Research at Harvard and elsewhere shows that boundaries are a success tool. Turn off the false danger signal of stress and the stress stops in four minutes. Stress blows up attention and undermines intellect, leading to mistakes, conflict with others, and crisis mentality, not to mention absenteeism, medical bills, and loss of top talent. It serves as a starting point for a second survey to be done after the work-life program to get metrics on the success of the program.
#LIFE BALANCE HOW TO#
Our How to Do a Work-Life Balance Survey Ebook serves as a road map to the hot buttons and pressure points that are undermining work-life balance. The right work-life balance survey can surface issues driving work-life conflict and identify the areas that need to be improved. Here are some of the ways the program boosts work-life balance and job satisfaction: 14 Ways to Increase Work-Life Balance Our work-life balance program gives employees proactive self-management skills that let them make critical adjustments to how they do their tasks and how they organize life outside the job to reduce stress and maximize attention and engagement. It leads to tasks having to be done over again, reduced productivity, more effort to get the same amount of work done, and hours of catching up on work at home or on the weekend. Without good time management, information management, interruption management, and stress management, strain and distraction drive stress and overwhelm. Yet devices, distractions, and unmanaged demands are shredding attention today and, as a result, driving work-life imbalance and conflict. The more of it we have, the less stress, the more we are engaged in what we’re doing, like what we’re doing, and get it done faster. The science tells us that attention is the chief productivity tool, chief life tool, and chief happiness tool. They get strategies to manage demands, reactions, minds, and bottlenecks, and prevent shrinking attention spans. We build sustainable work-life balance by giving employees the tools for smarter and more proactive self-management. Our WLB Approach: Smarter Work 14 Ways to Boost Work-Life Balance Parents with young children are prime for this approach. Employees who would like to work less but the job requires 40 hours or more per week can divvy up the job with another person, each of them working 20 hours while the position is being fully staffed. Two heads are better than one in this program. This flex option allows employees to work a reduced schedule of hours but still get benefits, and is particularly helpful for new parents.
The extra day off goes a long way to bumping up life balance. A standard program allows employees who work 35-40 hours per week to do 10-hour days for four days a week, instead of eight-hour days over five days. Some organizations offer their employees an option to get their allotted work done in a shorter time span. It’s ideal for companies whose teams are spread around the country or globe, for people with long commutes, and to signal trust to employees.Ĭompressed Workweek. In a digital world more organizations are turning to telework from home at varying frequencies. Some employees may want to start work later so they can take their kids to school, or earlier, so they can pick them up after school, see a class performance, or employees may just want to avoid peak commute hours. The main work-life balance flex initiatives are:įlex Time. This increases job and life satisfaction, which is one of the reasons why 57% of companies offer some form of flexible schedule options for their employees (Society for Human Resource Management). Studies show that remote employees actually work more hours from home (Fried, Boston College), but the time crunch isn’t as intense because they can accommodate their lives better. The perception of more control reduces stress. Research shows employees feel they can manage workload and home responsibilities better when they have the ability to adjust their schedules to pick up a child early from school, or work from home a couple days a week. Flex programs give employees the ability to navigate both realms better with adjustments to schedules and offices. Trying to juggle work and life responsibilities creates a time squeeze for employees, one that flex policies can help alleviate. Work-life balance programs take two basic approaches - policies that provide employees more flexibility on schedules and location, and self-management programs that reduce stress and increase work effectiveness and satisfaction on the job and off. Self-management and time management programs The Main Types of Work-Life Balance ProgramsĢ.