Work Life Balance
This article covers meaning, importance, steps & example of Work Life Balance from HRM perspective.
What is Work Life Balance?
Work life balance is a method which helps employees of an organization to balance their personal and professional lives. Work life balance encourages employees to divide their time on the basis on priorities and maintain a balance by devoting time to family, health, vacations etc. along with making a career, business travel etc.
It is an important concept in the world of business as it helps to motivate the employees and increases their loyalty towards the company.
Importance of work life balance
Working on a job for a company and making a career can be an extremely time consuming duty for any employee. Employees are busy at their offices throughout the day and sometimes even on weekends. This gives them very little time to interact with their family. Because of high pressure of work, often family members get neglected.
Also, stressful jobs cause the health of employees to deteriorate. This is where work life balance come into the picture. Work life balance concept allows an employee to maintain a fine balance in the time he or she gives to work as well as to personal matters. By having a good balance, people can have a quality of work life.
This helps to increase productivity at workplace as the employee is relaxed about his personal commitments. It also allows the employee to give quality time with family to spend vacations, leisure time, work on his/her health etc. Hence work life balance is extremely important for employees and increases their motivation to work for the company.
The below image depicts a work life balance scenario, where an employee has to balance his/her life between personal (family, friends & self) and professional (job, career) commitments.
5 Steps to improve work life balance
There are specific guidelines to how an individual can maintain a proper work life balance, some of which are:
1. Creating a work leisure plan
Where an individual has to schedule his tasks, and divide time appropriately so that he has allocated appropriate time to his work and his career development goals and at the same time allotted time for leisure and personal development. Employees also use a compressed work week plan to build a balance.
2. Leaving out activities that waste time and energy
Individual should judiciously avoid wasteful activities which demand large time and energy and in return not produce output for either the work life or the leisure life.
Effective time management can help an employee be less stressed.
3. Outsourcing and Delegating work
Delegate or outsource time consuming work to other individuals. It serves two purposes, first the work gets done and the other is person can focus on other things which may align more with skills and knowledge and may be less stressful.
It also helps grooming the other employees.
4. Set enough time for relaxation
Relaxation provides better work life balance, and tends to improve productivity on the professional or the work front along with providing ample scope to develop the life part of the balance.
5. Prioritizing work
Often employees do not give priority to work and end up doing a lot of work at the last minute. Better planning can help employees save unnecessary time delays, which can be utilized by employees for personal work.
Benefits of work life balance
There are several advantages of work life balance. Some of them are listed below:
1. Work life balance increases the motivation of employees and helps them perform better at job
2. It helps people to relieve their stress as they can spend leisure time with their near and dear ones
3. Companies can maximise productivity from an employee who is rejuvenated and refreshed as compared to a over worked employee
4. Healthy lifestyles can be maintained by having a work life balance. This includes a good diet, regular exercises etc.
5. Employees who are highly motivated can help the business grow as they are more attached to their job and careers
Work life Balance Examples
These days many companies and people prioritize work life balance. Some of the examples through which this is happening is Work from Home, flexible work timings, sufficient leaves for vacation and family care. Also sabbatical leaves are offered these days.
Another example is offering people option to move in a different career path which aligns more with the skills and aspirations.
Hence, this concludes the definition of Work Life Balance along with its overview.
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