
Private health cover
We provide business healthcare cover for 1 to 249 employees. Our plans are built around the needs of you and your business.
Working in a small business can be all consuming. Being part of a smaller team can mean that your employees feel much more invested in the business and its performance, compared to how they might feel working for a large company. While this obviously has a lot of benefits, such as higher levels of motivation and teamwork, it can also have negative effects for your team. Being highly motivated and dedicated to their role and the business can sometimes mean that your employees’ work life balance takes a hit.
According to a CIPD report, the average UK worker reports around five hours of overwork per week1. While some overtime may be inevitable, consistently working over and above their contracted hours can result in your team having less time to spend on the things outside of work that make them happy, including spending time with their friends and family. When this occurs regularly, it can start to negatively impact their work life balance.
Now that more of us are working from home due to the Coronavirus pandemic, the lines between home life and work life are becoming even more blurred. This makes the need to maintain a positive work life balance more important than ever.
The importance of work life balance
In a survey conducted on behalf of AXA Health, 56% of SME employees said that having a good work/life balance would make them the most happy at work, and 47% said that having a poor work/life balance would make them the least happy2. According to a CIPD survey, 24% of workers reported finding it difficult to relax in their personal time because of their job, while 26% of workers said that their job affects personal commitments1.
Consistently working long hours could be having a negative effect on your employees’ mental health. According to a survey by the Mental Health Foundation, when working long hours more than a quarter of employees feel depressed (27%), one third feel anxious (34%), and more than half feel irritable (58%)3.