Why your employees aren’t working to their full potential…and what you can do about it
The old-school Work Life Balance has been replaced by Work Life Integration. We no longer work 8-5 and disconnect from work while at home. We all bring our whole self to work, and our whole self back at home. Whatever happens at home follows us at work, and whatever happens at work follows us back home.
Employees simply can’t leave their personal life at the door when they come to work. Everyday life challenges and stressors can pose barriers to employees’ well-being and distract them from focusing and succeeding at work.
Many employees are present at work… but not accounted for. As Joe Queenan, journalist and commentator, says “presenteeism is a situation that arises when distracted employees drag their forlorn carcasses into the office and waste everyone else’s time by hacking their way through their working day on an empty tank.”
In other words, employees are there physically, but they’re not there mentally. And the impact of your business is costly, very costly.
Many organizations struggle to grasp this complex concept of Work-Life Integration, how it affects their employees’ well-being and ultimately how it impacts their business.
Caring leaders understand that supporting their employees’ families inside AND outside of work is the right thing to do to.
Addressing the complexity of Work-Life Integration
Addressing the complexity of Work Life Integration starts with mapping out your employee journey and identifying the moments that matter – to them. All the things at and outside of work that positively and negatively impact your employees’ well-being, and as a result their focus, productivity, engagement, etc.
For some organizations, the employee journey map looks like this:
In other words, these organizations don’t address at all (or even care about) their employees’ whole selves.
For other organizations, the employee journey map looks like this:
It resembles a “bored” (pun) game with a singular path, where all employees look like robots.
For more “advanced” organizations, the employee journey map looks like this:
Although this type of journey map provides a more detailed approach to the employee lifecycle, it still follows a very linear path. Unfortunately, each employee’s journey is unique and non-linear.
For the most successful organizations, those who truly have embraced a people-centric approach, who apply design thinking to solve this problem and have a well-defined employee experience (EX) strategy, it looks like this:
Life and work challenges are simply inevitable
Life is messy, confusing, overwhelming. Lines between work life and personal life are blurred.
There are many distractions at home and at work that prevent employees to be fully focused and productive at work. Whether it’s their health or the health of a loved-one, work stress or burn-out, difficult relationships with co-workers or manager, the feeling of not being valued to their full potential, life transitions (such as becoming a parent or an empty nester, going through breakup or divorce, losing a loved-one)… all of these life and work events impact positively or negatively your employees’ vitality, focus, productivity and performance.
Life and work challenges are simply inevitable. Conscious leaders and organizations are the ones who take care of their people first. However leaders don’t always have the answers or the time to help. They see their people suffering, they may feel helpless and don’t know where to turn to.
LifeGuides has created a platform to leverage three of the most valuable and untapped resources on the planet – life experience, wisdom and human connection.
We are a peer-to-peer community that can help your people navigate through their day-to-day stressors by providing a place of empathy, listening, caring and support.
The heartbeat of our company revolves around trained Guides who are ready and available to give your employees the relief that they may not even know they need.
LifeGuides does NOT provide any type of professional advice. Our Guides are simply people like your employees who’ve been in their shoes and have successfully overcome the challenges they’re going through. With this life experience, our Guides help your employees navigate those stressful times to create a happier, more positive and peaceful existence.
By Stephan Vincent – Sr. Director of Engagement Marketing at LifeGuides (Executive Team),
Founder of the Employee Experience Summit (a nationwide city-tour of EX conferences) and Employee Experience Podcast, and author of the first B2E (business to employee) Branding Manifesto
