With time becoming an increasingly scarce commodity, employees are now placing greater value on their own personal time. For businesses to prosper, employers need to pay great attention to employee conditions and remuneration.
Flexible working arrangements allow a greater choice of ways for employees to access the necessary time to complete their tasks.
This shows that the employer is respecting the value and importance of the employees’ time and life away from work. The most common arrangements to improve work flexibility are job sharing, working some days at home, rostered days off, and making up any time off on other days.
The key part of the arrangement is that it must be conditional upon the employee reaching agreed Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) and other performance targets. That way, everyone is better off.
Flexible working arrangements are a low-cost exercise that produces a small but long-term return for the employer. Training to improve an employees’ physical and emotional wellbeing increases the employees’ capacity to perform and adapt.
Here are some tips for employers to improve employees’ work life balance:
- Ask your employees what support they would like from you to help their work life balance.
- Adopt healthy eating and drinking practices during working hours and business lunches.
- Be honest, caring, knowledgeable and inspirational. These leadership traits reduce employee work stress and reduce sick leave.
- Provide ongoing learning and safety sessions that cover a wide variety of topics including work-life balance.
- Provide your employees with opportunities to participate in physical activity.
- Walk your talk. Be the example of good health and a healthy life balance.
Creating more flexible working conditions gives your employees greater choice on how to use their time by improving their capacity to do more with their working time, enhancing productivity benefits and leading to a healthier balance sheet for the firm.
For further information contact Paul St. Clair on 02 9221 4088.