placeholder
Stuart Gentle Publisher at Onrec

Survey shows only half of the UK are happy with their work-life balance

New research has found that around half of the UK population are still not happy with their work-life balance

  • New data suggests 45% of people feel they’re still spending too much time at work
  • Research is published as the UK prepares to mark National Work Life Week 2015
  • Five senior business figures offer tips on how to switch off and avoid burnout


New research has found that around half of the UK population are still not happy with their work-life balance.

Undertaken by Forward Role Recruitment, a leading digital recruitment specialist based in the North West, the survey of 750 people showed that many workers are at risk of burning themselves out.

Interestingly, the study found that women are slightly happier with their working arrangements than men, with 59% confirming that they have struck a nice balance between work and their personal lives. Only 54% of male survey respondents said likewise.

The findings are published as the UK gets set to mark ‘National Work Life Week 2015’ (September 21st to 25th), an initiative run by Working Families that is aimed at highlighting the benefits that employers can reap by taking greater care of their staff’s wellbeing.

There’s no doubt the digital revolution has had an impact on people’s work-life balance, with many of us monitoring our work email inboxes through our smartphones and tablets around the clock. To that end, we spoke to five company directors and business owners to get their tips on how you can prevent your job from dominating your life.

Steve Thompson, Managing Director at Forward Role, said it’s important that you know when and where to blank work out.

“On my phone alone, I get updates from two email accounts, Facebook (main site and messenger), twitter (two accounts), LinkedIn, Pinterest, Vine, Snapchat, Instagram, WhatsApp, and that’s before text messages, calls and various push notifications from apps. I also use the phone to watch videos, listen to music, read e-books and surf the internet, so all in all that’s a lot of time spent staring at a small screen and a lot of interruptions to the main event that is life.

“I think the key to getting a degree of balance is to ban yourself from physically having access to the phone when you’re at home and spending time with significant others. Sleep mode is a must at night-time. We have a box on our dinner table that phones are placed in at meal times, and we’ve also implemented a fines system for touching your phones when out with friends for a bit of fun! I think someone should open a restaurant that blocks all types of phone signals and Wi-Fi. They’d make a fortune from people desperate to take a step back in time or get a bit of peace and quiet.”

Working from home can be one solution to improve your work-life balance, but there’s always a danger that the lines between work and home life become blurred, which can be unhealthy. Meghna Patel, Director at Mahi Naturals Ltd, suggested that those who often work remotely ensure that clear boundaries are in place.

“Having a dedicated work space is so important. Working from the sofa or kitchen table never works long term as you need a separate work area that you can leave when you have finished working and then go into your home/family space.

“I used to work from our spare bedroom but found the temptation to work longer or just check emails one last time was too great as it was next to our bedroom and meant it was hard to switch off. I have a small extension now downstairs where I can shut the door when working and the whole family knows and understands it is an area for mummy’s work and not playing. I also find the physical act of closing and locking the door of the office at night makes me feel that work is now finished for the day.”

Genevieve Zawada, CEO of Elect Club, is an international transformational coach. She believes that being organised and forward thinking can help you to switch off outside of working hours.

Before you finish work, make sure you have written your ‘to-do list’ for the following day, so you can switch off and relax. If I don’t do this, all evening I am trying to remember what I have to do the following day which is really annoying and have ended up getting up in the middle of the night writing a list out so I don’t forget. 

“So to avoid doing this I spend at least 30 minutes every day writing out my list for the following day. I also put all my “mummy” duties on there, as they take equal priority as work for me. As a working mum, I have two jobs and actually as a wife I really have three! It is important to include family things in your to-do list to ensure they get the same priority. Once you have written your list it is important to tell yourself that it is the end of the day and time to go on to the reason you are working, and that is to have a lovely time with your family. All too often we forget that we work to live, and in this day and age it feels like it’s the other way round, which it never should be.” 

Guy Blaskey, Founder of Pooch & Mutt, thinks that rather than prompting you to stay switched on 24 hours a day, technology can have a positive effect on the way you organise your life.

My Google calendar is the number one tool for organising my life. The great thing about it is being able to have different shared calendars with different people, so I can have one for work events, one for personal, one for shared things with my wife, and they all appear in different colours in the same calendar. I also spend a lot of time emailing myself. This is a great way to not get caught up in things, and have a reminder for later.

“[If you want to completely switch off from work] go running and take nothing with you except your house keys. Leave your phone at home.”

Ben Wolfenden, Director at Visibilis, stated that using your working time efficiently, especially when it comes to multitasking, will help you to prioritise your actions and reboot.

“My advice for avoiding a digital burnout is to have time out. A lot of people say disconnect once a week - realistically that's not going to happen for me. But I do disconnect for two hours a night. That is my family time and non-negotiable disconnect time. I have a little boy and too often he will have done something funny and I will have missed it from looking down at my screen.

“The best advice for switching off is just do it. Yes, you will have more emails when you check back in, yes you may have missed a few updates, but ultimately you will be more refreshed and have a better perspective after spending some time back in the real world.”