Work life balance is not just about flexible working hours and negotiating better working hours with your employers. fficeffice" />

Work life balance is more than this.

The 9 to 5 job seems to be a thing of the past.

Companies can take employees for granted; they can assume that employees have a clear understanding of what the expectations are.

Personal needs can be jeopardised. Family and personal relationships can be sacrificed. People take on too much in fear of the possible outcome if they say no. Being asked to do something within an unrealistic timeframe or without adequate resources causes stress and pressure.

People must become more assertive. The next time a stressful situation arises, say to your employer… ‘Yes, I will gladly take on the task, but do you realise it will not be possible without additional resources or an extension of time to complete the project effectively and accurately. What is the employers’ reaction? If the employer is unwilling to accept this, you are in the wrong company. Start to take steps to change jobs.

There must be effective communication between both parties, otherwise stress cannot be managed effectively.  One major contributor to stress is misunderstanding. In a business environment individuals have ongoing opportunities to give information, discuss problems, receive feedback and ideas from others, and report on the status of his or her work.

People suffering high levels of stress will tend to withdraw and eventually they will become isolated. The employer may see this as ‘not being a team player’ or ‘they don’t fit’ where what this person is in need of is support, and clearer clarification of their position, role and indeed the joint goal.

What employees need to do to ease the stress load on themselves is:

• Establish a structure for understanding their career requirements, passing on power to others for carrying out the plan.

• Design policies and procedures to direct themselves and create methods or systems to supervise their operations

• Establish detailed steps and timetables for achieving results and resources to make the plan happen, organising time more efficiently

• Create the potential of consistency, producing key results. What can be done within the timeframe and budget?

• Strengthen themselves to overcome biased, overbearing and supply barriers by allocating adequate resources to make the plan happen. And as a result promote solidity within themselves

• Motivate and inspire themselves by creating the potential of producing consistent results

• Energise themselves to overcome change by satisfying basic, often unfulfilled needs

• Communicate to all those whose cooperation may be needed so as to create an environment and group that understands the visions and strategies and accepts their responsibility

• Develop their vision of the future, the distant future, and the strategies for producing the smaller changes needed to achieve the goal, step by step.

• Create the potential of producing useful change

• Monitoring results in detail, identifying variation from the plan, then organise themselves to solve these problems.

In short people must take responsibility to organise themselves, whereby they can plan within the allocated resources. Generate stability within their own role by establishing direction to motivate themselves to change what they are capable and willing to change to resolve issues to take complete control.

Do you not owe it to yourself to take control of your own career and live to reduce your stress levels?

It is not enough for important tasks and skills to be learned, it is critical that they become automatic and continuous.

Q1etc specialises in helping you to balance your work and life commitments in these stressful times.

For more information contact info@q1etc.com