While most professionals are juggling between work and life, WORK-LIFE BALANCE has come to the verge of impossibility in life. Even though many companies have significant work-life balance policies, such arrangements are largely in experimental stage only.
Many global leaders asserted the concept of Work-Life Balance as a path-breaking initiative for employee well being. According to Jeff Bezos –Chief Executive Officer, Amazon stated “work-life balance is a circle; it’s not a balance. And I think that is worth everybody paying attention to it.” He further highlighted “If you shortchange your sleep, you might get a couple of extra ‘productive’ hours, but that productivity might be an illusion.” With respect to work-life balance, Amit Aggarwal – Senior Vice President also added – Amazon India sent out an email to his team to stop replying mail post office hours. This is said to be a very significant initiative focusing on work-life balance by any major brand.
Despite many initiatives across the corporate, a survey conducted by Monster.com (2019) revealed that 60% of professionals have rated their work-life balance hugely deranged. The highly competitive work environment and do or die situations have become a trend in corporate culture. Strenuous working hours, taking office work to home often, working on the weekends, etc are becoming unofficial parameters of employee’s performance metrics. The impact of such imbalance leads to anxiety, hypertension, fatigue, back problems and frequent headache, which further effects employee’s productivity. Due to these reasons, companies are coming up with more work-life balance initiative for well being of their human resources.
Here are a few tips to manage work-life balance:
• Negotiate with your rewarding performance – most of the company offers flexible work option to employees with consistent performance, so strive for efficient and productive performance to avail such benefits.
• Talk to the manager – Better to communicate your family exigency & commitment with managers or management, and get their full support.
• Learn to say “No” –The timely deliverables is the key to work-life balance, stretching the work commitments and staying back for long hours are no more the attribute of productive employees. Try to say “no “for the unrealistic target and focus on the timeline.
• Family time – Work life can only be manageable if there is a clear line drawn between family and work. You should always keep your personal life aside, taking work at home may burn out your family time. Always prioritize your family and work requirements accordingly
In the end, the right balance comes from our own choice; a small step from both employer and employee’s side can bring productive and more content work-life. So, all we can say is
WORK SMARTER, NOT HARDER!!!
Soumya Sahadevan
Research Associate, ICoFP