Personal and Professional Problems of Work-life Imbalance

Most of us suffer from undue work pressures that hamper our healthy living. Work pressures come in two forms.  Either self-induced – in order to prove our abilities to peers or superiors and to survive in the competitive world. Alternatively, thrust upon by the company to meet their job requirements. Furthermore, stiff competition, recession or market slump creates work pressures in employees that result in physical, psychological and emotional imbalances.

In order to handle work pressures, people often bring unfinished work home and burn the midnight oil. Consequently, they lack sleep and quality time with family. They go back to work the next day being more depressed and tired. To top it, with the availability of gadgets and technology, employees are expected to stay glued to their phone or laptop to take calls or reply to mails. As a result, they fail miserably to balance their personal, family and professional life. In fact, they live a compromised life.

Work-life imbalance leads to several problems and complications. In fact, both the individual and the people in his/her immediate environment get affected. Quality of work and family life are affected.

The Personal and Professional problems of work-life imbalance are many and varied. For example –

Personal Problems

• Poor health
• Depression, Frustration, Sleeplessness, Stress
• Fatigue
• Misplaced anger
• Low Self-confidence
• Lack of trust
• Dependence
• Emotional immaturity
• Conflicts in family
• Poor relationship with family
• Poor quality of life
• Lack of motivation

Professional Problems

Eventually, these affect at both the organization and the individual levels. Few examples include –

Organization                        

• Poor employee performance
• Absenteeism
• Poor employee relationship
• Lack of loyalty
• Employee turnover
• Late coming
• Conflicts with peers and superior
• High productivity costs
• Lack of growth and development

Individual

• Low morale
• Lack of critical-thinking
• Lack of problem-solving & decision-making skills
• Missing deadlines
• Lack of planning & organizing skills
• Stagnation

Hence, these are some of the most common and frequent problems due to work-life imbalance.

We will see the strategies for dealing with work-life imbalance in the next post.