You Won’t Believe These Work-Life Balance Statistics

It’s no secret that many meeting professionals struggle to figure out how to disconnect from their work duties. Is the phone buzzing with the client sending the final approval? Should I refresh my email to see if that vendor replied yet? When will the hotel sales team send over the final contract?

While it can feel good to be “available” for your clients and your boss, that availability can easily morph into a 24/7/365 mindset of being ready and willing to respond to every request — no matter the time of day or night. A new survey of 2,000+ adults commissioned by cloud-based enterprise work management solution provider Workfront shows just how many issues that mindset can create.

“More times than not, there are no parameters set by employers on what they require from employees after hours,” Joe Staples, CMO of Workfront, said. “So the default can be an ‘always-on’ lifestyle. The challenge this presents is a potential for burnout.”

The flames of that burnout seem to be rising higher. Here’s a look at three startling statistics from the research.

• 57 percent of employees think technology has ruined the definition of a family dinner.

  Remember the concept of sitting down for an uninterrupted hour with your family? If you don’t, you’re not alone. More than half of survey respondents indicated that employers and clients demand responses via text or email — no matter what time it is.

• 60 percent of employees blame bad bosses for the most negative impact on work-life balance.

  While smartphones, tablets and technological innovations might be the channel for all those work messages, employees won’t blame the messenger when it arrives. They blame the sender at the other end of the communication. More than half believe that demanding, overbearing or mean leaders can have the worst impact on employees’ lives.

• 38 percent of employees have missed life events because of bad work-life balance.

  The demands of today’s always-on work environment are preventing employees from participating in some very important personal activities. From birthdays to kids’ baseball games to anniversaries, nearly two in five survey respondents revealed that they’ve had to skip some milestone moments due to work.

How To Extinguish The Burnout In Your Office

Feel like your team is suffering from poor work-life balance and low morale? Consider embracing some of these suggestions from survey respondents.

• Offer a flexible work schedule with the ability to log in and work outside typical business hours to compensate for time off during standard operating hours

• Let employees work remotely

• Offer unlimited paid time off (it works for Netflix, Groupon and Evernote — why not your organization?)

• Restrict company email use to an hourly range

• Set up “meeting free” times throughout the week