Improving work life balance to boost employee wellbeing

Work life balance is the ability to manage our time properly, by allocating our work time appropriately, whilst continuing to maintain fulfilment in our personal and professional lives.

Having a balance between work and life can:

• Reduce stress.
• Prevent burnout in work and home life.
• Improve mental and physical health.

When an employee becomes unbalanced in their work and home life it can lead to heightened stress, reduce productivity and increase the risk of burnout. Over time, this imbalance can also negatively impact their physical health, relationships and overall job satisfaction.

Effects of poor work life balance on a person’s mental health

Mental health conditions are one of the costliest forms of workplace injury. They lead to significantly more time off work and higher compensation paid when compared to physical injuries and diseases.

Mental health in most cases will indirectly impact a worker’s productivity through unhealthy stress levels that are caused by one-off incidences or have been occurring over extended periods.

This can result in:

• Increased risk of anxiety, depression.
• Mood swings.
• Substance abuse.
• Workplace injuries.
• Interpersonal conflict between coworkers.

Mental health can also be impacted when workers have insufficient time off from work and work in very stressful roles or sectors.

A worker that is well rested and healthy is often able to handle the burden and capacity of their work than a person who is exhausted and tired. When a worker is showing symptoms of burnout and fatigue and asked to perform their daily activities, they are effectively trying to perform two jobs at the same time and not achieving either one very well. The quality of their work suffers on both sides, and they are incapable of completing their tasks to the best of their abilities.

Common factors of poor work life balance 

One of the most common factors of poor work life balance is an increase in responsibilities at work.

This may include:

• Worker being rewarded for high performance with increased work obligations.
• Organisation not re-filling vacant positions and task being divvied out to remained team members.
• Normal slow progression in the increase of additional task and responsibilities added to worker job demands overtime.
• Longer work hours.

How to improve your work life balance

• Prioritise the mental health of workers.
• Complete a job satisfaction worker survey on what aspects of a worker’s job, role or their tasks they feel maybe of harm to their mental health e.g. work design, job demands, hours or management style.
• Set boundaries between work and personal life.
• Ensuring workers take annual leave and personal mental health days.
• Review of commute times to work.

What psychosocial hazards should be addressed first?

Psychosocial hazards identified can be:

• Addressed at the same time.
• The workplace can focus on one or a few of them at a time then address more later.
• There is a lot of room for creativity when implementing control measures.
• Sometimes, actions to address one psychosocial hazard can also improve other psychosocial factors.

Develop and Implement a Plan

Your work context and content factors will differ from that of other similar organisations and work groups. So, any plan to prevent and manage stress and psychological injury must be based on specific risk identification and assessment process for your organisation.

Example of an action plan includes:

Primary intervention – Addressing the workplace factors that are risks of psychological injury (such as poor work team climate) by developing solutions to treat the identified risk factors.

Secondary intervention – Minimising the impact of stress on employees by responding to warning signs and intervening early to ensure that individuals who are not coping receive assistance and support.

Tertiary intervention – Implementing safe and effective rehabilitation and return to work strategies.  

It is important to remember that as every person’s situation is unique and different, it is impossible for an organisation to propose a one size fits all solution to address every worker’s work life balance.