5 Signs Your People Don’t Have Work-Life Balance

5 Signs Your People Don’t Have Work-Life Balance
By ExecutiveBrief Staff

When your employees’ lives are too tilted on work, theirs are not the only ones affected but yours, too. See the signs and take action.

A young lad once asked his father how much he was earning per hour. The father replied, “Sixty dollars, son. Why do you ask”? The son innocently said, “So, I will be saving 120 dollars.” The father then asked further, “What for?” and the son further replied, “So that I can pay you to spend time with me for two hours!” The father taken aback, embraced his son with eyes misty and an instant guilt in his heart. Similar stories have been told about the lack of quality time that parents spend with their children, or about marital relationships on the rocks.
Work has become exacting and has taken most of the time supposedly devoted to personal and social life. The reasons are varied, but the glaring ones are the increasing materialism in this day and age, and the pressures in the workplace in pursuit of increased productivity, efficiency and competitiveness.

People need to earn to pay for household bills, pay for home mortgage, spend for children’s college education or buy a new car. People need to work harder to get promoted, get higher salaries and get recognition. In the process, however, people have become too engrossed in their jobs that work-life balance has become a rarity. People, then, get a false sense of achievement. Fishing with your son, playing golf with your friends and attending religious service have become items in a wish list for many. Work has become the master of many lives, an all-consuming part of life.

According to statistical studies, working hours vary from country to country. In Japan for example, people work for about 35 hours a week; in UK, 37 hours; and, 47 hours in the United States. The pressures of business competition are taking their toll on employees. Studies on effects of longer working hours have revealed that they are counter productive. Thus, the challenge of work-life balance has been growing in the awareness and consciousness of both the employers and employees . In societies characterized by conflicting responsibilities and commitments, the balancing of work and personal life has also become a significant issue in the workplace. HR professionals now are seeking alternatives to achieve positive results on company bottom lines. They have realized that work-life balance in their employees is a vital determinant to the companies’ long-term viability and success. What is life-work balance? The definition of work-life balance has varying characteristics. To the employer, it could merely mean short working hours. To the employee, it could mean more time for recreation and company sports activities. To others, it could mean more company-sponsored family affairs. It has different meanings to different groups, and the meaning often depends on the context of a viewpoint.
While there are a number of definitions of work-life balance, they are one in essence. It is all about devoting time and effort to achieve harmony, enjoyment and peace with self, family, relatives and friends on one end, and fulfillment of work challenges and responsibilities on the other. It does not mean committing equal amount of time for the four quadrants of work, self, family and friends, as it would be unrealistic to do so. It does not mean a fixed set of activities, as they vary from time to time, stage by stage. The right balance for today may be different by tomorrow; when one is single and then marries; when one will have children or have a new job. Work-life balance continually changes as demands of work, family, and friends change. However, the work-life balance essentially revolves around the concepts of achievement and enjoyment in life.

Here are five signs you or your employees are losing the balance Although it seems easy on the surface, identifying signs of work-life imbalance in employees is not as simple as it looks. Each person is unique in his set of values and attitudes, goals and priorities. His or her ability to cope with the pressures of social and work environment is another vital factor. People have different levels of satisfaction and enjoyment.

There have been many studies on work-life balance in such deep detail that the concept is now commonly known. The compendium of studies is unified in pointing out the alarming signs of work-life imbalance. This could be a starting point in going into a more detailed identification of work-life imbalance by companies and their executives.

1) When employees are burnt out When one sees employees as having chronic fatigue (exhaustion, tiredness and a sense of being physically run down), they could be having a burnout. As Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary puts it, burnout is “exhaustion of physical or emotional strength or motivation usually as a result of prolonged stress or frustration.” Irritability and explosive anger at the slightest mistake are some of the more overt emotional expressions while cynicism, negativity, paranoia and self-pity are the internally repressed emotions and attitudes pervading in the person’s mind. Employees who are burnt out usually isolate themselves from work teams, become anti-social within the workplace, and show non-cooperation. Their initiatives and creativity likewise deteriorate. When one sees these symptomatic abnormalities, there is a 99% probability that employees do not have a work-life balance.

2) When employees health suffer Another common sign of work-life imbalance is when employees often get sick--from the minor headaches, weight disorders, ulcers, hypertensions to heart attacks. While these are medical conditions that can develop in anybody regardless of their work-life balance, it is common to attribute work-life imbalance as a contributing cause. Unreasonable work deadlines, voluminous work, demand for quality work output and long working hours oftentimes create pressure that stresses employees.

Thus, in order to beat deadlines and workloads, meals are often skipped, sleep is cut short, worrying occupies the mind and the body is exhausted. When these happen, the employees health is put at risk. It will not be uncommon for the employees to be absent, tardy and sleepy. Similarly, the office clinic doctor would be busy taking blood pressures, prescribing medicines and administering medical procedures. As a consequence, company medical expenses increase.
3) When employees have family relations problems This is a common occurrence for employees whose lives are too tilted on work. It happens when work begins to take over and eat up of most of his time. One wakes up when the children have gone to school and arrives when the children have gone to bed. No time is left for having breakfast together, nor exchanges of pleasantries during dinner. More so, in attending memorable school events. They even forget birthdays and sometimes their own wedding anniversaries. Likewise, vacations are often postponed. The parents and the children have become strangers to one another. They begin to lose emotional attachments to each other. The children no longer feel the care, the attention and the love they need. They are left alone to their peers and the parent-children generation gap widens . Employees begin to evade family topics in the workplace because they no longer know their family that well.

4) When company productivity deteriorates As a result of burnt out and health problems in employees, not to mention the family issues, the company’s productivity is bound to deteriorate. Employees become less motivated, distracted and less enthusiastic in their work. Teamwork is reduced and employees become less cooperative Then the company sees tardiness and absenteeism reducing output and bad health affecting the physical capability of the employees to deliver quantity and quality of work.

5) When employees lose friends Losing friends is another sign of work-life imbalance. When one stops going out with co-workers or friends for a round of golf or tennis, engaging in chats over bottles of beer or coffee, or joining company-initiated activities, he may be losing his work-life balance. Friends compose the peer group that provides reassurances, advice and confidence to a person in whatever emotional state one is in. Taking away this opportunity for casual exchanges and emotional ventilations could contain worry and stress in the person. Employees, or everyone in the workplace for that matter, need to maintain a work-life balance. If these signs appear in any one of your work groups, take action.

Do you think someone on his death bed ever said, ‘I wish I had spent more time in the office?”