If your company is like most employers, one of your top resolutions is improving employee retention. That undoubtedly means you’re seeking ways to enhance your employees’ work-life balance—an issue that will loom large in 2024.
According to Mercer’s “Inside Employees’ Minds” report, work-life balance matters so much to employees, it’s second only to financial security in terms of job requirements. Add that to Aflac’s latest workforce survey, which found that 57% of workers report experiencing burnout and 75% say they’re under moderate-to-high levels of stress.
It’s clear: if you want to retain your people in 2024, you’ll improve their work-life balance. But what does that actually look like for employees—and what steps can you take to make it so?
Surf the Internet, and you’ll find various definitions of the term “work-life balance.” For example, the Cambridge Dictionary defines it as “the amount of time you spend doing your job compared with the amount of time you spend with your family and doing things you enjoy.”
And according to the business expert Gartner, “Work-life balance is an aspect of employee well-being related to the employee’s ability to manage both personal and professional responsibilities with adequate time for rest and leisure.”
So, work-life balance is largely about the number of hours employees spend in or on work versus their private lives. But we think that includes how much headspace employees devote to work after-hours…whether job-related stress follows them home…and if they ever fully unplug from the office.
If you really want to improve the equilibrium between your peoples’ work and personal lives, consider these strategies:
More PTO. Parental leave. Pawternity leave. Paid volunteer days. There are many ways to offer employees some additional time off that won’t break the bank, but will show that you care. Keep in mind: in the Mercer survey cited above, employees said that providing more time off is the #1 most-effective way employers can upgrade the work-life equation.