Avoid Paying Lip Service To Work-Life Balance

Maybe it’s because of the pandemic and remote work that we see so much discussion about work-life balance these days.

It’s true that working from home blurs the lines between your personal and professional lives. It’s difficult to create boundaries when work is just a few steps away, but that’s been true for as long as laptops have existed.

Perhaps it’s the uncertainty of COVID that has accentuated the pressure and anxiety that people feel at work, and that’s spilling into home life.

Regardless of the cause, what are the best ways to balance and compartmentalize your work and personal lives? How can companies help in this process?

Creating Separation Is Easier Said Than Done

In my experience, too many companies treat work-life balance as a cute catchphrase to help attract or retain talent, but they don’t follow through.

This article advocates for companies to build barriers to help their employees recharge outside of work hours. There’s definitely some merit to this approach, but it’s not always practical. Sometimes completing a project or closing business requires spending time outside of traditional work days and work hours.

What I’ve learned is that a culture that fosters work-life balance is best achieved by creating metrics for every role that focus on accountability and results. The measurement should not be tied to the number of hours worked or which days you work, but rather on the quality of the work output.

A results-oriented culture enables everything else to fall into place. Job flexibility, work-life balance, trust, and camaraderie all seem to take care of themselves when people know their goals and are held accountable to those goals, rather than to superficial measures of productivity.

If you’re curious about how we’ve built this type of work culture at recruitAbility, check out this article.