The New Normal Work life Balance

By Dwayne Anderson

The #New Normal Work-Life Balance  
Are You Struggling To Balance Your Work & Life Amid This NewNormal?
Discover How To Get Control of Your Life, Avoid Stress & Burnouts By Maintaining A Proper Balance Between Your Work & Life While Working Remotely During This Pandemic!!!
It has been over a year and we’ve seen and done things we’d never imagine! From stockpiling toilet paper, hand sanitizer, fighting over face masks, to working from the couch. Although the frenzy of stockpiling has subsided, we continue to work from home.
This Transition Has Been Unfamiliar, But It Has Become Our NEW NORMAL!
Everyone fortunate enough to remain employed (as some companies had to shut down offices or undergo major retrenchment) had to instantaneously adapt to the new routine.
Here’s something that will surprise you. Ever since the Work-From-Home model has come into effect, work-life balance has been affected.
Now, you may be wondering if employees are working from home, wouldn’t that be good for their family life? After all, they are spending most of their time at home, leaving them to have a better work-life balance.
The truth is that work-life balance has been highly affected because of the work from home  model, and the ‘new normal’.
As a matter of fact…

• Seven in 10 Americans working from home during COVID-19 are struggling to maintain a healthy work-life balance.
• 65% of people admit that now that they’re working remotely, they’re working longer hours than ever before.
• 56% of people say they’re more stressed about work than ever before when working from home during COVID-19.
• The average workday lengthened by 48.5 minutes following stay-at-home orders and lockdowns.
• 40% of remote workers say unplugging after hours is the biggest challenge of working remotely.
• 67% of people working remotely feel pressure to be available at all hours of the day.
• 29% of remote workers say they struggle to have a work-life balance, compared to 23% of in-office employees.

Though #workfromhome  has mostly been a blessing, there are a few drawbacks - the skewed work-life balance is one of them.
According to the Harvard Business Review, close to $190 billion is spent on employees facing burnout. A poor work-life balance is one of the major reasons for burnout, and therefore, must be addressed at the earliest.
Especially given the unpredictable, often under-pressure workplace environment and the added blurring of lines between work and personal because of the need to work from home more often due to COVID.
If you want to have a more balanced life then it’s important to understand what balance even is. Because most people get it wrong and end up feeling stressed, tired, and overworked with no time for themselves, their families, and friends.
Well, not anymore…
Because we are about to show you what is the right work-life balance and how you can achieve it in the new normal quickly and easily…
Learn How To Manage Your Work Environment During This Pandemic To Create A Better Work-Life Balance!
A comprehensive guide that will help you to achieve work-life balance as a remote worker, get control of your life and adopt healthy lifestyle changes.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Publisher s21598
• Release date: Sep 15, 2021
• ISBN: 9791220845526

Book preview

Chapter 1 - The Importance Of Achieving Work-Life Balance And How To Do It

Work-life balance is a concept that describes the ideal situation in which an employee can split his or her time and energy between work and other important aspects of their life. Achieving work-life balance is a daily challenge. It is tough to make time for family, friends, community participation, spirituality, personal growth, self-care, and other personal activities, in addition to the demands of the workplace.

Because many employees experience a personal, professional, and monetary need to achieve, work-life balance can be challenging. Employers can help employees achieve work-life balance by instituting policies, procedures, actions, and expectations that enable them to pursue more balanced lives, such as flexible work schedules, paid time off (PTO) policies, responsibly paced time and communication expectations, and company-sponsored family events and activities.

Work-life balance reduces the stress employee’s experience. When an employee spends the majority of their days on work-related activities and feels as if they are neglecting other important components of their lives, stress and unhappiness result. An employee, who doesn't make time for self-care, eventually damages their output and productivity.

The workplace that enables employees to achieve work-life balance is particularly motivating and gratifying to employees, which makes them happy. And happy employees, whose needs for work-life balance are achieved, tend to stay with their employer and are more productive.

What is Work Life Balance?

Work life balance is a method which helps employees of an organization to balance their personal and professional lives. Work life balance encourages employees to divide their time on the basis on priorities and maintain a balance by devoting time to family, health, vacations etc. along with making a career, business travel etc.

It is an important concept in the world of business as it helps to motivate the employees and increases their loyalty towards the company.

Importance of work life balance

Working on a job for a company and making a career can be an extremely time consuming duty for any employee. Employees are busy at their offices throughout the day and sometimes even on weekends. This gives them very little time to interact with their family. Because of high pressure of work, often family members get neglected. Also, stressful jobs cause the health of employees to deteriorate. This is where work life balance comes into the picture. Work life balance concept allows an employee to maintain a fine balance in the time he or she gives to work as well as to personal matters. By having a good balance, people can have a quality of work life.

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This helps to increase productivity at workplace as the employee is relaxed about his personal commitments. It also allows the employee to give quality time with family to spend vacations, leisure time, work on his/her health etc. Hence work life balance is extremely important for employees and increases their motivation to work for the company.

The below image depicts a work life balance scenario, where an employee has to balance his/her life between personal (family, friends & self) and professional (job, career) commitments.

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5 Steps to improve work life balance

There are specific guidelines to how an individual can maintain a proper work life balance, some of which are:

1. Creating a work leisure plan

Where an individual has to schedule his tasks, and divide time appropriately so that he has allocated appropriate time to his work and his career development goals and at the same time allotted time for leisure and personal development. Employees also use a compressed work week plan to build a balance.

2. Leaving out activities that waste time and energy

Individual should judiciously avoid wasteful activities which demand large time and energy and in return not produce output for either the work life or the leisure life.

Effective time management can help an employee be less stressed.

3. Outsourcing and Delegating work

Delegate or outsource time consuming work to other individuals. It serves two purposes, first the work gets done and the other is person can focus on other things which may align more with skills and knowledge and may be less stressful.

It also helps grooming the other employees.

4. Set enough time for relaxation

Relaxation provides better work life balance, and tends to improve productivity on the professional or the work front along with providing ample scope to develop the life part of the balance.

5. Prioritizing work

Often employees do not give priority to work and end up doing a lot of work at the last minute. Better planning can help employees save unnecessary time