Employers have a decisive say in work-life balance

The late summer months are often a time when many professionals will be thinking more about the concept of a “work-life balance”. For some, this will be prompted by a somewhat impatient countdown until the day we depart on a long-planned holiday to catch up with family or explore a new destination.

For others, it might be because we’ve recently returned from a similar excursion out of the office and already missing the relative freedom and personal time it offered.

In either case, the idea of the perfect work-life balance — the very personally felt sweet-spot between time spent at work and time spent at leisure — is a concept that many people can both struggle to describe and worry they aren’t achieving. Many professionals will be familiar, for example, with the fear that they spend too long in the office while leaving too little time for themselves and their families.

As something of such concern to employees, the concept should also be something that occupies the attention of the organisations people work for, and not simply because it is nice to do so. Employees who have a work-life balance skewed very much towards the workplace suffer higher levels of stress and associated negative health effects such as high blood pressure and heart disease.

This, logically enough, can have a real and evident negative effect on an organisation’s levels of attendance and productivity, not to mention raising safety concerns and increasing insurance costs.

Overworked, stressed employees are also more likely to disengage from their work, lose interest in the organisation’s vision, and cease to be as creative, effective and motivated as you need them to be. They might be left feeling underappreciated and ignored by their organisation, perceiving that the business cares little for them as individuals and responding negatively in turn.

Worse still, such negativity is prone to spread further among a workforce — potentially poisoning the attitude of entire departments if left unchecked.

Research also often shows that a “good” work-life balance is among the most highly-sought after attributes of an organisation when professionals are job-hunting for a new role. A recent Deloitte report, for example, showed that 16.8 per cent of Millennials surveyed prioritised a good work-life balance — placing it as the highest placed recruitment factor against alternatives such as progression opportunities, international travel, or the brand reputation.

As a result, companies that are perceived to support a good balance are often able to cherry-pick the very best candidates and enjoy the ongoing good public relations of being perceived as an employer who cares and invests in their staff’s well-being.

This doesn’t, however, mean that an organisation should feel compelled to simply ramp up vacation days as a means to fix the problem (much as I am sure this would be well-received in itself!). What is clear from much of the research on work-life balance is that how it is defined is very much a personal issue. And, consequently, policies to support it need to pay this due attention.

For employees with young children, for example, access to childcare arrangements or flexible working practices might be most highly-prized as a means to better manage their time. This could be as simple as staggering start and finish times, or could contemplate more flexible remote working options.

And this isn’t even just appealing to parents — a striking 2015 survey by RecruitFi, for example, found that 54 per cent of all US full-time workers would leave their current positions or scale back their hours if they had the chance. People wanted more time for themselves, to spend with family, to exercise and relax, to engage in the activities they enjoy most.

Put like that, it is clear that better flexitime policies are an essential consideration for organisations as a means to retain their employees.

Others people may be happy to spend longer amounts of time at work if only they are also able to socialise more with colleagues and friends from around the organisation. This desire might be met by providing more informal meeting and relaxation areas where people can chat, or by organising social events that encourage a more collegiate atmosphere within an office.

The point is that achieving a great work-life balance is not a simple box-checking exercise that a organisation can complete and forget about. It is a constant process that is as much about remaining receptive and sensitive to the different needs of employees, and then being proactive enough to create a corporate culture and HR processes that can best accommodate them.

The writer is a human capital expert with more than 15 years of experience across a range of organisations.