Work Life Week – Getting Your Balance

By Sara Daines, Chair of Parent and Carer Network

Well, according to Working Families next week (1^st to 5^th October 2018) is Work-Life Week, a chance for employers to showcase what they offer to support employees towards a good work-life balance.

Hopefully you’ve got to this blog through the email highlighting some of the things that are available to you at SHU. I encourage you to take the time this week to explore some of the ones that you are not familiar with.

Here are a few of my ideas on work life balance and how to achieve it.

Be productive!

What are you struggling to fit into your evenings and weekends? Can you fit it into your lunch time? I know many people who take a lunch time exercise class, go to meditation session or even just go for a brisk walk. Not only are you fitting in time to take care of your health, but you are also likely to come back in the afternoon revitalised and more productive. What about a power lunch of making those phone calls, paying the bills and other home admin chores that always seem to be stacking up? Save them up and do them in bulk once every few weeks. Above all, do not skip your lunch break, it is really important to take breaks, move around and recharge.

Make Technology Work for You (not the other way round)

Although it’s great that we can have access to everything through our phones, don’t forget to switch off. You will probably have already heard about blue light from device screens and how this interrupts with ability to fall asleep at night. There are plenty of apps that measure how much you look at your screen and help you to reduce it if that it what you are aiming for.

If you are looking at your emails regularly outside of work, it might be worth checking whether that is really expected of you and consider how this is affecting your life outside of work. Don’t forget that you can still have access to your emails on your devices but can switch off notifications so that you only check when you need to and don’t get distracted by them.

Giving Back

I have gained much personal satisfaction by using my own experiences to help support others through this network. What causes are close to your heart and can you find a way to help improve something for others? Here are a few ideas:

• Staff networks offer a range of activities and sessions to get involved in, we particularly are looking for more people to contribute to getting things done. Did you know, active members of the network are entitled to time off to cover their duties (see point 19 of the Time Off Policy) and it be classed as your Equality and Diversity objective that everyone has in their PDR.
• Check out Hallam Mentoring where you can sign up as a mentor or a mentee and give back some of your expertise.
• The University also encourages staff to get involved in their community by becoming a School Governor.
• Did you know that staff can get involved in Volunteering through Hallam Union? Of course, the voluntary sector is huge, so if you can’t see something here that suits you, keep looking! This is an area that I truly believe can help you to unlock hidden talents and interests as well as introducing you to a wide range if people you may otherwise not have met.

So my challenge to you is to try one new thing this work-life week and see how it impacts on you. Good luck and enjoy!