Business can be frustrating at times. Not just for you, but your employees also. Increasing working hours, necessary overtime due to upcoming deadlines, and the growing stress of having to deliver to meet the organizational goals… Many factors may lead to a state of exhaustion in your team. These can look like they are for the sake of being more productive, but when they cause employee burnout in your company; productivity is one of the first things to be negatively affected.
Work-life balance is one of the first things to take a hit from the factors that eventually cause your employees to feel burnt out. For further reading on employee burnout, you can also check our article “What is Employee Burnout and How To Avoid It?”.
85% of companies that create work-life balance opportunities for their employees report an increase in their overall productivity.1
In order to effectively manage your team’s productivity, you need to start focusing on providing a work environment that supports a better work-life balance for your employees.
İçindekiler
After the emergence of the Covid-19 pandemic, many employees started to work from their homes instead of traditional offices. Even though employees quickly adapt to working from home, sometimes it might not be that easy for managers to track the work. So, some companies may insist on continuing their regular 9-to-5 workdays to ensure that their employees are still working as they should. But some tasks do not take as many hours as others, and sometimes an employee may finish their job before their shift ends.
Changing the approach and shifting the expectations from completion of work hours to completion of actual tasks can directly affect how employees manage their time. And it can encourage them to be more engaged with their work rather than just waiting for their workday to end.
In organizations that don’t actively communicate with each other, sometimes it may be hard to understand if an employee has too much responsibility to deal with. When different people assign tasks to employees, they can accept more work than they can deliver in time. Since it may be hard for employees to reach out to their superiors just to report that they think they have too much to do in too little time, stepping in as a manager can help everyone be responsible for an optimum amount of work. So, you can regularly check what your employees have on their plates and how much time they have to finish them all. This will not only improve your team’s work-life balance but will also help you avoid missing deadlines and build a culture of trust between you and your employees.
As for the culture of trust, it’s essential in helping your employees with their work-life balance. Because when you build trust between your team and yourself, there will be no more need for interventions and interruptions to check if your team is on track with their tasks. Regular communication and constructive feedback are helpful, but when a deadline is set, there is no point in repeatedly checking in with them before the deadline comes with a team-manager relationship built on trust.
Providing an adequate work-life balance is equally important for all your employees, but parents have much more critical responsibilities than their jobs. Understand that just like you depend on your employees for your company’s success; fathers and mothers of your company have children in their house that are dependent on them in much more crucial ways. Connect with the parents of your company, hear their concerns, and provide them with solutions to work for your company without having to let go of their parenting responsibilities. You can give them time-offs, try to cover their childcare expenses, encourage them to be with their children whenever they need.
Especially in remote offices, it may be hard to decide when to start working and when to stop. Since the daily workflow does not stop, some employees might not find time to leave their computers and take five for themselves. As a manager, you can regularly encourage your team members to give breaks, drink a cup of tea, stretch a bit, and deal with their responsibilities. This way, you can both let your team maintain their work-life balance and gain the appreciation of your employees, leading to improved motivation and increased engagement.
The workforce management software Kolay streamlines your HR processes and helps companies provide a more clear workflow for their employees. With Kolay, you can continuously engage with your employees through overtime and leave requests, easily access your employees’ records, organize and track employee training, and let your employees express their needs with their accounts. To explore many more features of Kolay and experience what’s waiting for you, start trying Kolay now for free!
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