Employees often feel a lot of pressure at their workplace because of the increasing competition, trying to live up to their boss’s or lead’s expectations, and increasing demand to continuously develop productivity.
This pressure often takes a mental toll on your employee’s mental and physical health and has many other adverse effects on them that leads to some very adverse effects on the mental and physical health of employees, which usually goes unnoticed.
This leads to a drop in their efficiency and causes a lack of interest in their work. They punch more hours and dedicate most of their time to their work trying to meet their targets, but end up sacrificing their personal life in this process and missing out on their other personal priorities.
And hence, it is crucial to make use of effective training management systems to educate your employees to draw a line between professional life and personal life for every employee to avoid serious consequences and ensure a healthy mental & physical condition of your employees as suggested by eLearningIndustry.com.
Below are some of the major consequences of poor employee work-life balance:
Decreased motivation
A poor work-life balance can severely demotivate the employee, killing their energy to work and demote their enthusiasm to carry on with their responsibilities. An employee who lacks motivation also tends to lose focus from their tasks that cause the likelihood of them not being able to finish work on time. Decreased motivation may lead to spread of negativity on peers that can be poisonous for especially the new members of the team.
Impact on performance
If the employees are not able to give enough time to their personal life, their personal problems can have an impact on their job performance. The employee stays distracted and tends to get phased out or lose motivation and focus that can lead to making more mistakes or errors that might cost loss of clients. They may fail to deliver tasks and meet employer expectations. All this can have a financial impact on the organization.
Impact on health
Excessive work demand eats up your personal time that might lead to an increase in stress level. Increased stress levels can weaken your immune system and may lead to medical conditions. Like a vicious circle, weak immune systems lead to other health complications and may even lead to substance abuse. Unhealthy employee will always feel fatigued, which will reduce his focus that in turn might lead to him making costly errors.
Increases depression
The continuous pressure and stress of performing better and giving the best but still not being able to meet the expected targets can seriously wear down an employee. This can lead to employees developing stress anxiety, tension, and there may be signs of depression. This impacts not only the employee or the company but leaves a tarnishing impact on the family leading to severe ill impacts.
Employees taking more leaves
The work-life imbalance may kill the zest and zeal of the employee and take away their will to work. This may make them take more leaves to avoid the work quite often. This can lead to employee disengagement and can cause delays in completing their project tasks on time and affects the work pressure on other team members.
Unhappy or stressed employees start looking out for other options for the job hoping for a balanced work and private life. The companies may face increased attrition that surely will have a negative impact on revenue and branding. The highly advanced engagement courses and programs also cannot succeed in engaging such employees whose life is imbalanced.
Lack of commitment
An employee who is not able to cope up with a balanced personal and professional life will eventually stop being committed to achieving the organizational goals and can become a major liability in the long run. This can have a major impact on the company’s reputation and may also cause losing the customers.
One non committed employee becomes the reason for the chain of employees getting into the same situation. If one team member is disengaged, the work of the other resource that is dependent on his outcomes will get affected leading him to frustration. A frustrated employee will start feeling stressed and the chain is formed. Doesn’t this sound scary?
Brings differences in personal relationships
Heavy work loads demand time that one tries to steal from their personal life. It also increases the stress levels that might cause tension in your personal relationships. By not spending time/quality time with your partner or children or other family members and friends, the differences might cause irreversible damage to your personal life. Fatigue and exhaustion due to working extra hours and under stress leads to bad personal health and your participation in family activities get affected.
Negative impact on business relationships
The happy employee brings more business by ensuring to keep their clients happy. A stressed and unhappy employee with poor work life balance will lead to contrary results. He may attend the meetings half heartedly with incomplete information.
Attending meetings with a stressed mind might lead to unpleasant discussions that may spoil the relationships with their clients. Such employees can get triggered easily and may lash out on their peers, managers or even clients and customers. As a result companies might end up losing clients and business alliances. Obviously, the employee will end up losing their job.
Conclusion
Not having a balanced work life leads to stress, mental and physical health problems. Stress at work leads to stress out of work also that might bring irreversible differences in your personal relationships. This leads to decreased productivity with no innovations and creativity and increased turnover.
On the contrary, a harmonious work-life balance will benefit not only your employees but also the employers and eventually your organization. When your employees are happy and satisfied in their personal and professional life, and are in good health, they tend to work better and are capable of being more innovative and creative at their tasks.
