Balancing work and private life
The term work-life balance stands for a balance between work and private life.
For many people, a high salary and career are not the primary goals of their professional life. Happiness in life is much more important to them. And private life and family play an enormous role in this.
employees want her Reconcile family life with professional activity. Due to the increase in time and performance pressure, there is often less time for private life and the physical and psychological stress increases - which usually also has an impact on quality of life and health.
employees want each other feel good at work After all, that's where you spend most of your day. In the foreground are a good relationship with work colleagues and supervisors as well fun in the professional task.
What does it mean for my business?
The aim of the work-life balance is the (better) compatibility of work and family or private life. However, it can only really succeed if both sides – employees and company – make their contribution.
A good work-life balance has a positive effect on the company - in every respect.
- Employees are happier
- Employees are more efficient
- Higher loyalty
- Increased motivation
- Absenteeism and employee turnover decrease, resulting in cost savings for the company
- Further competences are developed / developed
- Positive working atmosphere, modern corporate culture
- Improving customer relationships through a positive working atmosphere
- The company becomes more attractive as an employer, which in turn "attracts" qualified and committed personnel.
What can I do about it?
The following three aspects have an impact on the work-life balance of employees:
- leadership skills:
The need for work-life balance must also understood and prioritized at management level. If a manager constantly puts his employees under time and performance pressure and does not give them any recognition, all internal programs to promote the work-life balance will be of no use.
It is important that employees' desire for flexibility is not equated with a lack of professional commitment. In the best case, executives who use work-life balance measures themselves act as role models. - employee training:
By increasing the organizational skills the employee – e.g. B. Targeted Training in time management and project management – do they better cope with the performance requirements. Overstraining is prevented and the work-life balance is promoted. - working conditions:
Working conditions have a very big impact. In particular, models that allow employees a high degree of time autonomy improve the work-life balance enormously. This includes flexible working hours, part-time models, sabbaticals and home office solutions.
Concrete actions
Work-life balance does not have to be synonymous with more free time, it is much more about increasing flexibility for employees and more efficiency in their daily work. You can take the following concrete measures:
1. Know-how prioritization and time management
An important first lesson for all employees is to quickly analyze and correctly prioritize their tasks.
According to the Pareto principle, 20% of our tasks are decisive for 80% of our results. Unfortunately, we mostly devote our time to the 80% - the urgent tasks - instead of the important 20%. These 20% of our activities would actually bring us closer to our goals. The remaining 80%, the urgent tasks, are rather time wasters that only make a small contribution to our goal achievement.
How do we get out of this time waster trap?
A great help here is the Eisenhower principle, the daily application of which shows a quick effect.
| Important | Unimportant | |
| Urgently | do it personally | Delegate |
| Not urgent | Terminate | Do not do |
Download the Eisenhower worksheet template
All tasks are divided into 4 categories:
- Urgent and important:
Complete the task yourself immediately - Not urgent, but important:
Set an exact date and attend it personally. - Urgent but unimportant:
Delegate the task to a competent employee/colleague. - Not urgent and unimportant:
Postpone the task indefinitely – or throw it in the trash right away.
→ Practical tip:
Hand out the matrix to all employees and ask them to use this list in their daily work. In this way, current tasks can also be optimally gone through and checked in the appraisal interview.
2. Enable home office - without losing efficiency
A very big lever for a better work-life balance is more flexibility in the choice of work location. By eliminating this, employees save an average of 2 hours or more per day. Valuable time for work or private life. Care tasks such as picking up children can also be better managed with this model.
With the appropriate technical equipment, a home office space can offer the same performance as a space in the office. The employee can then work flexibly from home or otherwise outside the company.
And the professional equipment of a home office does not have to be expensive.
remedy here virtual telephone systems that make all communication functions available regardless of location.
- Calls? Arrive directly on the laptop or smartphone. Like sitting in the office. And outgoing calls go out via the office number, no matter where you are.
- faxes? Can be called up directly on a laptop or smartphone and even sent.
- Access to relevant work materials and information? The company network can be accessed securely via a VPN via the laptop. Or you use one File sharing function – as included with bluePBX, for example. This allows employees to easily share files with each other.
- Vote quickly? No problem - if you can use a chat function. bluePBX offers an extensive team chat with which all team members have an overview of each other's availability and can chat at any time. This enables spontaneous coordination – without having to call or write long emails.
3. Also make optimal use of travel time
Valuable working time is often lost due to travel time. Here the functions of a VOIP phone system help. Employees can therefore be reached when traveling as well as in the office. A special advantage of the bluePBX system: With the bluePBX Communicator and the mobile app Communicator Go, telephone, fax, video and telephone conferences can also be used on the go.
- Best accessibility: You can be reached on the mobile via the app on the office number. And even if the mobile network should be bad, calls can be made by forwarding the mobile number to the office number WIRELESS INTERNET ACCESS or the mobile data network.
- Presence function: This function shows the status of the entire team. Who is on the phone? who is offline
→ Practical tip for bargain hunters:
When traveling abroad, with bluePBX you can easilyLAN phone and be reached. For the price of a local call / call within Germany. Handy, right?
4. Save on meetings
Does it really have to be a face-to-face meeting with a large group every time?
Telephone and video conferences can save valuable time and work efficiently. In addition, travel costs are saved and virtual teams can still experience each other "live".
5. Create a positive working atmosphere
Through targeted offers you can strengthen the "we feeling" in the team.
Regular team meetings create togetherness and transparency in the team:
Who works on which projects? How is the status? What are challenges?
Feedback from the team on current topics?
In order to learn from each other in the best possible way, each employee can name their weekly highs and lows.
Regular joint activities, such as after-work parties, sports or team lunches promote a positive atmosphere.
Collaboration software such as the bluePBX Communicator can also greatly strengthen the "we feeling". You can see the entire team at a glance, you can join
open the chat or send files with one click. The presence function provides information about who is currently online, on the phone or can be reached.
→ Practical tip:
Project teams can create their own groups in the bluePBX Communicator. In this way, virtual teams can be optimally networked with one another and work particularly efficiently.
6. Intelligent distribution of working hours
The organization of working hours is of course one of the most effective ways to achieve a better work-life balance. The location and duration of company working hours have a significant influence on the lives of employees.
Many employees would like more flexible working hours. Flexitime work allows for more leeway in terms of time. If the job allows it, flexible working hours are a good way to increase employee satisfaction.
In addition to the classic full-time position, one could think about part-time work close to full-time (25 to 34 hours/week) or part-time work remote from full-time (up to 24 hours/week).
Instead of reducing working hours, more flexible working hours can also be a solution. For example, job sharing and work team models. The work tasks are transferred to the employees and they independently clarify how tasks, timing and substitutions are organized.