1. Help leaders understand that effective workload management is critical to staff wellbeing.
Unless organisations get this right, stress created by poor work management will undermine other wellbeing initiatives. Organisations cannot achieve effective workload management without the right tools to understand, predict and manage when unrealistic deadlines and unmanageable workloads.
2. Undertake a systemic review to identify factors that undermine work-life boundaries.
Employees cannot address the factors that undermine wellbeing by themselves. This needs to be approached as a joint enterprise with input from managers, teams and employees but as an organisational initiative. Review whether culture, policy, job design, performance management systems and key performance indicators, undermine or support an work-life boundaries.
3. Make evidence-based decisions.
Productivity tools enable employees and managers to have a constructive conversation about time, tasks, work, and deadlines. From a business perspective they allow organisations to spot bad practice and opportunities for greater efficiency.
4. Equip managers to support employers to set and maintain work-life boundaries.
Staff are more likely to engage with solutions they can influence. Develop manager facilitation skills to ask team members for feedback on what a realistic workload look like, what undermines work life balance, and what they can do as a team to collectively manage work-life boundaries. Mangers also need to understand their role in actively supporting employees in switching off at the end of the workday.
5. Ensure leaders lead by example.
Nothing undermines policy faster than leaders who say one thing and then behave differently. For employees to trust they have their managers full support to switch off at the end of the day, they first need to see leaders model work-life boundaries. That means being loud and proud about setting them and sticking to them.
6. Devise a communication plan to promote the organisation’s new approach to wellbeing.
Take time to explain what the organisations is doing to manage workload and how this drives benefit from other wellbeing perks such as gym access or flexing working hours. Don’t rely on a single launch or promotion event. Devise a schedule to reiterate the message throughout the year around specific occasions. As well as reinforcing key messages its helpful for to include mini case studies based on employee and manager experience to highlight the impact of your new approach and to share best practice with managers.
