A major project going live this week, a 5 year old with the flu, 8 year old with soccer practice, dance and music lesson, a spouse who is travelling for work due back next week. Sound familiar?

More and more, life and work commitments are compounded together into what seems to be a Jackson Pollock painting – chaotic, emotional, overwhelming at the time of creation but once we step back, it seems to all come together and the cycle then continues. According to the OECD, 1 in 10 of us are working more than 50 hours a week on top of everything else that is going on in our lives, juggling all sorts of commitments. Australians work longer hours than other developed OECD countries with less time to look after themselves and their families, resulting in increased stress levels, declined mental and physical health.

Now that working from home or flexible work is more accepted, especially due to the pandemic propelling this notion, companies are forced to re-think how they operate. As an organisation, we believe that our best assets are our people. Our first and foremost priority is ensuring that how we operate and the tools that we provide will allow our employees to juggle their life commitments, whilst at the same time having the ability to kick goals collaboratively as a team. So many businesses previously had no means to allow their employees to have the ability to work on the go in a secure way. Gone are the days of having to physically go into the office and log in to do what you need to. Give your people the tools to enable this and trust in them, to do what they do best.

A few things to consider as a business to support your people:

Assess your IT Strategy

Is your house in order? What is the current environment like? How is it set up and supported? Is it dated and not currently set up for modern work? What’s needed to get to a place where its transformed to enable hybrid work?

Re-define best practices to promote new habits

How to you get your kids to eat their vegetables? We all know its good for us and taste great, but until we try it for ourselves, how you get that ”ah-ha” moment and help change that habit? Small steps in making your employees know that this is the best way forward will fast track your success as a business and their happiness as employees. Happy employees breeds engagement, productivity and collaboration.

Having a defined plan and process allowing your staff to see the value will really help with enabling your people to lead a more balanced life.

Measure Productivity and Culture

There is no point doing something without having the end in mind and with purpose. Have a way to be able to track productivity and employee sentiment. You’ll find that by having IT support your employees and having your people at the heart of your business, it will pay dividends.

Wilton Wong from Genesis Financial Partners says ”As our business grew, we needed to ensure we had the right tools to work securely from anywhere.”, now with a robust IT foundation, they’ve been able to support that for their employees. In a time where their business was growing and their people had to work from home, Genesis FP needed to re-think and re-define how they operated. They’re now at a place where 100% of their employees work from home, with technology in place that enables them to ‘Focus on you’.

Here’s an example of how Julia Lin our Head of Growth, was recently interviewed around what work-life balance means to her and how she balances her ‘buckets’ with a two-off, one-on routine where she can work anytime, anywhere supported and enabled by technology.

Have questions on how to bring your organisation into the world of hybrid work to support work-life balance? Contact us here at hello@atarix.com.au or call 1300 ATARIX.