Achieving and Maintaining a Positive Work/Life Balance

 
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Achieving and Maintaining Positive Work/Life Balance

Available in person or remotely for distributed workforces

When people overwork they are not able to focus, cognitive efficiency reduces resulting in confusion, poor decision making, overwhelm, and mind fog. In short: poor results are delivered. Burnout is a huge issue and research demonstrates lack of work life balance is a massive factor in this.

The data shows when the mind is continuously occupied by work, our ability to be productive drops significantly. We achieve less when we are constantly ‘switched on’ to work.

When we are preoccupied with work at home in the evenings or at weekends, it stops the mind relaxing. The impact is huge as we become more irritable and stressed, we're more anxious, it takes us longer to do things, we fail to spot opportunities, and happiness declines.

Most people don't recognise this is happening and only spot things like work is more stressful, sleep is poorer, and that we find it very hard to stop thinking about work.

While we can continue to push on like this, the problems simply gets worse the longer we let it continue.

Enjoying time off, spending time with family, as well as excelling at work is possible. By organising life to allow this to happen, it increases success and happiness.

Objectives

When work bleeds into our home life and time off we typically achieve less and we don’t enjoy our time off either. If work is all-consuming, we have no real breaks causing attention and efficiency to suffer. We become ‘busy fools’.

Checking our email over the weekend contributes to a practical drop in IQ of about 10 points. Switching attention between home and work priorities eats into time and drains mental energy. Without any real ‘down-time’ we can't truly relax and our levels of stress hormone increase in the brain.

Ruminating about work problems outside work time is a significant predictor of increased exhaustion.

“work-related rumination during evenings may lead to health problems”. - Should You Switch Off or Stay Engaged? Firoozabadi et al. Journal of Occupational Health Psychology, 2018, Vol. 23, No. 2, 278–288.

This training gives you control over those boundaries, allowing you to achieve more in work and enjoy your time.

Training

When we ring-fence time it becomes easier to achieve more. Time off is vital to the productive use of time when working and paradoxically less time thinking about work usually results in more work achievement.

It can be hard to switch off when we leave the office but doing so will get us further in life.

You will learn skills and psychological tools to:

• Know what the brain is doing and how to switch off more easily
• Swiftly come back to a work task when back at work
• Maintain greater focus and motivation
• Build greater wellness into all aspects of life
• Build resilience when the pressure is on
• Develop skills to maintain calmness and clarity
• Increase happiness and fun in life and the workplace

Programme Leader

This training is led by John Prendergast MA, an expert in stress and wellbeing who has extensive training and experience in mental health and wellness. His delivery style is practical and make the learning easy to implement and is ideal for workplaces where tensions may already be high. (Read more about John here)

Relevant Research

Ruminating about work problems outside work time is a significant predictor of increase in exhaustion.

 “work-related rumination during evenings may lead to health problems”. - Should You Switch Off or Stay Engaged? (Firoozabadi et al, 2018) Journal of Occupational Health Psychology, 23(2), 278–288.

“Over time, individuals experiencing higher levels of perceived stress were less likely to create new communication ties and were more likely to maintain existing ties to others. Participants also tended to communicate with similarly stressed others. Such communication network dynamics further increased individuals’ levels of perceived stress over time, leading to stress-related vicious cycles”. –

“Till Stress Do Us Part: On the Interplay Between Perceived Stress and Communication Network Dynamics,” Kalish et al, 2015.

Those with high levels of responsibility at work typically have more difficulty in “leaving work at work.” Those in white collar jobs and management positions typically have more permeable boundaries around work and less stress resilience. How one approaches boundary management impacts stress recovery.

“The role of work–nonwork boundary management in work stress recovery.” (Kinnunen et al, 2016).  International Journal of Stress Management, 23(2), 99–123.

Managers who were rated higher in work–life balance were rated higher in career advancement potential than were managers who were rated lower in work–life balance.

“Can a Manager Have a Life and a Career? International and Multisource Perspectives on Work–Life Balance and Career Advancement Potential.” (Lyness and Judiesch, 2008), Journal of Applied Psychology, Vol. 93, No. 4, 789–805.

Work life balance moderates employee job satisfaction and happiness with perceived working conditions.

“Overtime and Quality of Working Life in Academics and Nonacademics: The Role of Perceived Work-Life Balance.” (Fontinha et al, 2019), International Journal of Stress Management, Vol. 26, No. 2, 173–183.

Feeling unable to devote the time we need to work activities negatively relate to work satisfaction, psychological well-being, and physical well-being.

“Work–Family Conflict and Self-Discrepant Time Allocation at Work.” (Dahm et al, 2015), Journal of Applied Psychology,  Vol. 100, No. 3, 767–792.