Pause what you’re doing now and ask yourself, are you living to work or working to live? This is an important question that a lot of members of today’s workforce are asking themselves every day. The pandemic COVID-19 has affected the world and even the workplace to have a work schedule now that is not only confined to the normal office hours. A lot of us have been encouraged to work from home which has its own advantages and disadvantages.
Whatever those are, every HR support leader or employer should never ignore the fact that employees are now spending longer hours at home than ever before. Most great leaders would understand the importance of putting their people first over everything else.
1. Provide a flexible and remote working schedule
According to Sage.com’s survey, 81% of the 3,500 employees that they involved in a poll have placed importance and value on flexible working. It’s not a surprise that people want to be trusted to manage how, where, and when they work. Employees appreciate their employers who empower them to manage their own time.
Employees feel more empowered and valued when they know they can go see a doctor when needed or need to get something in their house fixed, secured in the knowledge that their employer is fully aware that they’ll still get the job done.
2. Focus on productivity rather than long hours of work
Instead of counting the hours employees work, it’s better that they are more productive and that they can focus more on the completion of a specific task. Although there may be some days that employees are required to work long hours just to complete a task, this can be offset by the days when it’s not necessary for them to perform a complete eight hour day of work.
3. Give employees breaks, go out for a walk or even allow them to do their work in a different part of the office
You can do this by providing break-out rooms or separate some spare desks that workers can go to. Sometimes phones and team chatter can get pretty overwhelming and it’s actually beneficial to break away from it a little bit.
4. Leaders should be the best examples
If managers and seniors can’t keep a healthy work-life balance, then how can the employees do it too? This is why it’s important that managers and senior leadership are able to enjoy a healthy work-life balance too. As the employer, you want to make sure that they leave the office on time, take breaks, and not send emails to them out of office hours or not wanting them to deliver work and tasks on unworkable schedule scales when it isn’t urgent.
5. Offer childcare services for parent employees
The responsibility of parents to take care of their children doesn’t stop when they leave for work in the morning. This is why it would be nice and thoughtful for a workplace to be family-friendly since it has proven to give an advantage for both employers and employees in a variety of different industries.
You have plenty of options to do this. You can either provide an onsite childcare facility that employs credible staff and do the guesswork and frustrations out of other babysitting and daycare services. But if this won’t work for you, you can give your employees childcare service discounts to lessen the stresses of caring for children when it’s workday and lessen the amount of missed work.
But if these options are still not feasible, you may give your employees the opportunity to have a flexible working schedule so they can take care of their children. For instance, you include the chance for them to take time off early to pick up a sick child from school, or allow them to attend some school events at lunchtime, or offer a flexible start and end time for parents to drop off and pick up their kids from school.
6. Offer paid vacation time
Nowadays, vacation is no longer considered a luxury. It’s already more of a necessity. It’s essential for employers to know this and how vacations from work have become a crucial part of today’s work culture. Allowing employees to have long breaks without needing to sacrifice their wages is highly effective for fostering a work-life balance. If they go on vacations, they will be more rejuvenated and relaxed after returning to work, producing better work quality and productivity.
7. Ask for feedback from time to time and conduct work-life balance surveys
Companies must always perform a time-to-time assessment of the employees in order to have a healthy work environment. Although situations may change because times do change, keeping track of these changes is an important part of providing effective solutions in place. Employers are able to fix issues and concerns that may act as a hindrance towards meeting a healthy work-life balance goal.
Aside from that, taking feedback will make employees feel that they are valued and it will help organizations to know everyone better and provide solutions to the issues raised.
