Modern work culture is becoming increasingly demanding. Between navigating new technologies, acclimating to remote work environments, and keeping up with the daily grind, employees and managers alike may find themselves working longer hours and dealing with a lot of stress. These factors can negatively impact their ability to maintain a healthy work-life balance.
A recent survey by the Health and Safety Executive revealed that 822,000 workers suffered from work-related stress, depression, or anxiety between 2020 and 2021. This is detrimental not only to employees’ wellbeing but also to the businesses in which they work. In fact, a Breeze study reported that 66% of workers experiencing remote work anxiety said it affected their efficiency and productivity.
Striking a balance between working effectively and having enough time for yourself can help mitigate these problems. Here are five tips that can help put you on the path to achieving a healthier work-life balance.
1) Find a job you love
Staying in a job that doesn’t feel like a good fit for you in the long term can lead to unnecessary stress. This can take a toll on your physical and mental health, resulting in sleepless nights, unhealthy eating habits, and overfatigue, among others. Not achieving the right work-life balance can even prevent you from spending quality time with your family.
On the flip side, having a job you are passionate about means you get to be enthusiastic about going to work each day. It keeps your motivation up and helps you to cultivate a positive work environment, which can, in turn, lead to enhanced productivity. You’ll also be more receptive to any work challenges that come your way.
2) Leverage technology to streamline workflows
One of the best things about technology is that it will help you work smarter, not harder. Considering the plethora of applications and software solutions on the market today, there are bound to be one or two that can help with your day-to-day responsibilities.
With workplace tech at your disposal, it is easier to:
- Make collaboration more convenient. Using software solutions can make it easy for employees to visualize their workload, collaborate with fellow employees, and manage tasks. Managers can ensure that all workloads are manageable, while employees can avoid stressing about inefficient work processes.
- Reduce the time spent on repetitive tasks. There is software out there to help automate tasks like emailing, collecting customer data, and generating sales analysis. This frees up employees to work on more fulfilling, challenging, or attention-demanding tasks.
- Minimize process errors and streamline workflows. Customer relationship management (CRM) tools allow you to map out your sales processes efficiently. In this way, you can detect and address potential bottlenecks timeously, ensuring the effectiveness of your workflows.
- Simplify information retrieval. Platforms with mobile-first, cloud-based infrastructures can simplify data accessibility, letting employees retrieve data whether they are on-site or out in the field. This helps them to perform their jobs faster as well as reduces the stress of commuting to and from the office.
- Gain better visibility into business operations. Perhaps the most important function that technology offers is in providing managers with a 360-degree view of their day-to-day operations. Benefits include forecasting workloads and gaining insights into operational trends that directly impact how employees work.
It’s clear that investing in technology can optimize processes and make tasks more manageable for employees. One such software is Skynamo, a field sales CRM that streamlines workflows and helps mobile sales teams to work more efficiently and independently while out in the field. In addition, it gives managers instant access to sales activity, cutting downtime on administrative tasks.
3) Set limits to achieve work-life balance
The key to a healthy work-life balance is to create strong boundaries. This will help build positive professional relationships, maintain a structured work environment, and set clear expectations with colleagues and managers.
Some ways of achieving this include:
- Maintaining a consistent work schedule. Having a routine has plenty of benefits, from getting better sleep to having lower stress levels. This underlines the need for keeping a consistent schedule, whether you work remotely or from the office. In addition, make sure your work colleagues are aware of this so they know when you’re available in an official capacity.
- Hitting snooze on notifications when off-the-clock. Sometimes, it’s inevitable for colleagues to keep messaging you about work when you’re no longer on duty. In these cases, you shouldn’t hesitate to hit the snooze button on your notifications. This prevents you from spending personal time on work-related matters.
- Learning to say “no”. In any company, work doesn’t really ever end. So, before you take on that extra task or agree to work overtime, remember that there’s nothing wrong with saying “no”. This is especially true if you’re pressed for time or simply need rest for the day.
Setting work-life boundaries is instrumental in learning how to avoid work stress. This lets employees detach from work once their official hours end and helps them focus better once they come back to work.
4) Spend Some Time on Yourself
As the old saying goes, you should work to live and not live to work. In a world where working longer hours is seen as a marker of success, is nonetheless essential to take time off and focus on yourself every now and then. Some effective strategies for doing this include:
- Getting enough sleep. Lack of sleep can keep you from functioning properly. Studies have shown that it can negatively affect productivity in sales teams, put you at risk of medical conditions, and affect your emotional state. As much as possible, try making it a habit to get quality sleep every night. Invest in a comfortable mattress and a white noise machine, if necessary.
- Maintaining a healthy diet. What you eat can affect your ability to cope with stress. Before you choose to indulge in comfort food, you might want to consider a healthier food and beverage first. This lets you take care of your metabolism and digestive cycles – both important factors in stress management. This aside, it’s also vital for staying healthy in the Covid-19 economy.
- Exercising regularly. Physical activity is a great way of taking your mind off work. By stimulating the production of endorphins, it makes it is easier for you to relieve tension and anxiety. According to an ADAA online poll, 14% of people exercise regularly to cope with stress.
- Taking up a hobby. Be it arts and crafts, gardening, or playing video games, hobbies are great outlets for stress. A hobby can help you take a break from responsibilities, exercise your creativity, and keep you engaged in something that you enjoy.
Practicing self-care is an important aspect of achieving a work-life balance. It allows you to reset your mind and gives you space to breathe. This way, when stressful situations arise at work, you will have the energy and the headspace to deal with them as effectively as possible.
5) Build your support network
Dealing with work stress is never easy. It can leave you feeling isolated, burnt out, and exhausted all the time. Sometimes to a point where you may find it hard to take care of yourself. It helps to have a network of people who you can rely on when your professional life starts to overwhelm you.
Building a strong support network ensures you have people who are there for you when times get tough. They can offer unique perspectives that may help you overcome work hurdles or simply be a good listener when you need to vent. To get you started, here are a few ideas for cultivating a social support network:
- Keep in close touch with your family. Your family serves as the pillar of your social circle. Come hell or high water, they are ready to listen to you and help you in times of need. It also helps if you already see each other on a regular, if not daily, basis.
- Connect with friends. Having close friends from work, school, or any other period in your life gives you a sense of belonging.
- Find people with the same interests as you. Join a club, take a class, or get involved in volunteer work to find individuals who share your interests. Who knows? Maybe they’re there to destress from their hectic jobs, too.
The bottom line here is to surround yourself with peers who can help you unwind — friendly faces who you can exchange stories with. Creating a social circle outside of work will allow you to temporarily escape your work responsibilities and take a well-earned breather.
Help your sales team achieve work-life balance
With everyone so connected through technology, it’s commonplace to be on duty at all times. From marketing professionals to sales representatives, employees have made a habit of answering work-related messages while off the clock and taking calls while on vacation. This makes it harder for employees to wind down and live a fulfilling life outside their work.
Balancing one’s personal and professional life, however, doesn’t always need to feel like walking a tightrope. Learning to set boundaries, sticking to a work schedule, and having some alone time are great strategies for destressing and preventing burnout. Furthermore, it’s also important to leverage best-in-class tools like Skynamo to make the most out of your billable hours.
Skynamo is a field sales CRM designed to help business owners and sales managers monitor and coach their sales teams efficiently. It serves as a centralized hub where teams can check sales pipelines and share notes about leads. The platform also helps users take the guesswork out of sales decisions because it generates reports about your key performance indicators in real-time. As a result, it helps decrease the build-up of work-related stress for your sales teams.
Still not sure how Skynamo can help your team? Have a chat with us to find out more about the features our field sales CRM software has to offer.
