Wellbeing | Is 'work-life balance' an outdated term?

For years, HR has touted the relevance of a balance between the home life, family and responsibilities that all workers possess outside of the office, and the version of themselves that they bring into their professional field.

This balance is considered essential by the vast majority of the HR community; in fact, when quizzed by the Office for National Statistics (ONS), a massive 98% of HR practitioners agreed that work-life balance was very important.

This isn’t just for worker wellbeing though. Numerous studies have found that modern workers are pushed to the limits of their own abilities. Rescuetime research claimed that most workers are so dangerously teetering on the verge of burnout that they only have a productive period of two hours and 48 minutes, despite 94% working 50-plus hour weeks, whilst 44% of the workforce has reported feeling burned out at least once in their professional lives.

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Work-life balance | '28 days holiday isn't a benefit'

And whilst ensuring that professionals have a work-life balance is becoming a key talking point for HR, the lines between home life and work like are becoming even more blurred; for example, 21% of all office time is spent on games, social media and news websites, whilst the average worker spends a shocking 40% of their waking hours outside of the workplace finishing off work; only 74% of work is done during normal working hours. 29% of valuable weekend time is also taken up by out-of-office work.