Organizational Leadership Training Company

Unplug, Disengage, Disconnect: How to Create Balance in Your Work and Your Life

What’s the first word that pops into your head when someone says, “work-life balance?”
For many of today’s executives and professionals, that word is “Impossible.”

A recent study by the Harvard Business School showed that 94% of today’s professionals say they work at least 50 hours a week, and nearly half put that figure at 65 hours.

Is this an accurate picture of your work environment?

If so, what is it doing to the company, and what can you do about it?

Here’s a sampling of the damage that is already being done:

  • Productivity goes down after 40 hours on the job
  • People experience sleepiness, poor concentration, irritability, and increased susceptibility to illness
  • Accidents and injuries occur more frequently, both on and off the job
  • Personal relationships with friends and family suffer
  • Increased stress can cause serious health problems, including obesity, heart disease, and stomach issues.

In order to implement real change, you can’t just arbitrarily adjust schedules and working hours. You must change the corporate culture. “Your Work or Your Life,” Joel’s organizational leadership training, shows you the steps your managers can take to reduce their working hours while increasing both balance and productivity.

Here are the three components they will learn to implement:

Part 1: Eliminate

  • Prevent the input that creates information overflow
  • Remove excess workplace stress
  • Set boundaries that will stop work overload
  • Say no without appearing uncooperative

Part 2: Reduce

  • Break the smartphone addiction
  • Stop obsessively checking email
  • Curtail the number of meetings you attend
  • Start working a 40-hour week

Part 3: Renew

  • Understand why they need to renew and how renewal works
  • Learn how to ‘be’ instead of ‘do’
  • Use vacations to unplug and recharge
  • Create free time—and know what to do with it
  • Schedule time off to disconnect, disengage and unplug

What Your Company Gains by Supporting Work-Life Balance

When you become intentional about creating work-life balance as part of your company’s culture, you will see immediate benefits, both to your brand and to your bottom line. This is why companies have leadership training focused on Work-Life Balance.

People will want to work for you.

You’ll attract top talent, and you’ll find it easier to keep the talent you already have. When you give people the freedom to design their own work scenarios, you will inspire greater creativity and productivity.

You will reduce recruiting and training costs.

Numbers and opinions vary, but these numbers are a reasonable estimate of what it costs you to lose and replace an employee:

  • Entry-Level Employees – it costs between 30-50 percent of their annual salary to hire and train replacements.
  • Mid-Level Employees – it costs upwards of 150 percent of their annual salary to replace them.
  • High-Level or Highly Specialized Employees – you’re looking at 400 percent of their annual salary.

Healthy employees mean a healthier company.

Employees who don’t feel like they’re always running behind give you a more adaptable, motivated, and positive workforce. When your employees feel balanced between their work and personal commitments, they are less likely to get off track and more likely to adapt to the company’s changing needs and their boss’s urgent requests. A positive workforce creates an organization that can more easily meet the needs of customers and clients.

You’ll meet the needs of Millennials.

By 2020, half the workforce will be millennials. Their needs and attitudes are already shaping the workplace of tomorrow. They are socially aware, and they will want time to support the causes they believe in. They want conversational work spaces, areas for socialization and collaborative tasks, and quiet spaces for rest and rebalancing.

What’s In It for the Employees?

There will be far fewer burnouts.

When job stress becomes constant and unrelenting, burnout occurs. Burnout is that awful feeling that you are falling farther and farther behind and you’ll never get caught up. The negative effects of a burnout impact every area of life, including home and social life. Your organizational leadership want to help by providing training on Work-Life Balance. They understand its value. Joel’s course will show participants how to minimize the stress at work and how to unplug and recharge during time away from the job. Burnout becomes a thing of the past.

Employees will feel more creative.

Encouraging employees to make choices about their time and commitments fosters increased creativity. Employees are the experts on their own work structure. They know what tasks and timelines keep them motivated and engaged. They know which meetings are productive and which are not. When they learn to control their information overload, they will free up time to brainstorm, daydream, and apply creativity in every area of their work.

Time flexibility increases energy.

When your company provides your managers with leadership training courses like this one, you are modeling the behavior you want to encourage. Once you have trained employees to take control of their work life, you may offer even more options, such as flextime, working remotely, and deciding their own work priorities. Employees will find that their energy level increases exponentially. Freedom to create life balance makes work fun and rewarding again.

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