Are you struggling with work life balance? Maybe you feel that work is invading your personal life. You are not alone. Millions of people worldwide suffer from poor work life balance. In fact, half of the population in UK (52%) and 66% of Americans have bad work life balance.

Whether it’s taking work home to complete, answering work related texts or emails after work hours, or working overtime or on weekends, work life imbalance causes stress and health problems, including higher risks of stroke, heart disease, and anxiety and depression (Medical News Today).

What’s more, work life imbalance can even progress into burnout, a potentially dangerous condition that can affect physical and mental health if left untreated (WebMD). 

Health is not just a necessity but a personal responsibility

Because of the negative effects of work life imbalance, it becomes a personal responsibility to ensure that work doesn’t invade one’s personal life. Employers need to accept that employees have a life that doesn’t revolve around the employer’s business. Employers also need to ensure that employees’ wellbeing comes before company profits, and not look at employees as mechanical objects that can be replaced when no longer functioning.

If you don’t care about yourself, no one else will

For these reasons, workers – whether they work office based jobs, work from home, or are self-employed – need to ensure proper work life boundaries. One of them is not connecting work email to their everyday personal phone and even switching off the phone number employers can reach them on. If you don’t take the steps to set boundaries and care for your well-being, who else will?

Quiet quitting – the notion that employees work within defined work hours and engage solely in activities within those hours and not overwork themselves – needs to be seen as the new norm and not just a fad that will pass. While it doesn’t mean employees shouldn’t be engaged employees, it does mean setting and maintaining work life boundaries that ensure both the health of the individual and the health of the job.

Benefits of having work life balance include personal fulfillment, improved morale and job satisfaction, better productivity, and preventing burnout.