11 Ways to Improve a Healthy Work-Life Balance

Career & WorkplaceGuest Posts

Are you getting overwhelmed by workplace stress and the pressure of family and friends? A positive work-life balance can help you create more time for your work and other things in your life. The busier you get, the harder it is for you to prioritize between your work and personal life. Maintaining a healthy work-life balance is essential because it improves your overall health and relationships. It also enhances your productivity and attitude toward new work-life challenges.

Despite the pressure to have it all, it is not easy to achieve and maintain a healthy work-life balance. Here are 11 ways to make that improvement.

Employee attendance tracking for a healthy work-life balance

It is a good idea to avoid conflict at work. Fortunately, there are tools and effective work-life management strategies that allow you to reduce the effects of stress. Likewise, these tools can be used to strengthen the workforce in your organization, which will boost the productivity of your employees.

One of the benefits of using employee attendance tracking is that it allows the manager to embrace remote working. Attendance tracking apps have a remote clocking feature that allows your employees to be accountable without restrictions. Besides, these attendance tracking tools can help your team become more productive and improve morale. By reducing the time it takes to wait for vacation and time-off approval, employees become productive, and the work environment becomes happier.

By far, one of the most critical benefits of attendance tracking is the ability to identify goals and objectives by reviewing imbalances in hours worked. The big picture in this insight is the identification of payroll savings and better decision-making. Both are important because they allow the manager to identify and act on the activities that are eroding the company’s culture.

How to Improve a Work-Life Balance?

Unfortunately, many people don’t place enough importance on their mental health. The importance of maintaining a healthy work-life balance is prevalent at a time when studies show that stress-related illnesses and depression are on the rise. Money can create happiness some times, but spending all your time working pushes you further from happiness. Here are 11 tips to help you improve work-life balance.

  1. Meet the needs of your employees

Employees are the lifeblood of any organization. So if you are not meeting their needs, then you are bound to increase your work-related stress. Here are tips for fostering better mental and physical health of your team:

  • Provide child care perks
  • Ensure your employees take paid leave
  • Survey balance-related factors
  1. Educate your staff

Unfortunately, small business doesn’t spend as much to educate their employees on better work-life balance as large organizations. For a business to succeed, the employees have to maintain a healthy work-life balance. Offer seminars on how work-life balance is important and how to achieve it.

  1. Lookout for employee well-being

If you want to improve work-life balance in your organization, look out for employee well-being through social support. That’s a sound business decision, and companies around the world are acknowledging it. Why? The reason is that employee well-being is linked to engagement and productivity.

  1. Make working hours flexible

Herein, employees have scheduling freedom that allows them to fulfill the obligations of their positions on their own time. Flexibility has countless benefits to organizations, and a lot of companies are taking note. This is an excellent way to encourage work-life balance outside the office environment.

  1. Embrace remote working

Your employees don’t need to dress in company attire and commute through traffic to work to stay productive. There are a lot of benefits of remote working to businesses. Most importantly, the employees are more productive and maintain a healthy work-life balance.

  1. Promote quality over quantity

As a business manager, you should encourage your employees to work efficiently instead of doing more work. Doing more work and working smart are not the same. Besides, doing a lot of work damages the morale of the employees.

  1. Bring them home to work

Maintaining a healthy balance between your work and personal life is no easy task. That’s why many organizations encourage employees to carry their work home. This approach allows the employee to spend more time with their family, which also makes them happier.

  1. Encourage employees to practice healthy living

It is no secret that employees are the best asset an organization holds. Hence, placing a deeper emphasis on employee wellness can encourage engagement in the workplace and improve productivity. Also, an integral aspect of promoting a healthier work-life balance is healthy living.

  1. Prioritize financial education

Financial stress can have a deep impact on employees’ performance away from home. As such, improving the financial literacy of your employees can have far-reaching implications in your company’s success.

  1. Promote creativity

Encouraging your employees to be more creative can spur innovation within your organization. Therefore, promoting a healthy work-life balance through creativity can lead to an actively engaged workforce.

  1. Lead by example

Even when you tell your employees that you encourage healthier living, that doesn’t mean they’ll follow everything you say. You have to lead by example if you want to connect with your staff. If your employees see that you value healthier foods over other junk options, they will prioritize theirs.

Bottom line

There are a lot of ways to separate your personal and professional lives without having them encroach on each other. Which one are you looking forward to implementing most?

Author’s BIO: Lori Wade is a journalist from Louisville. She is a content writer who has experience in small editions. Lori is now engaged in news and conceptual articles on the topic of business. If you are interested in an entrepreneur or lifestyle, you can find her on Twitter & LinkedIn. She has good experience and knowledge in the field. 

How Is Your Summer Strategy Working?

Family

how is your summer strategy working?
By now you have had the first part of the season to evaluate your summer strategies for whatever is going on at home while you are at work. Households with children face some real challenges when school is out (I know ours does), and I’m pretty sure you have done your best to make a plan, but is it working?
Now is a good time to ask your kids how they feel about the summer so far and get suggestions for solving some of the problems that have come up. Talk to your caregiver and emergency backup and let them know you appreciate all they do.  That stay-at-home neighbor needs to be thanked for being on call, even if you haven’t had to make the call. And don’t forget to thank your kids for acting responsibly even though they should be doing it anyway.
Have a family treat night and brainstorm how to deal with little things before they turn into door-slamming fights. Do you have a system in place for conflict resolution at home? Do you need to create a sign that lists expectations and rules while you are at work? Is the person in charge while you are gone abusing their authority? Are consequences clear and consistent?
Many kids (and adults) find it easier to discuss problems when there’s something to do while you talk. I’m thinking ice cream with all the toppings here, but do what works for your family. There’s something about a regular family time that you know will be happening that makes communication develop.
It’s easy to forget that family life does develop the skills you bring into your career. There are surprising ways family and career overlap and most of it has to do with the strengths we developed at home.

Surprising Ways Family And Career Overlap

Work/Family Balance

surprising ways family and career overlap
Have you ever considered the ways your work comes home — and your home comes to work? One writer recently shared her thoughts in this article titled, “4 Things Business Taught Me About Parenting — and Vice Versa” and I am sure, if you thought about it, you could come up with more things you have learned as you balance career and family.
The reality is that we aren’t compartmentalized into two separate persons who are exclusively at home or exclusively at work. If you are having problems at home, it is easy to bring that stress into the workplace, and the same tendency applies from work to home. But there are good things that overlap, too!

  • “Treat others the way you’d like to be treated” is a basic childhood lesson that never stops being the right thing to do.
  • “Be responsible for your behavior” applies pretty much everywhere I can think of.
  • “Apologize when you are wrong” gets everybody on the same side, and the same team, and frees you to deal with the problem.
  • “Time out” gives a chance to regroup and respond instead of react. You don’t put a co-worker in the corner, but you could suggest a break and set up a meeting to discuss solutions.
  • “Nap time/Snack time” acknowledges the physical limitations of a child. But grownups, too, have physical limitations and repeatedly working through lunch or excessive overtime will reveal that fact.
  • “Respect each other’s boundaries and differences” goes past teaching kids to get along and into the working world with people from many backgrounds and perspectives.
  • “Do your chores”, or your to-do list, because sometimes you just have to get it done regardless of how you feel about it.

What are some things you have learned from work and applied to home, or vice-versa? I’d love to hear from you!