Why should employers care about an employee’s work-life balance? There are many reasons. Think about the following:

•       Balanced workers are happy workers, and happy workers are hard, productive workers who are more likely to stick around.

•       Overworked employees are stressed, frazzled, illness-prone and more likely to jump ship.

•       Work-life balance is an often cheap benefit that can attract top-notch employees.

•       Workers who can balance their personal life with their work life have less need to take off time from work.

So, assuming that a balanced lifestyle is something that you want to offer your potential and current employees, you might want to know just how that objective can be reached. Well, that’s what I am here to tell you.

What Exactly Is Work-Life Balance?

Work-life balance occurs when employees have the appropriate time to meet their realistic work goals while still having time to have a family, a social life, and even some downtime. With doctor’s appointments, kid’s soccer games, dinner with friends, book clubs, and everything else under the sun, people are not going to want or be able to work 24 hours a day. Recognizing this and accommodating it will help make you an employer of choice.

Work-life balance, it should be noted, does not mean ‘let workers do whatever they want, without getting any work done’; it simply means making a workload that is both realistic and accepting of the average person’s life.

How Can I Create the Perfect Balance?

There are many ways to create work-life balance. Potential approaches include one, more or all of the following:

•       Assign workloads that are realistically accomplishable. One person should not be doing the work of five people.

•       Have an open dialogue with your employees. If they feel they can truly communicate their issues and concerns, and work with you to come up with a mutually satisfactory solution, they will be more likely to feel as if their career is a part of their life – not their entire life.

•       Offer telecommuting options where possible. An employee may welcome a day off from the mental grind of the daily commute, or want to make sure he or she is home in time for a child’s play. Having the option of working from home (assuming they are actually working while there) is a way to easily keep workers happy, satisfied, and wanting to do their best work.

•       Offer a comprehensive vacation/sick leave policy. Let’s face it: sick workers not only contaminate the rest of the workforce, they are likely not very productive. By offering sick days, you are protecting the rest of your staff, letting an unproductive worker recuperate, and making your employees feel much more satisfied with their work environment. It is a win for all!

•       Offer programs and initiatives that help improve workers’ lives. These can include: (i) fitness and wellness programs that will not only improve moral, but will help lower health care costs; (ii) financial programs that allow employees to set up 401(k)s and/or offer financial advice and counseling; or (iii) employee assistance programs (EAPs) that offer improvement of mental wellbeing through education and counseling.

There are many other ways that work-life balance can be achieved in your workplace. What are you waiting for? Balanced workers are better workers, and don’t you want your workers to be the best?

This was a joint collaboration between Amanda Walters, a specialist freelance writer, and Ashley Shaw, a Legal Editor at XpertHR US, an online service that helps employers and HR departments comply with employment laws on the federal, state and local level. She edits the Risk Management – Health, Safety, Security chapter.