Balancing one’s life and work can be a total burnout. It is exhausting, yet the outcome is more than peaceful and gives a better picture of hope and future. Every aspect of life revolves around balancing time, energy, and effort. Employees consider Work-life balance to be the most challenging aspect of their work life. Those who achieve the invaluable work-life balance conquer all the organizational and personal stress.
Work-life balance is a prime factor where all the pressure starts and ends. This challenge has taken several steps forward due to the ongoing pandemic. Before the pandemic, employees faced a different set of problems like unproductive time spent traveling, traffic, longer breaks, and staying at office premises even if an employee has completed his or her task. All these worries were an add-on to the lack of work-life balance.
Now, these issues are solved as all the employees are working from home. However, employees are still in distress because of the absolute imbalance between personal and professional life as a completely unique set of complications have arisen. The expectation of overtime working hours, degradation in work performance, family or other disturbances, feelings of isolation, or being alone have led to additional pressure on employees.
This proves, no matter how flexible the organizations or their protocols are, employees are bound to be in stressful situations if there is a lack of work-life balance
Definition of Work-life balance
Work-life balance is an act of maintaining the order or equilibrium between one’s personal life and professional activities. It is a major concern for someone not willing to compromise on the quality of their professional or personal life. Over-engaging in any one aspect of life may lead to significant disturbances and eventually break down its foundation. Employees and professionals need to understand that professional life is just a part of life. It is not life in totality. Employees experience a lack of work-life balance because they consider their professional life as their whole meaning of existence or get caught up in their personal affairs more than necessary.
While referring to a fine work-life balance, it doesn't always mean getting off from work and returning to household responsibilities. It is more about the comprehension of designating a certain level of priority to things in a broader sense. Prioritizing the aspects of life and understanding which task or activity needs most of the attention is a must. Knowing this entire procedure and following it helps the employees to establish and retain a work-life balance.
Symptoms of a poor balance between work and personal life:
People show evident signs when they lack balance between professional life and personal life. Changes are not obvious at first, but the adverse effects of imbalance show a rapid increase in stress. Irritability is the stepping stone of poor work-life balance in working professionals, then follows stress, anxiety, fatigue, depression, etc.
Nowadays, these symptoms are common in employees, irrespective of whatever field they chose to work in or whichever position they work on a hierarchical level, there is always work pressure from their superiors and the compulsion to complete the tasks. Following are the symptoms of poor work-life balance:
Glued to the laptop screen:
Employees who dedicate themselves entirely to their work lose track of time and miss their personal or family events. Dangerously glued to their work computer screen is a primary symptom of weak work-life balance. Accepting an extra load of work becomes a daily habit and slowly and steadily leads to a daily routine. Working extra hours with hazardous effects on health and relationships is simply not worth it.
Chair potato:
The term “Couch potato” is modified to “Chair potato” in this case as working professionals like managers, HRs, or subordinates never get out of their chair and never get to breathe fresh air the whole day. Lately, there is a new trend among work from home professionals of sticking to their chair and not making any movement the entire day. This immobile body posture continues for the whole day, and employees witness health issues in response to this behavior. Working professionals start getting out of shape and experience rapid weight gain. Eating disorders are another cause of major weight gain.
Impatient behavior:
When employees experience poor balance in their work and personal life, they tend to become more rigid, impatient, and short-tempered. This agitation has adverse effects on other employees or subordinates and family members. This is the most evident sign where the employee gets frustrated and tends to show low patience. This is due to the constant hustle in everyday life. And this, in turn, affects the employees' peace of mind and calmness in their daily functionalities.
Constantly worried about work even in personal time: Employees who overwork find themselves thinking about their work round the clock. The constant feeling of outperforming oneself overpowers any other feeling in the world. Employees are in the loop of their company's tasks, files, meetings, talking to their customers, and trying to achieve the targets by the end of the day. Everything related to their personal life takes a toll on their tasks. Slowly and steadily, a time comes where personal interests vanish into thin air. No free time is enjoyed whatsoever. All these are the major symptoms that have to be quickly worked upon.
No social life whatsoever: Since back-to-back tasks are allotted by managers, employees do not get any time to socialize and behave humanly. They work as machines and handle things robotically. When the work-life balance falls out of place, employees stop giving time and going out with their friends and family.
Extremities in Behavior: Employees experience extreme feelings with the completion of tasks. On one hand, urgency in completing the tasks and maintaining the quality simultaneously is a part of work OCD. Employees who repetitively keep checking for discrepancies in the workflow want to perform the tasks with perfection. Having an eye for detail is a quality unless it gets out of hand and disrupts the work-life balance. On the other hand, there are employees who get incompetent over a course of time and start to underperform.
How important it is to achieve Work-life Balance:
Humans are social animals, they are not made to work with machines 24 hours a day. When this cycle of work-life balance is out of place, the functionality of humans comes to a halt. There are several reports stating deaths of employees due to lack of work-life balance and excessive work assigned by companies. Nothing is worth the physical and mental health, and more importantly, an individual’s life.
All the professionals, managers, employees, or employers who understand the idea of work-life balance at the beginning of their career have a peaceful journey of maintaining the balance between their lives. The policy, in this case, is “the earlier the merrier”. The better the understanding of balancing everything, the more fruitful are the results.
Easy Work-life Balance Tips for Employees:
Work-life Balance acts as a knight in shining armour and comes to the rescue of people who are always burdened with their work and assignments. It shows that there is a beautiful life outside the menial work. Accepting the changes and adapting to the natural environment helps the best when there is no balance between lives.
However, it is also important to take note that no personal issues should be involved in professional matters. Employees, generally, fail to manage their problems, and it affects their efficiency in working professionally.
If the employees try to achieve work-life balance with an inaccurate approach, it becomes more difficult to achieve it. By following the right measures and steps, employees can certainly claim that they have achieved a work-life balance.
Here are quick tips to follow and maintain a healthier work-life balance for employees who work from home:
● Design a proper work desk at your home and make yourself comfortable. Sit with a good posture while working.
● Try to cut off those extra loads of files or sheets after working hours.
● Avoid checking work-related messages, updates or emails from your cosy bed. Prepare a dedicated routine to go through all your work stuff.
● After completing the working hours, spend time with your family.
● Reduce screen time and try to enjoy nature.
● Shaking off the laziness, try to get up early in the morning and maintain a healthy eating routine.
Some set of tips to follow for a healthier work-life balance under general situations:
● Communication about work-life balance is Key: Firstly, the professionals should address the lack of work-life balance and communicate it to someone who could help. Several employees fail to address it as a problem and never talk about it. To lower the pressure, people need to share the pressure with someone. Sharing the feeling of frustration leads to several better solutions. Just talking the problems out solves 50% of the problem itself.
● Time Management: This one is a little difficult to attain. Every busy person on this planet is trying to manage their time. It takes tremendous discipline to be able to manage the time successfully. For example, a strict routine can help manage time. Working in a specific time schedule helps and boosts productivity. This balance should be practiced daily until achieved.
● Breaks and Vacations are necessary: It is more than necessary to take breaks to restore productivity and energy in the middle of extreme working hours. Every organization should accept the Japanese ideology of napping in between work. Normalizing resting after handling work pressure should be a corporate thing.
● Follow a Healthy routine: Getting up early in the morning, dedicating a peaceful time to yourself is what you owe to your body and mind. The Work-life balance comes from within. Exercising and following a healthy schedule help train your mind and maintain productivity.
● Keep the greed aside and prioritize mental health: The desire to earn more money and, for that purpose, working extra hours for extra pennies are worthless if your mental health is at stake. This famous line, “Health is wealth”, has significance for a reason.
● Completing the tasks during office hours and cutting off overtime: Completing all the tasks in the office hours and leaving on time is a sign of maintaining a work-life balance. Try not to over or underwork in these hours and leave once done working.
● Meditation: A habit of meditation helps to keep one’s mind in peace and calms them down. It gives a stable state of mind and makes the person mentally stronger for the day’s tasks. Meditating every day also helps to start the day with a positive approach.
Wrapping up
Even when employees or managers work at MNCs and experience tremendous career growth, they are not satisfied with their work. The reason is poor work-life balance.
Therefore, it is important to prioritize your goals and work, and keep your loved ones happy and spend quality time with them.
Author Bio:
Prosenjit Mukherjee, General Manager & Head of HR at SCIKEY
Prosenjit have almost 16 years of Global HR and Talent Acquisition experience in mass recruitment, executive search hiring, employee engagement, policymaking, 360-degree Appraisal Mechanism, Trust Index Performance Management, Learning & Development, Virtual Performance Dashboards, Talent Certifications, Change management, Social media management, and Marketing.
He has taken part in many CEO and HR conclaves globally, whereas he has shared his views on leadership and growth. Prosenjit has coached and mentored HR managers on managing business operations, HRBP role, operations, and financial growth management.
During his career, he has worked with top fortune companies, renowned BPOs of Globe, premier IT organization. Prosenjit has received several rewards and felicitations from CEOs and MDs for extraordinary achievements. He had the opportunity to share stages with TedEx speakers.
