The most important part of a successful and smooth running of a company are its people. A company can’t run without cooperation, willingness, and genuine drive for success. To drive this, employees need to feel valued and understand the company mission and how they can make an impact. Ultimately, however, ensuring their well-being is prioritised is the best strategy for your company’s success.
Employers need to take responsibility for their employees’ well-being and promote a healthy work-life balance which will come in different forms. Here are the workplace practices we recommend you implement to guarantee employee prioritisation.
Offer Flexibility and remote working styles
Firstly, post-covid, employees value being able to work from anywhere and have flexibility through the day. Flexible working gives them the ability to manage day-to-day life e.g. pick up the kids or run to the doctors, all knowing their employer trusts that they’ll get the job done.
Full office working comes with restrictions and will likely put off current employees or future. Safe to say, if you want your team to work in the office every day, you’ll need to offer compensation of sorts to make up for the lack of flexibility.
It seems that a hybrid approach seems to be the most popular and the preference for employee, giving them the social aspect of being in an office 2/3 days a week where they can make meaningful relationships with their colleagues and then 2/3 days working from home where they have more flexibility with their personal life.
Focus on productivity rather than hours
This is becoming increasingly popular, and in the same vein of flexibility, encouraging mangers to focus on quality and completion of work rather than hours, will emphasise trust and put less pressure on your team.
Say an employee has worked an extra 3 hours at the end of the day to finish an urgent task, they get to take the same hours off at the end of the week or get TOIL accrual to make up for it.
Furthermore, make sure you and your employees are implementing time management into your workday. Making a list of priorities to ensure optimal working and success, and putting some time aside for breaks and disturbance free time for high priority tasks will help creating a healthy lifestyle while at work, reflecting on their home life.
Regularly Review Workload
Being overworked or not having the time for a balanced personal life is the biggest killer for employee happiness and will likely lead to poor performance.As a manager, you must review workload and allocate duties accordingly to employee, ensuring they have an achievable task. Remind them to communicate if they have reached capacity so you can shuffle workloads to put less strain on them. It’s important to stay on top of your team’s stress levels and busyness.
Setting clear expectations and boundaries
Objectives need to be clear and understood by your team alongside, the company and individual purpose. Employees will feel more motivated if they understand how their works impact their personal growth, team goals and overall company success.
Providing regular check-ins and feedback on progress, discussing areas they need to work on their professional development will encourage them in their field of work.
It’s not a one size fits all type of thing
A crucial thing to remember is that each individual in your team will require different levels of flexibly, some more than others. Everyone will have a different situation, will have different needs, and might enjoy a different work structure, e.g. normal work times or starting and finishing later, or vice versa. Others may not mind working extended hours, if it means they can switch off when get home. As manager, where possible, try and personalise the workday to best suit the person and their personal needs. There are plenty of ways to make compromises that won’t affect your business and instead prioritise your teams’ needs.
Benefits & Perks
Another way of sustaining a healthy work life balance is offering a range of services that can save your employees time, money, help in alleviating stress, or even help with their professional development. If you give back to your employees, they’ll feel valued and therefor driven.
These perks and benefits could come in many forms:
Health care plan – which would include mental health services.
Dental care plan
Subsidised gym membership
Tax guidance & support
Counselling services
Study Support
Paid training program
Social & Community Engagement
Another great way of supporting a healthy work-life balance and accentuating well-being is placing emphasis on your company’s social life and bonding. Forming strong relationships within your team will foster a better, more wholesome work environment.
There are many ways of doing this, either during or outside of work. Whether after work drinks, team lunches, lunch clubs, holiday incentives or friendly work games/challenges, it’s important to try to get everyone involved in a fun dynamic, where they can collaborate and engage with their teams and other teams. It’s also important to celebrate the wins and make sure they know they are appreciated.
Feedback is king
Ultimately, the best thing you can do for well-being is go straight to the source. Talk to your employees and ask for feedback. See what could be different and what they might like to see to improve your work environment, whether directly checking in on a regular basis, sending out pulse surveys or even creating an employee forum. Employee forums are great way of getting employees involved with each other and giving them a safe space to voice their opinion, come up with ideas, plan events, and set up initiatives that can improve the workplace.
To summarise:
By implementing these into your work-life strategy, you are offering your employees the optimal work environment. They’ll be happier and so will you, giving you improved employee, attraction, retention, and satisfaction. You will be able to create the most supportive and balanced workplace that will benefit your employee and your company.
At IN2 we have industry insight on what candidates are looking for in and from a company. We can support you in your recruitment process by providing tips and advice on benefits, perks, working style and suggest what you could be offering to candidates to beat your competition. In a candidate-led market, you need to be prioritising candidate needs and offer the best compensation package, and we can provide the information to help you make those informed decisions.
Get in touch to find out how we can support you on your hiring needs.