Many employees often struggle to find or maintain the appropriate work-life balance. This isn’t surprising in a world that never stops. With employees now being able to access their emails and work files remotely off multiple devices, from practically anywhere in the world fully switching off when away from the office can be difficult.
After all we’ve all fallen victim to what we believed would be a quick check of our work emails and then found ourselves spending hours responding to ‘urgent’ messages, that realistically could of waited until the next day. Accessing work from outside of the office however is not our only downfall. Many of us often choose to stay late at work or come in early in order to finish off tasks that should have already been completed.
Listed below are four tips to help employees effectively maximise their time which in turn will help them to achieve and maintain a better work-life balance.
Schedule/manage your time
Scheduling your time should not only be a key aspect at work but also within your home life. Having no clear organisation when it comes to the completion of tasks means you’re never fully making the most of your time.
Creating a daily schedule of all tasks that need to be completed and prioritising them by importance, is an ideal way to stay on top of what needs to be done and makes sure you don’t forget anything. Estimate and schedule a block of time for each task and try to keep within the allocated time limit. Make sure to make a note on any task that exceeds the time given as this information will help you to correctly schedule any future tasks that are similar.
Don’t strive for perfection
When it comes to completing work almost all of us strive for perfection. This however is not always probable, especially within a busy working environment when you are inundated with tasks. Employees often waste valuable time redoing the same tasks over and over again until the task reaches what they believe to be perfection. This can often leave employees with too much work to do and not enough time to complete it. Instead of completing all tasks to perfection level employees need to learn to just be happy with submitting work when it’s good enough.
Learn to say NO
Although making yourself available 24/7 and accepting any task asked of you is a good way to stay in your bosses good books is just not plausible. An excessive workload is one of the main causes of employees getting stressed at work. Stressed employees are less likely to be able to complete work to the best of their ability, meaning the standards of work produced can dramatically fall which in turn doesn’t look good to any manager.
Many people believe that saying no when asked to take on extra work can potentially portray them in a negative light to their line manager. This however is not true. Before accepting any extra work employees should always think clearly about whether they have sufficient time available and just how much strain would the completion of these extra tasks could have on their current workload. If the realisation is that the extra work would leave you submerged then just simply saying NO is the best thing for you. There’s also no need to make up excuses as to why you can’t take on the extra work, simply apologising and explaining to your fellow employees that you’re currently too busy is enough.
Leave work at work
We live in a society where almost all jobs are now considered ‘always on’. This means many employees often feel obligated to work outside of their contracted hours. Employees who do this make it impossible for themselves to ever achieve a work-life balance.
Instead of completing tasks at home, employees should note down before they leave the office any outstanding work that needs to be completed. This can then be used as a list of priority tasks that need to be dealt with the next time you are in the office.
Learning to leave work at work and switching completely off from checking and completing work related tasks when at home or on vacation is the easiest way to achieve and maintain a good work-life balance.