees reasonable flexibility in planning work and personal events. The workplace should be a place workers want to go to perform their craft. But it shouldn't become a burden on their personal or family lives, primarily if they work remotely. Here are methods on how to improve company work-life balance for your employees.

1. Keep a Consistent but Flexible Work Schedule

Flexible Schedule

The foundation of improving company work-life balance is the understanding that allows personal time to be important to an employee rather than irrelevant. Simply by letting them know their pursuit of happiness matters, you can help set a work-life balance for your employees. While it's crucial to maintain a consistent schedule as much as possible, your company should be flexible enough to allow for occasional changes to help each employee enjoy life.

Businesses should avoid encouraging employees to work longer hours unless necessary. Employees should be allowed to choose when they are unavailable to work due to family or personal matters. But it would be best to keep the work schedule structured, which can be achieved by using software that tracks when employees clock in. It's still essential to follow the hours they work.

2. Identify and Reduce Distractions

Distractions hurt productivity, especially if they persist in an annoying way. Constant noise such as construction work from the outside environment can be very irritating, while watching a fascinating film can be very enjoyable. Either way, remote workers should know that these distractions don't help achieve a good work-life balance. Some distractions cannot be controlled. Others can be controlled with remote control.

The best way to keep distractions to a minimum is for workers to prioritize work over a specific block of time. That means shutting off the TV, radio, phones, or other devices to eliminate distractions the worker can control. Some people can work with background music or other audio, but it can also cause some workers to lose focus.

Share your strategies for reducing distractions with your employees. An effective strategy is for the employee to figure out what pleasurable things distract them the most, then use them as motivation for completing the work. They can later enjoy these items like social media, movies, and video games without the stress of work interfering with pleasure.

3. Allow Several Short Breaks in a Workday

Woman taking a small break

One of the best ways to build a culture of trust in the workplace is to show you care about how employees feel about balancing work with leisure time. It's good for anyone's mental health to take periodic breaks while working on a project. Short breaks help workers gather their thoughts and return with a refreshed mind.

Incorporating some of these small breakroom ideas into your office space provides a place for workers to socialize and have fun. Setting aside a recreation room will help build your team spirit and loyalty. The breakroom can contain a TV, computer, games, and puzzles that make solving problems fun. Maybe the room has a pool table or ping pong table.

Taking ten-minute breaks every few hours helps workers let go of stressful thoughts and reset their emotions. It gives them time to go for a short walk, which is good exercise. It also allows them to communicate with friends or family on the phone, social media, email, or other electronic media.

4. Establish a Dedicated Workspace

Remote workers should set up a workspace in their home as if they were at the office. This workspace should provide easy access to computers, communication devices, and other tools that help get work done. It doesn't have to look like a typical office cubicle. The more customized it seems to meet the tastes of the worker, the more it can inspire creativity. The more people have a chance to be creative, the more this scenario may improve the work-life balance lifestyle.

When people love what they do, they have a better chance to thrive at it. Setting creative, engaging, and fun work environments allows a person to mix business with pleasure in a productive way. Part of achieving a healthy work-life balance is making work more enjoyable while accepting the responsibilities that go with the job.

It's interesting to note that when office cubicles swept corporations in the sixties, they were used differently than what the inventor had envisioned. Robert Propst had designed the cubicle to be configured in flexible ways with different sizes and layouts. Yet companies often overlooked the flexible and open space qualities of cubicles to create rows of identical small boxes that helped create stuffy office atmospheres.

5. Develop Personal Relationships with Team Members

Team Bonding

Even if your entire staff works remotely, management must establish a personal connection with each member. It helps to encourage your employees to seek rewards for productivity. The best way to avoid employee burnout is to address it early from a perspective that you want to help them achieve a work-life balance. They must make time for themselves and their loved ones.

Part of good team leadership is letting each team member know you care about their well-being. This approach helps inspire team loyalty and helps workers feel they contribute to the big picture. To gain insights into each employee, take an interest in what they seek to achieve in their careers. Let them know what their options are for moving toward their goals.

It's essential for management to connect with workers regularly to make sure the team understands where the company is headed with its goals. In-person meetings are the best way to communicate, but it's still better than management never engaging personally with employees if you can only communicate electronically. Videoconferencing is a helpful way to bring a scattered team together online.

6. Make Good Health a Priority

Plate full of nuts and exercise weight

Allowing for flexible work schedules and flexible work environments opens the door to workers taking time to prioritize their health. Whether they need to make regular doctor visits or get exercise and buy healthy food, their working hours should not prevent them from making decisions affecting their health. If you give individuals who work remotely the freedom to set their work schedules, they will be able to achieve their fitness goals better.

A healthy lifestyle is shaped by a nutritious diet, exercise, and positive energy instead of stress. When employees only get a half-hour lunch and must return in exactly 30 minutes, it may force them to eat fast food, weakening the immune system regularly. Overuse of alcohol may also create unhealthy conditions. It helps to encourage a healthy lifestyle to maintain a healthy workforce.

7. Allow for Paid Vacations

Workers should set goals and stick with them, but they should also take time off occasionally to enjoy other things in life. The flexible workplace is here to stay because it's where most workers want to be. By letting employees take paid vacations, they will have golden opportunities to improve work-life balance on their own.

When people focus too much on work, it can lead to long hours and a buildup of stress. While some pressure might help drive worker performance, too much stress is unhealthy, as many health professionals and studies have suggested. Letting workers take vacations is a chance to let go of stress and free their minds. After feeling relaxed and refreshed, workers will be in a positive state of mind when they return to work.

Conclusion

As an employer, you've got to think about maintaining a loyal team. One way to do that is to be clear you care about the work-life balance experience. While there is no perfect work-life balance solution, it's still essential to make it part of your team's work ethic. Allowing employees to spend time with their families can help attract personnel who appreciate your work. Want more ideas on how to help your business grow? Subscribe to the EMA newsletter today!

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