Part two of our Building Teams in Times of Change series focuses on strategies to encourage work-life balance in times of change, specifically in a virtual work environment. Part one discussed strategies for effectively managing the workload while working remotely. To build support and enhance focus, both work and life demands must be addressed, acknowledged, and accommodated. Here are some strategies used by TSI and our clients to encourage work-life balance:
Encouraging Work – Life Balance
- Goals: Goals can go beyond our work duties or larger projects. It is important to help team members balance work and life, especially in the context in which we are all working today. Many people are balancing children, spouses, family members and pets on top of the demands of their workload. An “ordinary” work day no longer exists for many people. Help team members set and share goals and provide positive support and follow up for those goals.
- Create Cooler Chat: Separate personal and professional but provide a Cooler Talk/Off-Topic space for interacting. One of the casualties of this quarantine is the “water cooler conversations” that build trust among teams.
- Highlight Happenings: Invite colleagues to share highlights that have been happening at home and work and the broad intersection of the two that occur within the daily routines of our new normal.
- Group Pulse: Use polls and intentional questioning (can be anonymous) to invite sharing of specific needs, identify common sentiments and feelings (concerns, highlights, fears, challenges, opportunities, growth). This can be used with word clouds, running lists (fill in questions or multiple choice), or other tools such as the PollEverywhere app, Menti, or Zoom polling.
- Banish the Burnout: Encourage or assign partners or small groups to support each other and be accountability partners/groups. You can maintain these groups or change them weekly or bi-weekly to encourage collaboration, group building, and support. These groups can also head up broader team initiatives and activities.
- Shut Off Value: Be explicit in encouraging a distinction between work life and home life in terms of time and “being on”. When working from home, it is common to feel the need to always be accessible by phone, text, chat, email, etc. As much as working hours are important, so are non-working hours.
- Insert Your Strategy Here: Please share any strategies you or your team are using.
Stay tuned for the third part of this blog series, Reach out and Don’t Touch Someone! In the meantime, remember to create intentional spaces to encourage balancing all facets of our “new normal”. Be an agent for change and a supportive asset for growth! We can all be agents of support, efficiency, and balance!
Join the Conversation
Join the conversation about what other organizations are doing to encourage work-life balance. Do you have a creative way of encouraging your team to balance work and life in their new working environment? How are members of your team managing their time and energy? Please share your strategies on TSI’s LinkedIn conversation and check out TSI’s Organizational Change Management services on our website.