Why work / life balance is bullshit!
I don’t know about you but the phrase “work-life balance” actually increases my levels of stress, guilt, and shame! I actually attribute the word gaslighting to this phrase. Gaslighting is loosely defined as saying or doing something to make someone question their own reality.
The term work / life balance not only infers we are doing life wrong, but if we are feeling tired, busy, stressed or burnt out that it’s all our own fault and outside contributors such as work, expectations, being a parent and other factors are not part of the problem. Studies have also shown that the term work / life balance actually decreases mental health, particularly in women.
The statistics also show that across the world, we currently have all-time high levels of stress, unaddressed mental health issues and burnout. Telling someone that they need work-life balance to manage those stressors and they will be mentally healthy actually fuels anxiety, depression, stress, and eventual burnout.
What is stress, anxiety and burn out?
Stress - is a feeling of emotional or physical tension. It can come from an event, a person, a lifestyle and even thoughts that make you feel nervous, frustrated, angry or overwhelmed. Stress is your body's reaction to a challenge or demand. In short bursts stress can be positive for example where it helps you avoid danger, try something new or meet a deadline. You may also feel stressed in situations like a job interview or performing or speaking in public. Beyond Blue states that stress and anxious feelings are a common sense response to a situation where we feel under pressure, but they usually pass once the stressful situation has passed.
Anxiety - is more than just feeling stressed or worried. Beyond Blue also tells us that people with an anxiety condition is when stress o anxiety is more frequent or persistent and is not always connected to an obvious stressor such as a challenge, deadline or situation. It also has ongoing impacts on a person's day to day functioning and quality of life. While each anxiety condition has its own unique features, there could be physical, psychological, emotional and behavioural systems.
Burnout - seems to be specifically used in relation to the workplace. It is a syndrome that is often related to chronic workplace stress that has not been successfully managed. It is normally characterised by three dimensions - exhaustion or low energy, increased mental distance or negative feelings related to your job and reduced professional efficacy and performance. Things that can contribute to burn out are toxic workplace cultures, lack of empathy and compassion from leaders or the workplace at large, lack of psychological safety at work, unrealistic expectations.
Why is stress, anxiety and burnout getting worse?
During COVID and now in the COVID normal era, there has been added pressures to always to be 'on', productive, available and be perfect in everything we do.
The work from home and hybrid working arrangements have also created a gap in leadership knowledge who have not managed hybrid or remote workforces before which has led to some inadvertent micromanaging or worse, absent managing, so people are feeling they are being watched too closely or not feeling engaged or supported by their leaders at all.
Studies also have shown that both staff and leaders have taken less annual leave and sick leave over the past 2 years and we have been sacrificing our health and wellbeing to spend more time working or trying to figure out the magic work / life balance equation.
What should we be doing?
Instead of telling people they need to find or fix their work / life balance and letting them figure it out alone, we need to address the expectations of perfection, available around the clock, provide managers with new leadership skills to manage their changing workforces and provide other tools to help people recognise and manage their emotions and signs of stress, anxiety and burnout.
We also need to encourage people to seek out professional support to deal with other factors that stress, anxiety and burn out affects such as gut health, sleep, hormonal imbalances etc.
Supervisors, managers and leaders need to start the conversation with their people around workplace stress and get educated on the best ways to support their teams and provide a psychologically safe working environment. Until these discussions and support is normalised, we will continue to see high levels of employee stress, anxiety and burn out and the knock-on effects to businesses will be turnover of staff, difficulty in employing good staff, underperformance and inefficient work practices and increased long term workers compensation claims and absences due to extended sick leave.
Ensuring a psychologically safe working environment will enhance employee engagement, foster a positive and inclusive workplace culture, boost innovation, productivity, efficiency, decrease turnover and increase employee happiness. These items also result in a better bottom line and a sustainable, future ready business.
If you'd like to know more or need help improving your workplace culture or implementing a psychologically safe working environment, please book a time to talk to one of our experts in this area.
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