As Busy As A Bee? Innovative Ideas For Work-Life Balance With Small Teams
As a busy entrepreneur, prioritizing your life outside of work can be a mega challenge. And chances are if you’re struggling, so are your team members.
More balance for you and your team in your business, family, and personal lives means a more harmonious, efficient path toward the growth you’re looking for.
Here are a few innovative ideas for work-life balance.
Advocate For Breaks
Contrary to traditional work culture, regular breaks are becoming a thing. Like, a big thing.
Those 15 minutes your team members take for rest, a snack, a walk, or something else, lift energy levels and improve performance. It’s part of why the Pomodoro technique has exploded.
Take note: When you measure productivity rather than hours, you get a truer picture of your team’s results and can better enjoy the benefits of work-life balance.
Promote Hobbies
Another idea for work-life balance is encouraging your team to take up a hobby. It’s an excellent outlet for creativity and expression.
It also increases work satisfaction while reducing stress. You can propose hobbies and track each other’s progress via a Slack channel.
Set The Example
Setting the example is a win-win for your business and your own personal life. When you demonstrate balance, you encourage your team members to do the same, giving both of you a chance to enjoy the positive impact of work-life balance.
Here are the bare essentials for your work-life balance:
- Set clear boundaries and stick to them
- Keep work at work and stick to your working hours
- Don’t engage with after-hour emails or work late too often
- Take time off and regular vacations to rejuvenate yourself
Offer Flexibility
We’re in a new age of organizational culture. Most people have had a taste of remote work — and they love it!
If you’re a brick-and-mortar business or have a physical office, consider offering remote options as well as flexibility.
The option to work from home enhances trust with employees, allows exceptional levels of comfort — we’re talking working in your PJs if that’s what you want — and therefore boosts productivity.
Yet even if you practice remote working, no work-life balance equals less output. Flexibility might look like offering one day off a week, half days off, or allowing your team to make their own hours.
This is sometimes already in the bag if any team members are outsourced or freelance.
Listen To Your Employees
An easy way to enhance work-life balance among your team is to ask them about their own ideas!
In addition, recognize that each team member has unique differences in their work-life balance needs.
Some have large families, while others don’t. Some love working a bit late, and others may be desperate to play a more part-time role.
Another idea? Put an open-door policy in place to maximize feedback and build effective dialogue in your workplace.
Hold Team-Building Activities
My final work-life balance example is to try bringing fun into work now and then.
I prepared two articles covering fun ideas for team-building activities you can use both virtually and in-person, which you might want to adopt for your team.
And if you’ve not yet built the team of your dreams, be sure to check out my FREE Guide to building a kick-ass team as an entrepreneur!
Janic 💜
