As the world urges for increased productivity, we have seen a trend in employees working past the end of their workdays. Some companies are providing overtime or additional days off to encourage employees to work past the company’s daily hours. The bottom line: employees need time to close their computers, snooze their Slack notifications, and get out of the mental mindset of work. If employees are pushed to their limits outside of their work hours, this trend is going to pave the way for a negative work-life balance, and in turn, can lead employees to experience what we call employee burnout.
It’s important for employees to know when to start and stop their workday. Emphasizing the importance of work-life balance can prove to have personal and professional benefits for your team and business as a whole. In this blog post, we will discuss three benefits of encouraging your employees to disconnect outside of work hours.
Avoid employee burnout and foster work-life balance
It is easy for employees to feel that they need to be accessible at all times to turnaround projects, respond to emails, answer questions…the list goes on. The constant pressure to always be accessible can lead to employee burnout and a nonexistent work-life balance.
One thing that can lessen that pressure is to ensure that managers are not reaching out to employees after the day’s work hours. Managers can schedule emails to be sent during work hours. Also, encourage employees to disconnect after work by having them turn off Slack notifications and setting the precedence that emails can wait until the morning if received past certain hours. By relieving the pressures of work after the day, it can enable your team to rest, recharge, and relax before resuming work the next day.
Build loyalty and respect for employees
It is important for employees to know their employer respects their boundaries. This reinforces the idea of employee loyalty, and can lead to better employee morale in the workplace.
If employees feel like their time is being respected, they will likely return that favor by being more loyal to their employer and the company which, in turn, can lead to higher retention rates. When employees feel like they are valued as people, this will prove to have a ripple effect in areas such as job satisfaction, higher workplace morale, and increased productivity.
Increase in productivity, creativity and engagement
By encouraging employees to disconnect after their workdays, they will be more productive. While work-life fluidity is a crucial aspect in the workplace, one component of that is having that time to be offline. Happiness is a two-way street; when one is happy in their personal life, that will translate into success at work. That success comes in various forms: productivity, creativity, and engagement. Having that time to dedicate to their personal lives will give them the mental capacity to bring those components back into their work life.
Encouraging employees to disconnect after their workdays will prove to be beneficial to not only the employees themselves but also your company. Employee burnout and poor work-life balance can hurt your workplace morale and company culture. As managers, it is our job to actively enforce a healthy work-life balance, and it all can start with shutting down your computer at the end of the day.
To learn more about ways to allow their employees more flexibility throughout the workday, check out our blog on Nine to Five Work Hours: Are Employees Really Productive?
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