Work-Life Blend: The New Reality Of Working When Home Is Office And Vice Versa
April 14, 2021
On March, Spotify has introduced a new policy for their employees to work from anywhere. The office is also designed to be cozy as the employees’ home. This has become increasingly common for many companies when the division between work and life is nearly faded in this pandemic period.
Does Work-life blend replace Work-life balance?
In recent years, the trend of ‘work-life balance’ (separating work and personal life) has gradually been replaced by ‘work-life blending’ (combining work and personal life) thanks to technology innovation and the new working way after Covid-19. This helps employees to have more short breaking sessions during a day to regenerate energy as well as increase the flexibility in work.
Work-life blend: How to apply it effectively?
Businesses can carry out employees’ physical and mental health survey to determine if work-life blended is a suitable approach for their organization with the assistance from an experienced HR agency. Below are some key questions:
- How should a workday be structured? What is the effective way to allocate time and workload?
- Do employees prefer separating work & personal life or taking regularly short breaks to recover?
- What are the criterion to evaluate employees: working time or productivity?
In addition, to apply work-life blend more effectively, businesses can also refer to the following principles:
Creating mutual awareness on the new way of working: Leaders and employees need to agree on the same goal of changing working routine which are enhancing work productivity and employees’ physical and mental health.
Freedom and obligation go hand in hand: Leaders should build up some rules for all organization to follow when allowing employees to flexibly arrange their work.
Always have plan B for every employee: Increasing flexibility in work may result in decreasing productivity. Therefore, leaders should ask their staffs to prepare a “plan B” to ensure completing work on time.
With an increasing number of businesses prioritized “well-being” and “flexibility” in their workplace, ‘work-life blend’ has become a popular solution for businesses to raise employee engagement and contribute to the sustainable development of itself.
