As working professionals, we walk a ‘tight rope’ with a crowd of people whom we hope, will cheer us on.
Every moment is an exhibition of balance between our family, friends, work, and citizenship.
Generally, the working parent tilts from affection towards responsibility. Their aim is to delight, love, or assist their children, and hopefully, each other. The balancing pole that they carry has on each end the ever-changing weights, which consist of their financial obligations, their health, family, the ‘date nights’, friendships, and the need to replenish their energy.
The inspired professionals slowly press forward balancing between the need for affirmed success, family, and joy.
We all ‘overbalance’ and ‘underbalanced’ at some stage of our lives and careers. We feel the fear that we will fall from our tasks. Every time we stumble, we feel the reality that we may not maintain balance and fall from our duties ahead.
Tight rope walking, takes practice, guidance, and the firm belief that if we just keep focused on balancing, we will get to the other side safely. Well-being and benefits programmes often offer a platform for employees to build healthy routines through the iterations of healthy habits.
Employers have numerous employees attempting to balance their lives and work. Each person is walking the proverbial ‘tight rope’ to please their colleagues and loved ones, every day.
Before COVID-19, the tight rope was the roads or tracks that tied our destinations together. Now it is often between the hallways of our homes. In 2021, our financial and work pressures will test our capabilities even more than ever before.
Most professionals find themselves between a ‘rock and a hard place’ or in COVID-19 terms, between the ‘Crocks’, and a ‘hotplate’, so to speak…
At this stage, during this haphazard social and economic period, it is more vital than ever that employers start to focus on providing the safety nets that will help their workers to develop a sense of security as their employees start to rebalance in a shifting reality.
This is where advice regarding health, wellbeing, and protection becomes so important. Employee Benefits has moved from a ‘tick box’ exercise to a creative and innovative environment which, if used appropriately, can engineer organisational change for the better.
As employers consider the annual budgets and contemplate their benefit renewal letters, they need to ask themselves several questions. Importantly:
- Is the advice that I receive today going to improve the lives of my employees more than before?
- Are we looking to empower our staff’s ability to improve their lives and be productive in the workplace?
Work-life balance, mental health, and financial well-being have become some of the most important issues for employees, forcing insurers and service providers to adapt their offerings to assist the end-user.
Now more than ever, employers need to review their arrangements and benefits strategies to consider the needs of their employees more succinctly!
It is important to work with pragmatic and resolution focused benefit consultants, who can assist in maintaining a balanced and strategic benefits programme. Employers need a consultant that can implement this programme in a manner that incentivises employees to engage in these benefit programmes and deliver results.
I urge all employers not to reach too quickly towards their pens. Instead, they should consider the power that they have to engineer organisational change that will lead to a happier, well balanced, and more productive workforce, before ticking off their benefits renewal letters from their annual tasks.
Published by
Gavin Roberts
Employee Benefits Consultant