Work/Life Balance: How Home Life Affects Work Life

Trickle discusses the oft-cited “work/life balance”, in other words, how home life affects work life, as well as vice versa.

Not even the staunchest of workaholics spend all of their time at work. We do stress the importance of having a healthy work/life balance here at Trickle.

The time spent away from the office helps employees to be more productive inside the office.

A more effective and often rare way to look at work/life balance is not to see it as a static goal. No one, despite popular belief, ‘achieves’ work/life balance. It’s a daily process of adapting to your current situations. Think of it in a similar way to health and fitness. You don’t achieve it, but it becomes a part of your life — if you stop eating healthy and exercising, you’ll no longer be healthy.

Life isn’t static. We grow older, build new relationships, have children, change locations, jobs, so the definition of work/life balance will change as time goes on. This change should be embraced by employees.

There is a symbiotic relationship between the home and the office, whether virtual or physical. What happens at home will have an effect on what happens at work and vice versa.

Employers must do all they can to help employees to have a healthy home life as well as supporting them when they’re at work.

Home is often seen as a sanctuary for us, and if it’s compromised in any way, our performance at work can suffer.

Having a culture that pushes work/life balance as well as placing importance on maintaining a healthy personal life outside of work are a couple of ways that can help people.

Many people have jobs for reasons that are outside of the workplace, e.g. financially supporting a family. If one of the main reasons people are working isn’t in good working order, they will become less engaged at work.

Employers need to do all they can to ensure that work doesn’t have a negative effect on the home lives of their employees. For example:

• Scheduling meetings at times that are more compatible with having a healthy work/life balance e.g., not having meetings overrun into the late evening and not scheduling meetings past 4 pm.
• Allowing parents to pick up their children during the workday. Parents work for their children. So, in an indirect way, damaging the bond between them and their children could lead to them looking for a new job that has better parent-focused policies.
• Promoting a ‘no guilt culture’ so that if something bad happens at home, a family emergency of some sort, that person can leave work to go and deal with it, without feeling guilty for doing so.

How Trickle Helps Employees Have Better Home Lives

It’s important that employees are empowered and feel that the relationship between their home and work life is a healthy one. Putting things in place to do this is a great way for showing your staff that you care about them outside of what they do in the workplace, something which they’ll be grateful for.

It’s not always easy to do, but it’s always worth it. Trickle can help your employees balance their home and work life.

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