National Work Life Week
21st – 25th September 2015
Focussing on the Work/Life Balance of your Employees
With the need for more and more employers to reduce costs and increase productivity, the focus and awareness of balancing working time with home life can diminish. The Working Families Organisation (the UK’s leading work/life balance organisation) want to build employers awareness to the importance of allowing employees to balance their working time with their leisure and family time.
National Work Life Week aims to highlight the benefits of facilitating the well-being and work-life balance of your employees, so that they are engaged, motivated and productive at work.
Employers can use the week to engage with their employees through a range of activities which focus on the work-life balance issue: healthy lifestyle events, balancing work & home sessions, quizzes, diversity & inclusion activities, network events. You can also use the week as an opportunity to promote your policies and practices and to highlight flexible working role models at all levels and in all areas of your organisation. Also as part of the National Work Life Week, Wednesday 23rd September is the ever popular Go Home on Time Day.
How can you support National Work Life Week and have some fun raising awareness about well-being?
Your organisation might like to think about introducing a fun activity in your workplace to encourage your employees to think more seriously about how they can improve their well being or work/life balance, and so improve their health, well being and productivity.
Share fun time activities
Could your company raise awareness by asking employees to join Working Families by encouraging staff to add photos of themselves and their families enjoying themselves – from cooking and gardening to rock climbing and sky diving– and adding them on line with the hashtag #wherewillyoube – or by pinning photos on to a National Work Life Week notice board in your companies offices?
If you’re wondering where the rest of People Business will be after work on the 23rd September…
Plan a healthy eating day or week
Most adults in England are overweight or obese. That means many of us are eating more than we need, and should eat less. And it’s not just food: some drinks can also be high in calories. Most adults need to eat and drink fewer calories in order to lose weight, even if they already eat a balanced diet.
You could provide fruit in the office, set up a place on your intranet for healthy recipe suggestions or encourage a healthy lunch day where everyone brings in something healthy to share.
Encourage employees to go for a walk at lunch time
Exercise has been described as “the best medicine ever invented”. Doing the recommended 150 minutes of your choice of exercise a week – whether it’s walking, dancing or swimming – will help to bring weight and blood pressure down. NHS Choices has a host of ideas and tools to help people get started – getting fit your way. If you’re keen to get going straight away, why not try the NHS Couch to 5K running plan?
Work life balance enabled through flexible working
- Part-time working: work is generally considered part-time when employers are contracted to work anything less than full-time hours.
- Term-time working: a worker remains on a permanent contract but takes leave during school holidays.
- Job-sharing: a form of part-time working where two (or occasionally more) people share the responsibility for a job between them.
- Flexitime: allows employees to choose, within certain set limits, when to begin and end periods of work.
- Annual hours: the period within which full-time employees must work is defined over a whole year to allow for peaks and troughs in the business.
- Career breaks: career breaks, or sabbaticals, are extended periods of leave – normally unpaid – of up to five years or more.
