As more organizations move to a hybrid work environment, it is essential for employees to review their workforce needs and priorities. This involves assessing their skills, availability, and abilities required to support the vision of the company. In terms of self-care and maintaining good mental health, this also means assessing if the company is still the best fit for you or whether you should seek employment elsewhere with a company that is better suited to your needs in order to successfully operate in this new environment.
Understand Your Company Culture
It’s time employees are honest with themselves about the type of company they actually work for. Is your organization open to making changes, or do they prefer to rely on the status quo? What is their attitude towards working from home, and how does it compare to in-person meetings? Understanding the company culture is necessary for creating an effective hybrid work environment.
A good way to gauge how senior leadership at your company feels about working from home is to assess if any outlandish comments came from your CEO when Covid-19 measures were lessened about employees returning to the office. If they were heavy-handed and non-compromising about people coming back to the office, then you already have a good idea that they don’t care about the health and well-being of their employees (hint: start looking for another job).
Understand What You Need Now
The look and feel of what work/life balance means to you has likely changed over the past several years. It’s time to reexamine those needs in order to create an effective hybrid work environment.
- What tasks do you need help with?
- What tasks are more effectively performed during in-person collaboration vs. virtual collaboration?
- Have the needs in your personal life shifted in this new era of working?
- Who and what can reasonably and sustainably support those needs?
These are just a few questions to consider in your quest to understand what you need now and implement effective self-care in this hybrid workplace landscape.
Set Clear Expectations
When it comes to hybrid work environments, clear expectations need to be established early on. This includes setting boundaries around when and where you will be based on discussions with your direct manager and broader leadership (as needed). If like many in the Corporate World, you work with others in your company across time zones, factor that into the equation and focus on aligning the best times for meeting for your in-office vs. work-from-home days. This is effective because you likely have slightly different start times for your working days based upon factors like commuting on your in-office days vs. your work-from-home days.
Take Advantage of Employee Benefits
From work with my professional clients, along with my own experiences in Corporate America, I have noticed that most larger companies are starting to have more initiatives to help employees lead healthier lives. Especially in this new era of work, it would be beneficial to explore any such programs that your company has to help with lifestyle changes aligned with your own personal goals. Some I have seen recently include:
- Discounts for gym memberships at major chains
- Volunteering and getting “Free” time off from work
- Annual mental health days won’t count against employees’ vacation
- Several complimentary consultations with a nutritionist or dietician
- Participation in enterprise-wide walking initiatives with prizes at the end
All of the things offered by your company may not be up your alley but there are probably some which would help you start or enhance your self-care in a hybrid workplace.
Work With A Life Coach
If putting it all together is something that you have done and are doing well or is something that you are having challenges organizing, working with a life coach may be the answer. Self-care is more than spa days and journaling and working with a knowledgeable professional to help you the perfect routine or practices for you will be beneficial. Life coaches have expertise in various areas, including time management and goal setting, which could be extremely helpful when you are trying to balance several responsibilities. Curious to learn more? Click the button below to book a Discovery Call.
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Other blog posts of interest:
♦ What is Reiki Good For?
♦ How Are You Finding Your Bliss?
♦ Build a Happy Life: 5 Great Benefits of Working with a Life Coach
♦ Self-Care in the Age of Hybrid Work: How to Reevaluate Your Needs
♦ Enjoying Your Summer Responsibly in the Midst of Covid-19: Social Balance and Health
Do you want to become more self-aware? Do you want to walk on the path to self-discovery and self-fulfillment? If yes, you’re not alone. One of the greatest joys of being human is being able to discover new facets of our personalities and carve out opportunities for improvement. Once you start this journey, you can eventually unlock your full potential and get a sense of self! And the best part is, we can tell you how to get there.
I’ve worked with a lot of clients who say that one of their goals is to achieve work-life balance because they read an article in such and such publication. Yes, they want more time with their family. Yes, they want to work less crazy hours. Yes, they want to have more control over their schedules. However, in our coaching sessions, it quickly becomes apparent that these clients don’t really want work-life balance.
In those glowy wonderful articles, I just mentioned I often see very long lists around the benefits of work-life balance. Those lists haunt my dreams! Clients who want to find a life coach often contact me with these same lists and rattle off want they want me to do for them.
For example, a client who seems to take a lot of sick time may have a lot going on at home. This means they never have a chance to decompress from the stress at work. They go from one stressful environment (home) to another (work) and they are mentally and emotionally drained. The way they attempt to manage their situation is to limit their exposure to work stress by taking sick days and just staying in bed on those days.
“Achieving work-life balance” is a zen pipe dream I believe all of those articles I mentioned earlier promise readers. When a client decides to hire a life coach, they quickly realize that same thing. If all of the moving parts in a client’s life were in sync and their only issues were around the demands from their job, they’d probably find another job.
To put it simply, employers want the most bang for their buck so to speak. Every employer’s goal is to get as much use and work out of employees as possible at the lowest possible cost. No business thinks any differently. That’s just capitalism. To be fair, there are some employers who are far better than others at offering more harmonious, peaceful and collaborative environments for employees to work in. This means the need for work-life balance is seemingly taken into consideration when an employer offers certain health & wellness or alternative work programs.
Please understand, work-life balance as a concept is not negative. However what I’ve found to be true as a professional life coach is that clients put all of their attention on “fixing” the wrong things. What I mean by that is that a client will focus on how to make changes about the time they spend at work and just stop there. They won’t take the plunge to reflect upon their lives as a whole and possibly see that their commitments outside of work may be a major factor in their tiredness, lack of engagement, etc. at work.