Creating a Good Work-Life Balance for Your Team
When you run a business, you’ll eventually find yourself taking on staff. No matter what you’re selling or who you’re selling to, you’re going to need some support at some point along the line to keep things ticking over and to help your business to progress. Sure, you may want to retain as much control over decision making in your business as possible for as long as possible, but as you find yourself having to fulfill orders, develop new products and expand, you’re going to need support to keep everything running to speed, as well as support from people with different areas of expertise to push things forward. Of course, when you take on staff, you’re going to find yourself with a lot of responsibility on your hands. You’re going to need to support your staff to ensure there are high levels of staff satisfaction and to maximise staff retention (saving you money). A key element of this is helping your team to manage a good work-life balance. Here’s some more information that can help you with this.
Why Focus on Employee Work-Life Balance?
Now, many employers feel that helping their team to maintain a good work-life balance isn’t their responsibility. But the truth is, work-life balance can have a huge impact on employee performance, productivity and staff retention - which are definitely areas you need to take responsibility for. A team who can manage a happy and comfortable home life around their work are much more likely to be happy, more positive, enjoy their work and work harder. Staff who don’t get to manage their home life around their work life are much more likely to experience burn out, start looking for other roles and are increasingly likely to leave.
Clear Goals and KPIs
A key element of helping your team to manage their work-life balance is to make sure that they have clear goals that are achievable within their working hours. All too many staff members end up overworking, doing extra hours and losing out on personal time because they’re busy trying to achieve goals that can’t be completed within their regular working hours. Make sure to review all staff members’ goals and targets (or “key performance indicators”) and make sure that they are reasonable. You can also discuss your team’s workload with them through anonymous surveys. This will give you honest feedback that provides insight into how your team are finding their general workload.
Break Times
Your team need breaks throughout the day. Way too many workplaces only offer one, short break, where staff barely have time to eat their lunch, never mind kick back and relax, disconnecting from their work and taking some time to recuperate. It’s been proven that people work much better and more productively when they take breaks. So, make sure that your staff have a series of short ten minute breaks throughout the day. You may want to offer one break before lunch and one after. This time could be used to disconnect, whether that’s going for a short walk, getting a hot drink, reading a Just Living Blog, checking in on the news or social media or anything else.
Flexible Working
A great way to help your employees to manage their work-life balance is to provide flexible working options. This could range from flexible hours to remote work to hybrid work. This will help your staff arrange their work around commitments and responsibilities.
Hopefully, some of the suggestions above will help you to help your team. Everyone will benefit in the long run!
