Are you struggling to find a sense of balance in life? If so, you’re not alone: between 11 - 21% of people are unhappy with their work-life balance in the UK, with 25 - 34 year olds experiencing the highest levels of dissatisfaction with how their time and energy is split.
Despite the increasingly demanding work culture in the UK, finding alignment across your professional and personal time is possible. In this guide, discover how to approach a work-life alignment in a way that suits you, and explore tips to improve how you’re feeling in your job and at home.
Redefining work-life balance
At Calmer, we prefer to refer to work-life balance as work-life alignment. This term is an updated version of work-life balance, which many mental health experts and organisations are pioneering to recognise the increasingly indistinguishable nature of work and life.
Calmer’s Founder, Tania Diggory, says “work-life alignment is an updated version of that work-life balance sentiment that is used by many professionals today. In this day and age, the phrase "work-life balance" could imply that you have work on one hand and the rest of your life on the other - which may not really sound that balanced.
“Alignment instead recognises how times have changed - especially due to technology - and how so many aspects of our lives now align, blend and mesh together. Ultimately, it is our responsibility as individuals to determine our own boundaries around these demands, and what contentment really means on a personal and professional level.”
In essence, it is more important that you can identify what balance means to you personally, and find ways to take steps to honour that.
What is a good work-life alignment?
A good work-life alignment can be defined as deriving meaningful daily satisfaction across time spent at work, and time outside of work.
This definition is purposefully loose, because there are many factors that can affect this balance, such as:
Your job role
Your industry
Your life stage
Your personal commitments
There are a number of motivational theories that demonstrate different approaches to achieving a good work-life alignment. For example, the four quadrants of life show that balance can be found when achievement and enjoyment is experienced across work, family, friends, and self.
On the other hand, Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs shows how certain factors, such as job security, are required to progress onto higher level needs, disregarding balance altogether.
13 signs of poor work-life alignment
The following signs can indicate a poor work-life alignment:
Anxiousness around working long hours
Disengagement with life in general
Envying friends’ lifestyles
Feeling alienated by modern life
Feeling unhappy about the time you devote to work
Increased irritability during and/or outside of work hours
Lack of personal development
Neglecting aspects of your life because of work
Physical, mental, or emotional health issues
Picking up emails or calls during a holiday
Poor relationships and/or home life
Regularly performing work duties out of hours
Worrying about work during leisure time
Alongside these signs, YouGov notes that more women report unhappiness than men (42% of women compared with 29% of men) around their work/life alignment, which could be linked to competing life roles.
The Mental Health Foundation also notes that a poor work/life alignment may increase your vulnerability to mental health problems.
5 steps to achieving a better work-life alignment
At Calmer, we work to provide proactive strategies to look after your mental health, both at work and in life. In the case of achieving better work/life alignment, you can try the following five steps:
1. Take responsibility for your work-life alignment
If you’re reading this, you’re well on your way to taking responsibility for your work/life alignment. The first step is to understand that you have control over certain aspects in your work and your life in general. This can enable you to speak up when work demands are too much, such as saying no when you need to. It is important that your employer values your work, so make sure to communicate with them when things feel too much to handle, so you can find a better solution together.
2. Improve how you work
The phrase ‘work smarter, not harder’ may be cliché, but it’s appropriate here. Learning how to prioritise your time, and avoiding procrastination can enable you to reduce the time and energy you put into your work, while still generating the same (if not better) results.
Taking proper breaks at work can also boost productivity, and it can provide time to destress too.
3. Talk about mental health with your employer
Achieving work/life alignment is a team effort, and your employer will play a key role in this too. Talking to your manager about how you feel will make them aware of your needs, and enable them to improve certain aspects of your job that may be out of your control.
It is important that both you and your employer take seriously the link between work-related stress and mental health issues. Together, you may be able to implement more support to relieve stress, and also reduce the risk of burnout.
4. Make time for life outside of work
With the line between work and life blurred, it can be difficult to find time to do things you enjoy outside of work. This is even more necessary when working from home. Try to ensure that a line is drawn between your work and leisure time.
If you do need to bring work home, or go into your leisure hours when working from home, try to limit how frequent this is. You may also benefit from limiting where you work in your home, and physically leaving this space when you finish for the day.
In addition to these steps, try placing equal importance on leisure activities and personal development. This includes exercise, learning a new skill, time seeing friends or family, and hobbies.
5. employers: create a better work-life alignment for your staff
The final step is for your employer to follow. Many managers and employers can benefit from implementing better work-life alignment for their staff, and it can be done through a number of different ways:
Promote consistent messages around work/life alignment to teams
Develop policies that acknowledge that work related stress affects mental health
Invest in programmes to support staff who experience mental health issues - Calmer can support with through the delivery of in-house training and for remote teams
Encourage communication around pressure points, such as deadlines and workloads.