Work-Life Balance for Managers: Say Goodbye To Burnout

Striking the right balance between professional responsibilities and personal life is difficult, especially for managers! 

Now, why is it so hard for us to find time to kick back and relax? We’re going to dive into the challenges so we know what we’re up against. Recognizing these challenges is the first step towards creating a healthier and engaging work environment.

The second step we’ll cover is to address these challenges with actionable strategies and tactics, some of which you can implement today. So, we can reach our goal of creating work-life balance for managers, just like we try to implement amongst our teams. Ready?

Table of Contents

• The Challenge with Work-Life Balance;
• 6 Tips for Creating Work-Life Balance;
• Begin Off-loading Manual Tasks Now;

The Challenge with Work-Life Balance

If creating work-life balance for managers was easy, we wouldn’t be here. There are a myriad of different challenges that managers face every day, but we’re not telling you anything new here, aren’t we!

It’s important to understand these challenges so they can be addressed with proper organizational changes. Let’s review.

High Expectations and Lots of Responsibilities

For every leader or manager, there are high expectations to perform and lead the team to reach their goals. Managers are typically the connector between strategic decisions and initiatives from higher leadership. While making sure those goals are met through the operational performance of the teams that they manage. No small feat. Plus, they are most likely amongst the most engaged people in your team and therefore truly care to achieve these targets.

This dual responsibility means that work days can exceed the typical 8 hours. That additional time in the workplace is spent juggling tasks, helping the team with busy periods, and covering for sick staff. Also, managers are usually the last to leave the workplace at the end of the day. 

People who excel in management are also typically high-performers. While leadership may have high expectations for their performance, these individuals may have an even higher expectation for themselves. 

This combination of high-performing individuals met with a continuous need for better performance can easily lead to burnout and stress. That’s why it’s such a considerable challenge to tackle stress at this level. 

The Always-On Work Culture

First, what is “always on” culture? It’s the expectation that one has to be accessible at all times throughout the day, even when work is over or on days off. Basically, being ready to respond to emails, messages, or requests at any hour.

It’s easy for managers and staff to get caught up in the “always on” culture that many workplaces have now. This in turn creates a culture where staff find it hard to disconnect, unwind and de-stress with their family, friends, and personal interests.

This “always-on” culture blurs the boundaries between work and life, favoring time at work. And do not get misled by the increasingly popular disconnection policies. Even if those show the goodwill of employers, managers and employees alike are often the ones who do not follow and open the door for their colleagues to step in their personal time. 

We therefore need to be more self conscious and avoid opening the door to those communications as we are not the exception we try to convince ourselves we are, but fuel this always-on culture by doing so.

Lack of Job Autonomy

Studies show that a lack of autonomy is a leading cause of burnout within an organization. This is common with a top-down leadership style, which can lead to less decision making and strict policies for middle and upper management. 

Lack of decision power can drive managers to feel out-of-control from their teams, leading to frustration and stress about work responsibilities. A combination that can complicate work-life balance. 

Limited Professional Development Time + Resources

Oftentimes once someone is promoted to management positions, the level of support and training reduces compared to front-line staff or individual contributors. If someone doesn’t have the years of experience or proper training to handle difficult management situations, this could lead to stress and frustration on the job. Thus negatively affecting work-life balance. 

6 Tips for Managers to Improve their Work-Life Balance

Now that we know the common challenges that make it difficult for managers to achieve work-life balance, let’s dive into some solutions for building a better, stress-free, workplace.

With the proper support in place to ensure work-life balance for all employees, not just management. 

1. Encourage and Help Plan Time Off

As managers tend to avoid taking time off because of the large responsibilities and duties we have, a challenge we identified. According to PEW Research, approximately 46% of Americans don’t use their PTO. Nearly half of workers! 

Through your debriefs or 1-1s with leadership, make it a priority to discuss the importance of planning and taking time off. The more important your tasks are, the more crucial it is for you to be able to disconnect and come back with a fresh pair of eyes. Most importantly, avoid the common guilt that most people feel when they take time off work.

Also consider implementing a Disconnect Policy, a mandatory period where everyone must take time off or cancel meetings and check-ins. This provides a space for more productive work to get done or a stress-free way to take time off. 

Lastly, consider discussing the importance of a monthly flex-day or flextime with leadership. This is where each manager is granted a day to come into work 1-2 hours late or leave 1-2 hours early. A flex-day is designed to add flexibility and relaxation from the typical demanding work week. As a manager, you typically don’t get the luxury of showing up late or leaving early.

2. Keep Health and Wellness Top of Mind

If your company offers health and wellness benefits programs, make sure you’re taking advantage of it! And if you believe that your benefits as a manager are not sufficient to meet work-life balance needs, consider voicing this concern with HR and working with them to see how they can provide the right benefits and tools that you’ll actually use. Other health and wellness resources can include gym memberships, wellness apps, massage therapists, or access to mental health professionals. 

Research also shows that things like trouble at home or high job demands do create stress that leads to poor mental health.

 

Source: Workplace stressors & health outcomes: Health policy for the workplace

Here are some tips to keep your health and wellness top of mind to reduce stress:

Set clear work boundaries: When you clock out for the day, make sure you implement a clear mental barrier that you’re off the clock and can enjoy guilt free time outside of work. This will help you have better relationships with friends and family outside of work, creating better situations for you at work. 

Speak up if something is unfair: Low organizational justice can be a driver of poor mental health in the workplace, which ultimately bleeds into your personal life. If you notice something’s unfair at work, bring it up with your leadership team. They’ll usually want to have this issue addressed, too. 

Don’t forget to make “You” time: When you’re a successful and loyal manager, it’s easy to get caught up in putting work before yourself. While that is helpful for the business and colleagues, it can take a toll on your mental and physical health. Make sure to schedule time into your personal calendar for your benefit. Whether that’s a stress-free morning walk before you head into work or prioritizing a healthy lunch instead of doing take-out, make the time for you! 

3. Respect This Personal Time

It can be easy to want answers at any hour and to be drawn to provide those with the same sense of urgency. Which then leads to late night texts or emails to share insights or work. Ultimately, this creates a never-ending workplace that will, in 100% of cases, take its toll on you and your team.  This “Always On” culture is one of the common challenges of today’s workplaces. 

Make sure to respect people’s working hours, including your own! Whether that’s explicit with a policy to avoid employee messages when they aren’t working, or to lead with example. Avoid requesting and even providing  information when they aren’t working and don’t respond late at night from your colleague requests. 

4. Delegate & Do Ask for Help

Delegate, delegate, delegate! As managers, if you have the resources and staff to delegate but are not sharing the work, please make this one of your top priorities. Start by segmenting your work into tasks as these are usually easier to let go. Then, you’ll see the full potential of your team and will most likely be drawn to give them additional responsibilities.

Or, if you are lacking the resources to provide that coverage and delegate tasks, revisit department structure. See if there is a budget for that additional staff hire or contractor to help with tasks.

5. Offer Development and Growth Opportunities

As a manager it is very important that you continue to learn and grow. Identify leadership training and opportunities to excel. Whether that’s regular meetings with other leaders within the organization, or by hiring external speakers and consultants to help share best practices and new ideas.

Areas of development for managers can include:

• Emotional intelligence and resilience as a leader;
• Strategic planning for dynamic workplaces;
• Team Building and Motivation;
• Achieve Change Management with Ease.

Becoming a better manager and professional will allow you to excel at work, get more done, and leave work knowing you can focus on personal time.

6. Streamline Work Processes

A great way to reduce the burden of being overworked at a job is to look at what processes you, as a manager, can help streamline and make more efficient. It’s common for unfinished work or unaligned tasks to fall on the managers plate, which works against work-life balance.

Here are some areas to start with when looking at processes and how you can make them more effective for yourself and the team:

1. What tasks become a bottleneck that requires more time from you?
2. Is task work left unfinished / unsatisfactory that requires you to step in and put in more hours to complete? 
3. Review task delegation with your team. They may have insights into inefficiencies within the process or tasks they work on. 

Another consideration is to use technology that helps streamline work processes or manual tasks. We’re a bit biased but implementing workforce management software, like Evolia, can save you time on manual processes and mundane tasks that weigh you down. Ultimately, to help you improve your work-life balance by reducing the ongoing manual workload. 

By automating mundane tasks like:

• Employee shift swap requests;
• Scheduling updates;
• Daily task management and tracking;
• Payroll and time clocking data entry;
• Leave approvals;

And more! 

Managers who use Evolia reported to have freed up 5 to 10 hours on average per week, for more productive and quality work. This new time in the week to focus on other demands can be an immediate stress reliever. That alone relieves stress for many managers.

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Final Thoughts

There are many challenges that managers face when it comes to creating work-life balance in an organization. The increased responsibilities, pressure to be ‘always-on’,  and potential lack of job autonomy can all be contributing challenges for work-life balance. 

As we identified, there are actionable steps you can take today to build a better work environment for all. Including respect for personal time, building flexible schedules, and most importantly, implementing tech to avoid manual and mundane work.