Today, Erin’s hopping on the blog to share our insights on how to create a culture of balance.
Finding Personal Balance
We’ve already spent a lot of time on this blog talking about our philosophy of balance. You can read about how to move from burnout to balance HERE. What do we mean by burnout is a controlled wobble? Read about it HERE. Or how to create meaningful balance HERE.
In all of these blogs, we are more focused on helping you understand how to achieve personal balance within your lives. But, we all know that we don’t live in a vacuum. We do life with lots of other people. This means that balance goes well beyond our individual needs and practices.
For today’s blog, we’re going to speak directly to folks in leadership positions. We believe that in order to really tackle the crisis of burnout, we have to move from a culture of burnout to a culture of balance. We have to move away from a culture that values burnout, to a culture that values balance. So we wanted to spend a few words today talking about how to create a culture of balance at your place of work.
Creating a culture of balance
We teach all the time that burnout looks different for everyone. Depending on your body, your brain, and your life circumstances – you will experience burnout differently. This is also true for balance. We advise leaders and managers that they have to work to understand how burnout impacts their folks as individuals. This advice is the same for understanding what their needs for balance are as well.
Creating a culture of balance means that you place more value on the needs of your employees, than on the needs of your bottom line. We know that every business has to keep the lights on. But we also know that employees who work in a culture of balance are more likely to be rested, healthy, and productive.
What does a culture of balance look like?
You might be thinking, “Gee, that’s great Erin, but you still haven’t told me how to do this.” And you’re right. I haven’t. In part, because I can’t tell you specifically what a culture of balance looks like for your organization.
However, I can tell you where you can start in order to create that culture of balance. We always recommend doing a cultural analysis of your organization.
- Check out your policies – are they equitable? Do you offer paid family leave? Do you allow your folks to use PTO for non-childcare related caregiving duties? Do you have free pads and tampons in your restrooms?
- Check in with your folks – do they feel comfortable communicating with you? Are there unseen barriers to clear communication? Are there common misunderstandings or misperceptions that are keeping you unbalanced?
- Check in with other leaders – being a leader is hard. It demands a lot of time and expertise, and not always with a lot of reward. Make sure you have a support system of leaders you can bounce ideas off of and who will help you remember to practice balance for yourself.
Like everything worthwhile, achieving a culture of balance is hard work. But, if you do, we know you will have happier employees, fewer instances of burnout, lower turnover, and higher engagement. Creating a culture of balance is not only the right thing to do, it will help ensure that you find and keep the employees who will continue to contribute to a successful organization.
Ready to read more about moving from a culture of burnout to a culture of balance? Check out our book HERE.
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