Trying to maintain a work-life balance has often been likened to juggling, but a good leader knows how to disrupt that circus act for their teams.
Despite the majority of employees and job seekers valuing work-life balance, 77 percent have experienced burnout in their current workplaces, according to a 2023 Zippia report. In addition to self-imposed “perfectionism,” many employees in the report named “company culture” and “supervisors” as significant barriers to achieving their preferred personal and professional equilibrium.
By prioritizing work-life balance, companies foster a happier, healthier workforce — which ultimately benefits their bottom line. The Zippia report also found that good work-life balance is tied to improved team morale, better employee retention and increased productivity.
At the three workplaces featured below, leaders are committed to promoting a robust separation between personal and professional life. Through open and honest discussions, they inquire about their employees’ workstyle preferences, home lives and red-flag behaviors, such as excess timesheet hours, neglected PTO or email responses during vacation.
By setting explicit expectations, modeling boundaries and adopting systems for optimizing workflows, these leaders — from Xero, Vendavo and PAIRIN — empower their employees to embrace sustainability and leave the juggling to the clowns.
Xero offers accounting software for small businesses and their advisors.
How do you encourage your team members to maintain a good work-life balance?
Work-life balance is going to be unique to each person. For some, it may pertain to their ability to be remote. Some may value flexibility for when they start and finish their work days, while others may seek more of a work-life integration with community and belonging in their workplace.
It begins with encouraging team members to identify what they see value in and then ensuring you have the right tools and policies to support them. It’s important to make this a regular point of conversation, too, especially during team meetings. It can be helpful to hear how others, including leaders, are finding their work-life balance. That level of transparency provides implicit permission for those on their team to do the same.
How do you gauge team members’ work-life balance? If it appears imbalanced, what do you do to help right the ship?
I take both a qualitative and quantitative approach to checking in. I see if people on the team are taking personal leave to recharge and mitigate burnout. If not, it’s important to understand why they aren’t doing so.
If it’s more of a day-to-day work-life balance concern, such as early mornings and late nights, I approach the conversation with support in mind. I ask: What would they need to be able to sign off at the end of the day? How can work be distributed through the rest of the team? Work that has become a daunting task for someone with tight time restraints may be a development opportunity for someone else looking to grow their career in the organization.
At the end of the day, it is about preserving open lines of communication, supporting flexibility whenever possible and ensuring they know the shared value of supporting work-life balance.
It is about preserving open lines of communication, supporting flexibility whenever possible and ensuring they know the shared value of supporting work-life balance.”
How do you keep work-life balance in mind when it comes to planning out projects and assigning work?
At Xero, we want to ensure that we keep work-life balance top of mind with a geographically dispersed team. When kicking off a project that includes team members around the globe, we set expectations around asynchronous work.
The keys to this are regularly scheduled asynchronous project updates, whether they be weekly or biweekly, that are recorded and shared to all team members globally. This keeps the same information across the working group to reduce the need for early mornings or late nights.
We also utilize an Asana board or another project management system to keep track of milestones and deliverables. This allows people to work in a style that fits them and schedule their days around their needs outside of work. Clarity in outcomes keeps the focus on the outputs and allows people to work in their own ways.
Finally, we encourage people to share their upcoming leaves and ensure that work is distributed across the team. If someone is away for an extended period, we make sure there is a designated representative from the team to cover the work while they are away.
Vendavo provides SaaS products for business-to-business companies to unlock their value, grow their margins and accelerate their revenue.
How do you encourage your team members to maintain a good work-life balance?
If you are really passionate about your team maintaining a good work-life balance, it needs to be a regular discussion topic with the team. A lot of employees may assume that the company wants them to work as many hours as possible, but you need to dispel that false assumption.
As managers, we realize that while there may be short-term commercial gains if someone works extra hours, it is not sustainable and will eventually lead to a burnt-out employee. In my opinion, it is much better to proactively encourage all employees to maintain a good work-life balance from day one. This effort will have a positive impact on morale and, in turn, provide numerous benefits to both the company and the employee.
It is much better to proactively encourage all employees to maintain a good work-life balance from day one.”
How do you gauge team members’ work-life balance? If it appears imbalanced, what do you do to help right the ship?
There are several ways that I gauge a team member's work-life balance. For employees who submit timesheets, I have a data-driven view of how much the employee is working. If the report reveals that someone keeps booking excess hours, then I instantly know there is likely a work-life balance issue. I also regularly ask my team how they are balancing their work and personal lives to see if any issues arise that need to be addressed.
Another thing I regularly look for is behavior when the employee is not supposed to be working. For example, if they are sending a lot of emails when they are on vacation, they are likely not maintaining a healthy work-life balance. When I detect any potential work-life balance issues, I bring them up in a discussion with the employee to better understand the circumstances around them. Was it a special circumstance, or do we need to make a change?
If a change is needed, then I work with the employee to make the change, and every now and then, I’ll ask for reinforcement from someone on our people and culture team. This action needs to happen relatively quickly, as you do not want inaction leading to the employee getting burnt out.
What benefits have you seen when your teams have good work-life balance?
When my team has a good work-life balance, I see multiple benefits — especially ones tied to improved morale. An employee is much more likely to stay at the company longer and recommend the company to others. If a team member is happy, positive morale generally spreads to others they interact with as well, which creates synergistic effects.
From a company perspective, this saves money on hiring costs, and the employee will be more productive and effective in their work. The positive energy will also spread to our customers, improving their satisfaction, which equally has a commercial impact. Overall, helping your teams maintain a good work-life balance has numerous benefits to employees, customers, shareholders and the team.
Social enterprise company PAIRIN consolidates resources from labor programs, government agencies and educational organizations onto a single platform that is individualized for students and job seekers.
How do you encourage your team members to maintain a good work-life balance?
We check in on each other during one-on-one meetings with managers every week, and we try to be great examples.
We have a Slack channel based on one of our company values — “Bird Dog Joy” — where we encourage team members to pursue joyful things and bring back pictures and stories to share with the rest of the team. Through the retelling of adventures big and small, we are all inspired to have our own adventures.
How do you gauge team members’ work-life balance? If it appears imbalanced, what do you do to help right the ship?
Conscientious, over-achieving, hard-working people are adept at hiding their needs, or they sometimes are just not great at recognizing and articulating them. You must be intentional in getting to know what stressors are in someone's life. Do they have a dying parent or a sick child? Are they dealing with the stress of buying a home or managing a construction project? You have to value the whole person, and that means asking about their life outside of what they can do for the company.
The only way to know about someone’s work-life balance is to ask them, put their answers in the context of what is going on in their life and coach them to make changes that they might not make on their own.
The only way to know about someone’s work-life balance is to ask them, put their answers in the context of what is going on in their life and coach them to make changes.”
What benefits have you seen when your teams have good work-life balance?
The main benefit we see when our teams have good work-life balance is palpable joy. People are less flustered, edgy or easily angered. They want to help others more and are less defensive or protectionist. They are more patient, and they have a little more emotional margin to think, feel and be with their peers.
They also stick around. Burnt out people leave — sometimes without saying a thing until it is too late.
