Meet the need for work-life balance

Recognising work-life balance problems

As an employer, you might find it hard to judge whether you are supporting your employees' need to balance their commitments at work with those at home.

Tell-tale signs of poor work-life balance include:

• employees doing a lot of overtime
• employees taking a lot of time off to deal with "emergencies" involving children or other dependents
• high levels of employee stress
• high rates of absenteeism or staff sickness
• high levels of staff turnover

You can  see how your business compares in achieving a healthy work-life balance at the Employers for Work-Life Balance website (interactive tool) .

If you want to ensure your business is one which encourages a healthy balance between work and outside commitments, the first step is to talk to your employees, their representatives and managers about where improvements could be made. There is no right answer or approach that works for every business, although there are a handful of tried-and-tested techniques which can help. See the page in this guide on the  work-life balance - ways of working  for an explanation of work-life practices. Any new flexible working arrangements should be tailored to your business' operational needs and employees' requests.

Subjects covered in this guide

• Introduction
• Business benefits of improved work-life balance
• Recognising work-life balance problems
• Work-life balance - ways of working
• Checklist: implementing policies to achieve work-life balance
• Here's how family-friendly policies have helped our business

 

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