Reasons to Explore Work-Life Balance Initiatives

Employees in a company spend most of their day working in the same place, in the same routine, and on nearly identical subjects. Additionally, if they are so overwhelmed with work that they have begun to lose their work-life balance, they are highly prone to experience burnout on a regular basis. This is not only harmful to people, but it is also harmful to companies since it may be an alarming sign for them to take fast action if they want to balance staff retention and engagement.

Understanding why employees go through burnout and how you, as a leader, can assist them to deal with it are two critical topics. Most of the time, it is because of the company that its employees experience situations in which they lose their work-life balance. As a result, Alexandra Kalev, chair of Tel Aviv University’s Department of Sociology and Anthropology, investigates how work-life balance programs might assist firms in improving employee retention and engagement.

Exploring work-life balance

The podcast episode opens by stating that work-life balance initiatives have long been shown to reduce attrition and increase employee loyalty. Aside from that, they have now been found to be beneficial in encouraging diversity among managers at such companies. Alexandra believes that three essential work-life balance supports are flexibility, time off, and childcare regulations. Aside from these three critical factors, she believes that practices are among the most helpful work-life balance initiatives because they reduce the barrier of opportunities between segments of people from various cultures and backgrounds.

According to her, managers prefer to measure their colleagues’ productivity based on the magnitude of their presence. However, she believes it is critical to examine the quality of the product produced. She claims that linking an employee’s time spent to their productivity is a misconception that harms the work-life balance of those individuals who may take less time to complete a task but offer the highest quality work. When discussing flexibility, she points out that there is often a conflict between employees who want more flexibility and managers who are concerned about achieving deadlines.

She thinks it is prudent to establish a middle ground where both of their needs may be addressed. Finally, she proposes that managers and executives recognize that people have lives outside of work and should be more attentive to them. She advises that workers be able to take the time they need to be with their family rather than needing to request leave until they can no longer enjoy the time.

There have been several ideas for employees to consider in order to achieve a healthy work-life balance. However, whether or not employees are able to do so is heavily dependent on the business. The aforementioned are a few suggestions that leaders and organizations could consider in order to assist employees in improving their work-life balance.