More people today consider work-life balance a key factor in achieving a successful career. The gap between work and personal lives has grown in importance and requires more awareness due to ever-increasing workplace commitments.
The pressing demands of a job or personal challenges can be stressful. Such situations can have a physical and psychological impact on employees. Technology has transformed many professional work cultures and expectations, resulting in a blurrier and much more interconnected distinction between “work” and “personal” time.
Proper time management, timely stress management, and effective burnout prevention can construct harmony between professional and personal lives. Here are some practical suggestions to help you achieve better work-life harmony:
- Schedule your workday to fit in social, recreational, and exercise activities. If you have many virtual meetings, consider having them while taking a walk.
- Take time off—whether for a vacation, sick leave, personal time, or emotional trauma, these are crucial strategies to support your wellness.
- Schedule a time to stop working for the day, and enforce it by turning off any work devices and closing your office.
- Make the most of your time by eliminating outside distractions and working in short, concentrated sessions.
- Allocate time slots for different tasks: schedule times for checking messages, attending meetings, collaborating with the team, or working on more challenging tasks.
- Eat lunch with coworkers or go somewhere to eat. Even if you work from home, you may get together with friends during your break.
- Take up a hobby outside of work. Our interests give us more life and energy.
- Be in touch with your team and managers. The anxiety that we’re not accomplishing enough can make it harder to maintain a healthy work-life balance. Speak with your superiors to set priorities for how you spend your work time and prioritize tasks.
Last but not least, smart tools like the Lumin online PDF editor can aid employees in managing files and facilitating document workflow. Once document flow is simplified, the team can relax and avoid any unnecessary stress. With Lumin, teams can easily edit PDF texts, edit PDF forms, and edit scanned PDFs on desktop or mobile.
Effects of work-life imbalance
A work-life imbalance typically happens when there are no clear boundaries between work and personal lives. Many employees find it difficult to draw clear lines between their needs and those of their employer. So, what are the possible effects?
Health Concerns. According to the Mayo Clinic, overworking and working long hours can negatively affect your team members. As per the research, those who work three to four hours of overtime have a 60% greater risk of developing heart-related illnesses than those who don’t.
Burnout and low productivity. Burnout can occur when working long hours and can have destructive mental health effects. It can interfere with your ability to focus and be motivated, lead to confusion, raise your chance of making mistakes, and lower your productivity level. Therefore, when you become overwhelmed at work, it’s essential to take breaks to minimize the risk of burnout. A burnout workforce are likely to put in the bare minimum when completing tasks, delaying the realization of corporate goals and objectives. Additionally, burnout staff often lacks creativity and is led by tunnel vision, therefore putting the success of many modern businesses at risk.
Low job satisfaction. A work-life imbalance has been linked to lower job satisfaction and increased turnover rates. This can greatly affect both the worker and the company since fewer employees would likely stay in their current positions for a long time, making employers spend more resources on hiring new people.
Building a strong work-life culture through technology
Technology helps you work smarter. By connecting with team members and collaborating on projects, your colleagues will feel your company’s support. In addition, modern tech tools can impact your work-life balance. For example, project management software can simplify tasks like taking notes, editing online, delegating tasks, and managing functions in one place.
Once your company embraces digitalization and starts offering awesome tools to your employees, they will gladly utilize Lumin, which is, for instance, the best PDF editor available online.
You can also conveniently manage your collaboration process with Lumin’s Circles. It allows you to:
- View information on document collaboration inside your organization or department;
- Create Teams inside your Circle to divide up groups and tasks;
- Tag Circle members where you need their input, or ask them to eSign;
- Quickly share documents Circle-wide and make fillable PDFs;
- Make fillable PDF templates and forms;
- Create folders to store documents;
- Use Lumin to annotate and edit PDF files and work together in real time.
Benefits that increase employee retention
A wonderful method to draw in fresh talent, keep your existing staff invested, and enhance employee experiences is to set up various benefits programs.
The retention of employees and the development of a healthy workplace culture depend heavily on retirement and health benefits. Similarly, wellness benefits raise employee satisfaction and productivity while still being simple for HR staff to administer.
Flexibility can become another benefit — the flexibility to work from home has become a standard feature of many jobs. This way, you can make your company stand out to prospective recruits by giving remote work reimbursement options and the ability to work from home.
