- Asmita Saini (Intern Psychologist at SELBIC)
"Work Life Balance"
Work Life balance. Have you heard of this term before? Of course, in your work life you must have come across this aspect related to a healthy work environment.
This concept is a well-researched one in the domain of Organizational Behavior (OB) and is vital to increasing productivity and life satisfaction of the employees who are the life of the party in any business or firm- technically speaking, they are the agents of change and growth in any organization.
In todays context, how do we define work life balance? In the simplest of terms, work life balance involves the idea of how employees manage time to juggle between work and life related responsibilities.
“But the idea of work life balance is deceptive in its simplicity”
In order to gather a better understanding of this concept we should first understand that work life balance applies more to individuals than to organizations, since we have to incorporate the idea of individual differences in human behavior here.
This idea here means that work habits of “A” naturally differ from those of “B”. Turning a new leaf, we also need to stress upon the fact that work life balance is NOT devoting equal time to work and life related issues.
Our life is very fluid and not made up of water tight compartments
In our quest to fully understand the idea of work life balance, we need to take into account two key concepts related to Achievement and Enjoyment both are two sides of the same coin.
Individuals want to do both, they want to achieve success at work and they also want to enjoy both life and work. So this is how the concept of work life balance works wherein employees prioritize their life and work while focusing on both- achievement and enjoyment in the different life quadrants- eg. Work, family, friends, personal selves etc.
Now picture an employee sitting in his cabin with his pile of work and the digital watch in front of him displaying time. Work constantly entails the perpetual need to meet deadlines, submit projects, prepare assignments and socialize and coordinate with the coworkers and team mates and so on and so forth.
In the backdrop is life, since work is a part of life, simply stated, and it’s not the other way round. So here comes in work life balance and as we know, training in this area can be of great help and can bring about marvelous improvements in the work life balance of the employees in an organization and almost needless to say- add to overall productivity.
Achieving the perfect work life balance, all thanks to well-planned strategies and implementations is just a training session away and these services can be availed very easily, priority mapping is the key here.
A good training in this area can help you in numerous number of domains including - discovering new work life balance strategies, getting high priority and high value actions done on time, effective daily and weekly planning, learning to manage interruptions successfully, learning strategies to manage procrastination and so much more.
Here we will introduce you to some wisdom in the form of 7 strategies which will help you not only in managing time but also in giving you the ready mindset to channelize your energy efficiently in work and life related aspects!
7 strategies to cope with Work-Life Balance
The first one here is to get on purpose. Write your life purpose statement down, post it somewhere easy to see every day and refer to it for guidance.
The second strategy would be to create the space by removing physical clutter, messy office, over reliance on gadgets, as well as emotional clutter, toxic people in your life and regrets. One simple way to achieve this is by ranking ongoing commitments- from professional to personal and remove the unnecessary obligations so that you can think clearer.
The third well known yet oft neglected strategy is to manage your energy by maintaining healthy lifestyle which includes proper diet, fluid intake and sleep and also recharging and relaxing via engaging hobbies and socializing.
The fourth strategy would be talking to yourself- or more appropriately monitoring negative self-talk and using affirmations or positive self-talk instead. This simple strategy can bring about a remarkable change in your work life balance in myriad good ways.
The fifth strategy is being authentic and its importance can never be underestimated. Make sure that your goals are what you want and not what you think you should do.
The next one is to stay present and is simply about enjoying what is right now. This translates to being mindful at work and acknowledging genuine compliments from colleagues and learning from your mistakes.
The seventh, last but not the least one is to simply cultivate an attitude of gratitude!
This simple practices will increase your positivity and put your challenges in perspective.
These lovely words of wisdom will undoubtedly work wonders in your tryst with work life balance.
But be aware and remember that work life balance is a very wide concept and tailor made training programs can add substantial value to your success goals in concrete and tested and researched ways.
So, in order to get the most out of work life balance, any business or organization should definitely consider opting for a training session on the same. Trainings and their phased approach is unmatched in this domain and shows you well evaluated positive results with just a little time and investment.
Organisational Psychology has come a long way in todays time and has a variety of tools and techniques to help your business achieve its organizational goals.
Selbic is a unique organization in Gurgaon, dealing with a range of Psychological services.
Training and Development is our forte and we deliver highly specialized training modules catering to the requirements of your organization. We have one stop solutions for all your organizational needs and we would love to design and implement modules related to Work Life Balance.