In May, Buchanan PR VP Renee Cree posted a blog about how employers must consider the mental health of their employees. Now, with beach season and beautiful weather upon us, it’s time to make sure we, as employees, are looking out for ourselves too.
Work-life balance has been an issue in the U.S. long before the pandemic. Last year, a survey from Groupon found that 60 percent of people don’t have boundaries for the workplace and home life. With work and home blended, it’s harder than ever to achieve a strong work-life balance. To combat this, here are three strategies to help balance things out this summer.
Take a vacation day (or a few). With cases spiking across the U.S., I’m not advocating for traveling, necessarily. However, it’s easy to ignore your vacation days when you’re already home so much and you feel pressure to keep working with an all-time high unemployment rate. And, even if we weren’t dealing with a pandemic, Americans already had an issue taking vacation days (more than half don’t use all their days). You’re entitled to your vacation days, and it’s important to use them to give your mind a break. Even if you make it a staycation, take some time off this summer to refresh.
Get outside. Working from home, it’s easy to go the entire day without stepping outside. We should feel fortunate that this work-from-home life is happening when it is nice outside. With the unpredictability of the virus, though, it’s possible we may not be back in the offices until winter. Take advantage of the extra daylight and go outside. Find time in your schedule, whether it’s the morning, noon or night, to enjoy the beautiful weather and escape your office home for a bit.
Sign off. Back in April, people seemed more conscious of stepping away from their workspace after work, because this was a temporary setup. Now that we’ve been working from home for four months – and with some companies extending that setup until January – it’s easy to slip back into a work-dominant schedule. It’s important to avoid this workaholic mentality and sign off each evening. Burn out is real, and if you don’t give yourself time to recuperate each evening, your work could begin to suffer.
For some other tips, BPR President Anne recently had a discussion on LinkedIn about how people are making the most of their new work-from-home lifestyles. What’s been working for you?