How to encourage your team's work-life balance
Corporate Gifting Can Give Them the Tools They Need to Pull It Off
The secret to happy employees is putting people over profit and everything else. And that might be a hard thing to do, especially when you’re focused on making money and keeping your business afloat.
But when you genuinely care about your employees, the profit falls into place, especially if you make shrewd business decisions along the way.
To put your people first, you need to understand their needs and what they expect from their work. And while you can’t force a work-life balance on your team, you can set them up for success.
And that success is so much more than giving them employee gifts through your corporate gifting program from time to time – although that helps.
Let’s take a look at a few ways you can help encourage a work-life balance in your employees and focus on your people.
Be flexible in work schedules and locations.
According to Stanford University studies, 42 percent of U.S. workers are working from home full-time, thanks to the ongoing coronavirus pandemic.
Working from home requires that employers put a great amount of trust in their teams to achieve their goals and do their best while outside of the work environment.
But it’s this trust that makes flexible working so appealing to the majority of the U.S. labor force.
If it’s possible, allowing your teams to work from home even a few days a week can help them feel trusted — and give them the opportunity for some flexibility in their work schedule to get other important things done, like scheduling appointments for home maintenance tasks or accepting grocery deliveries.
Assess your team’s workloads and stress.
Take an inventory of your team members’ responsibilities. Do you have some members doing the work assignments of multiple people in lieu of hiring additional workers or changing processes?
Often, too-heavy workloads result in unachievable goals and a sense of failure. Morale diminishes as a result.
Regularly meet with team members and get their honest feedback about the amount of work they’re doing. Reallocate some of the work to team members who can take on more without issue, and consider hiring additional team members to distribute the load. The frank conversations you’ll need to hold to complete this task requires your employees to trust you and your motives.
Offer valuable work perks.
Everyone’s heard of the nap pods and ping pong tables at Google headquarters. But those “perks” are there to help encourage employees to stick around the office for longer. Your team doesn’t want that.
Instead, they want meaningful work perks that show them that you care and that help alleviate their stress levels, not provide a brief detour from it. Consider:
-Free fitness memberships
-Snacks and drinks in the office
-Financial planning or estate planning support
-Discounted memberships for warehouse clubs or other services
-Company-provided childcare services
-Education reimbursement
-Acknowledgment for hard work, such as through corporate gifting or an awards program, with valuable rewards, such as additional time off, a cash prize, or useful items
Encourage breaks and time off.
Employees are more productive when they take breaks and leave the office. It’s tempting to reward employees who remain at their desks, fully focused on work, for their full shift, but having team members who feel pressured to do that isn’t actually a sign of a healthy workplace.
Encourage your employees to take breaks throughout the day. Suggest walking routes, or set up special areas, like a meditation room, to encourage time away from desks and computers.
Allow nonproductive team chatter. Not only does it make the workplace feel more welcoming, but it helps your team members bond and develop positive working relationships.
And speaking of time away from their desks, consider whether you might be able to offer more paid time off. Even an additional day or two can help encourage employees to take a day off. You might also consider setting up a paid time off system that does not allow vacation days to carry over from year to year, so your team members must take time off to avoid burnout.
Remember that every employee is different.
For some employees, a work-life balance means powering through the work day and being as productive as possible for eight hours straight, so they can go home to relax.
For others, it means taking it slower, lowering stress throughout the work week, and maybe spending a couple of hours on the weekends completing a task or two for work.
Some people want to begin work early in the morning and complete their work day sooner. Others want to start their day a little later and continue working into the evening.
Work-life balance looks different for everyone. And if you understand what the concept means to each of your employees, then you’ll be able to create a truly balanced work environment for everyone.
Corporate gifting is done right at The Care Crate Co.
If one of the ways you want to show your employees that you care as you strive to help them achieve their version of a work-life balance is an employee gift, The Care Crate Co. can help you.
Work with us to build your own fully-customized crate with items you hand-select, or choose from one of our curated gift sets or snack boxes. You can even fully customize your employee gift by adding your company logo to items inside the gift box, such as drink tumblers, water bottles, pens, tote bags, and more.
Talk to our crate concierge to learn more about our corporate gifting program and see how we can help you kick off your team’s journey toward a work-life balance.