Work-Life Balance for Overworked Employees

If you’ve noticed a lack of morale and low energy in your team recently, it may be time to take a hard look at what might be the root cause. Around 53% of UK employees have reported feeling overworked, which can ultimately lead to stress, anxiety, burnout and even depression.

Even with flexible working options, the lines can be blurred between work and pleasure, particularly if an individual feels like they may not be able to ‘switch off’ due to their workload. Add in other elements like health conditions, childcare, and other life obligations, all these elements can add a lot of stress to an already overworked member of your team.

What can you do as a business owner or member of senior leadership to ensure your people are working at safe, comfortable levels? While a stressful period here and there is inevitable, how can you support your people to ensure they are able to maintain a healthy work-life balance?

What does work-life balance mean?

To really understand how you can help your people, we need to define work-life balance. Work-life balance refers to maintaining a harmonious relationship between work and leisure. It’s something that must be consciously managed to ensure one aspect of someone’s life doesn’t spill into the other. In between all of this, true work-life balance must also enable time for individual self-care. As after all, if we’re constantly on the go in our work and personal lives, we’re bound to burnout!

A healthy work-life balance might involve:

• Setting boundaries

• Managing stress

• Making time for daily movement

• Making time for breaks for mental health

• Taking time off.

An unhealthy work-life balance might look like:

• Working excessively long hours

• Neglecting self-care

• Continuing to work to the point of burnout

• Unable to ‘switch off’ from work and stressful situations

• Poor productivity and increased distractibility.

Why is work-life balance important?

Work-life balance is incredibly important because it can reduce levels of stress and alleviate the symptoms of poor mental health. It can help increase work and life satisfaction, boost productivity and provide an improved sense of wellbeing overall. Here are some other reasons why work-life balance is important for individuals as well as organisations:

• It can improve interpersonal relationships

• Reduce absence rates and increase workplace engagement

• Provides individuals with greater job satisfaction

• Can enhance mental and physical health

• It can reduce staff turnover

How to tell if an employee is overworked?

An overworked employee is someone who has is dealing with increased workloads and demands for a prolonged period. This can be detrimental to your organisation’s morale, as it can result in burnout, stress, anxiety and the increased likelihood of individuals taking sick leave. An overworked employee may be:

• Working longer hours than usual

• Spinning far too many plates

• Saying yes to more tasks than usual (and may show signs of struggle)

• Outwardly exhausted

• Increased number of workplace errors

• Work-life imbalances

• Mood swings

Feeling overworked vs burnt-out – what’s the difference?

While the two are interlinked, being overworked and experiencing burnout are slightly different things.

Overworked

• Periods of excessive tasks

• Tiredness, stress and overwhelm

• Frustration

• Productive due to the pressure, but strained

• May recover much sooner once a busy period ends

Burnout

• Chronic stress due to long periods of overworking

• Physical and emotional exhaustion

• Detachment

• Reduced productivity, resulting in poor work performance

• May require intervention to recover

Why are employees overworked?

Surely the solution would be to stop overworking employees, right? Sadly, some organisations put their people through the trenches for a variety of reasons:

High workloads

Perhaps an organisation has signed on new clients and need to deliver work at a faster rate than normal. Instead of hiring more people to complete the work, the responsibilities may be assigned to existing employees to cover in the interim.

Lack of staff availability

Organisations that have fewer people on their roster may put additional work and duties upon their workforces. This can commonly occur in start-ups and SMEs.

Unclear job duties

Sadly, some people don’t have clearly defined duties, meaning leadership teams may assign work that isn’t necessarily a part of a person’s role.

Saying yes too much

With job security being a more significant issue due to the financial pressures of the Cost-of-Living Crisis, some people may take on more work so they can appear more invaluable to an organisation. This can inadvertently backfire and lead to poor work-life balance.

What happens when an employee is overworked?

Not only do your people suffer mentally, physically and emotionally as a result of overworking, but your organisation will too. Here are just some of the consequences of an overworked workforce from an organisational perspective:

• Decreased productivity

• Increased sickness rates (absenteeism)

• Being physically present, but disengaged in their work and the aims of the organisation (presenteeism)

• High staff turnover

• Low morale

• Poor quality of work

• Negative workplace culture based on fear, unease and high-pressure workflows

Over time, this can cause your organisation to have a reputation for overworking employees, which in turn cause reputational damage to your organisation. According to a survey by Robert Half, 62% of employees are feeling increasingly concerned about being overworked, while 60% believe their employers prioritise profit and productivity over their wellbeing.

Not only are these statistics staggering, but they can directly affect your bottom line if employee wellbeing isn’t prioritised. YouGov found one in five workers took time off due to poor mental health caused by pressure or stress. This costs your organisation in the long run, especially if turnover rates increase and you have to accommodate for hiring costs.

Ways to prevent having overworked employees (H2) 

Prevention and a proactive strategy are key to keeping your people happy, their work-life balanced and your organisation thriving.

1. Set clear expectations

Clearly defining job roles and responsibilities will ensure boundaries are respected, and simultaneously reduce feelings of uncertainty.

2. Regularly assess workloads

With the busy pace of the modern world, it can be hard to track who’s responsible for what. If you’re assigning work left, right and centre, it’s important you keep track. Check in with your people and ensure they’re able to complete work to their given deadlines without compromising their health and wellbeing. Offer to re-delegate to an individual who has capacity or offer to step in yourself and take some of the load off. If this isn’t possible, reprioritise other assignments to give your people room to work on the high priority tasks.

3. Encourage regular breaks

Breaks away from the workstation is beneficial for all. It can help break up the day, give your people an opportunity to grab something to eat or drink, and it may help them get moving – which is especially important for physical wellbeing.

4. Provide support

Your people need to know you are supporting them. Ensure you reassure your team during particularly stressful periods and offer active support by providing regular check-ins on their wellbeing.

5. Implement wellness programmes

Offering relevant support to your people, as well as initiatives which they can look forward to at work is a great way to relieve stress. Whether that’s morning meditations, yoga classes, on-site counsellors or fitness challenges, these initiatives can boost overall wellbeing.

6. Encourage time off

We’re all entitled to set time off every year. If you’ve noticed your people have been overworked and/or aren’t using their holiday entitlement – encourage them to do so. Remind them that this is time they are entitled to and should take when they need the break. It’s important to break down any stigma surrounding time off work in order to facilitate this in your organisation too.

7. Lead by example

If you’re a leader and/or business owner, it can be easy to take on a lot of work. It’s important to practice what you preach if you want to encourage your people to prioritise work-life balance. Clock off when you need to, ensure work notifications are turned after hours, partake in wellness activities and get regular feedback from your people to ensure they feel cared for and listened to.

What to do if your employees feel overworked

If your people are already overworked and you’ve recognised that this is a cause for concern, here are some steps you can take to mitigate the problem.

1. Check in with your people

Provide regular 1:1 check-ins with your people to see what the problems are, what tasks are causing bottlenecks, ask how you can best support them and see what other tasks can be reprioritised.

2. Remind them of your Employee Assistance Programme (EAP)

If you have an Employee Assistance Programme (EAP), remind your people of this service through signposting. With an EAP, you can provide your people with access to a counsellor who can provide specialist support for mental health issues, stress, anxiety, plus legal and financial advice if this is required.

3. Work with them to set boundaries

Poor boundary setting is often the reason people can begin to feel overworked. Encourage them to speak up if they are feeling the pressure, and ensure that boundaries are set if work is being set by other teams. This can help your people feel empowered to make the best choices for them, as well as manage their own workload in a way that suits them.

How an Employee Assistance Programme can help with overworked employees 

With access to HA | Wisdom Wellbeing’s EAP, your people can get expert support to a host of wellbeing issues. As the UK’s leading EAP service provider, we can help your people navigate feelings of overwhelm, stress, anxiety and burnout, by connecting them with one of our qualified counsellors of structured, solution-focused support. Plus, your people will have access to our support 24/7, 365 days a year, meaning they can work around their commitments and contact us at a time and date that suits them.

In addition to mental health support, if an individual is on sick leave due to anxiety and/or stress, our Peak Performance EAP ensures day one intervention. We’ll work with your people to ensure they have what they need to look after their mental health and return to work safely and increase the likelihood of a faster return to work.

Conclusion

Overworking your people is bad for business. Not only does it increase stress levels, but it can also lead to increased sickness rates, which in turn lowers your organisation’s productivity and bottom line. By having the right support in place and actively using these support systems, you can help your people feel accommodated and well-looked after so they can have a better work-life balance. Of course, busy periods in business are inevitable, but by taking steps to ensure your people are looked after, they can feel supported and resilient during these times.