Can You Be a Successful Entrepreneur and Lead a Happy Personal Life Also?

As an entrepreneur who aspires to take your business to higher levels, you may always be busy and therefore, there are chances of you ignoring your personal life. But the good news is that you can achieve your entrepreneurial goals and at the same time, lead a happy family life as well. You may wonder how this can be possible. Let us find out. 

You should first stop brooding over how you have all along been behaving.  In fact, there is no use thinking about your past behavior because “The past cannot be changed. The future is yet in your power” is an old adage that is always valid.  

Among the terms that are doing the rounds, "Work-Life balance" seems to be the most popular one nowadays because not many people are able to achieve this balance. Of course, official work is taking a lot of people's time. This may all the more be true in your case because you are an entrepreneur who aspires to succeed. You may expend a lot of your energy that includes your physical and emotional energies on your business-related tasks and on making your business plans. So, when you reach home, you may be too tired to spend time with your family members.

Remember the opinion of psychologists who firmly point out that over-working or concentrating too much on official work that is euphemistically called as workaholism is a behavioral defect that you do not develop and learn overnight. In fact, you have been developing this behavior gradually without even being aware of it. 

The main reason why you are spending more time at your workplace.

One of the main factors that has been influencing your desire to spend more time at your workplace is that you may be enjoying the adrenaline rush you experience when you confront various types of challenges during the course of your entrepreneurial journey.  But when you are enjoying the process of tackling the challenges in your business, your family members are getting restless. They may become unhappy and disappointed as well.

You may also become unhappy.

Psychologists suggest that after some time, you yourself will start getting restless and unhappy. Once you reach this stage, your output and performance will take a beating. Since you will not be able to do your tasks as efficiently as you were doing earlier, you will experience a lot of stress and anxiety. This will result in you being affected by stress-related ailments. In short, you are punishing yourself by focusing more on your business and not bestowing enough attention on your personal life. The following tips may help you. 

1. Even if you have unfinished tasks, you must never bring them home. This will make your family members more unhappy.

2. Whatever may be your busy schedule, allocate some time for spending uninterrupted time with your family members. If you and your family members discuss and decide on a social cause, you are certain to derive a lot of satisfaction out of it. You can choose a common hobby and pursue it together also so your stressed-out mind will get the much needed relaxation.

3. Schedule holidays and vacations once in every three or four months. This will re-energize you and you will be able to work more efficiently.

4. If you observe those successful entrepreneurs who enjoy a great personal life as well, you will find that they delegate most of their tasks wisely. You should learn this habit also. Apart from getting you a lot of free time, this will help in molding second-line leaders in your company. Of course, you need to hire efficient and self-driven employees for achieving this aim.

5. Experts are right when they say that a perfect work-life balance is a mirage. So, instead of aiming at this impossible goal, you should look to achieve a better equilibrium in your life.

To summarize, destroying your personal life just to achieve entrepreneurial success can be perilous. So, you should create ways that can uniquely be suitable for your life and for the type of business you run. As Philip Sidney says, “Either I will find a way, or I will make one."

Engaging employees, the best way to grow your business

Organizations vie with each other for hiring the best minds and so, they invade top colleges, universities and institutions. But do these hires stay long in the organizations? The fact is a large number of these recruits stay in the organizations for a short duration and start hopping jobs. This means the job of the HR division does not stop with just hiring. They must take all possible steps for retaining thesetalents.

Employees nowadays focus on various other factors also in addition to getting hefty paychecks. Let us have a look.

1. Career path that is well defined

If employees know that there is ample room for growth and that the management will facilitate such a growth, they will be more loyal to the organization. They will genuinely engage in the steps taken by the company to grow. Therefore, the management should put in place a clear-cut development plan for the career growth of employees. When employees feel that their skills and work are valued, they will feel empowered. They will also work hard to deserve the careerdevelopment.

2. Keeping the employees motivated and engaged

Unless the management team takes steps to keep the employees motivated and engaged, they cannot achieve their business objectives. Engaged employees will be enthusiastic in doing their work and so, their productivity will be very good. They may not hesitate to travel the extra distance for helping the organization grow. This means organizations should put in place the best practices for engaging the employees. But unfortunately, most of the companies focus only on the measuring the performance of employees rather than adopting the best practices for engaging employees.

3. Work-life balance

Employers should help employees have a proper work-life balance. Of course, job demands are increasing and so are personal goals. Due to this, employees may tend to over-work. This is certain to lead to fatigue and therefore, instead of coming out with increased productivity, their performance will dip. Hence, employers should encourage employees to adopt suitable time management techniques. They should also encourage them to pursue activities or hobbies in which they are interested. But at the same time, these activities should not be allowed to hamper their working. 

Not only that, employees should be encouraged to do suitable cardio exercises so they can get a good supply of oxygen. This will help them overcome their fatigue. Employers should also encourage employees for setting what is known as "Me-Time" so they can spend quality time with their family or for following their passion.

4. Recognition

Bosses in general do not miss chances to find fault with employees or to point out when the performance of an employee dips. But many bosses fail to appreciate when an employee does a good job. If employees are appreciated for their performance, they will get motivated. This will give a boost to their confidence and they will willingly engage themselves in the efforts of the management in uplifting the company.

5. Collaboration and accessibility

In many organizations, the top management remains "invisible." In other words, employees may not be able to access them. If employees are allowed to collaborate with the top managers, their trust in the system will improve.  

6. Fair reviews

Reviews should be fair which means that they should be objective. Employers can think of having a committee for reviewing the performance of employees so subjectivity and bias are greatly reduced in the reviewing process. In fact, reviews should be key milestones in the career of an employee. The focus should be on the key achievements made by the employee, her strengths as well as development areas. A lot of scope should be made available for discussion at the time of reviewing.

In short, employees' loyalty goes beyond paychecks. Employers should therefore figure out how to engage employees so they will actively participate in the process of the growth of the company.

Barriers that may Hinder Your Career Growth

When children are asked what they will like to become when they grow up, they may come up with various types of answers. But they may not be aware nor do they anticipate barriers that may hinder their ambitions. There are many types of barriers for career growth and these include those that are caused due to family situations, biases and so on.  

The following are the general barriers that may hinder career growth.

1. A fixed and inflexible mindset

According to experts, an inflexible and fixed mindset can be a great hindrance to career growth. This means you must have a growth mindset if you want to climb your career ladder. An inflexible or fixed mindset may make you think that you have enough talents and knowledge. On the other hand, if you have a growth mindset, you will think that there is always a scope for improvement. This means you will always keep striving to enhance your skill and knowledge levels. 

2. Financial barriers

If you have bills to pay, debts to clear, etc. and if you keep focusing on them, you may never grow in your career. Instead, you should shift your focus towards growth, whatever may be your financial situation. Focusing on earning for paying your bills, etc., may not allow you to take risks that may give a big boost to your career growth. For example, you may want to start a business, may like to change jobs or may look for a career change. These are certainly risks but when you focus on your mortgage or payment of bills, you may be afraid of taking these risks. If you are not ready to take any risks, where is the question of growing in your career and in life?

3. Importance of setting smart goals

Setting smart goals is important. This means you should set achievable goals and follow them with a lot of passion. SMART means "specific, measurable, attainable, realistic and time-bound." The goal you set should fulfill these conditions.

4. Fearing failure and success

Many people fear failure and do not take the required steps for growing in their career. Surprisingly, there are many people who fear success also. In fact, fear of failure and fear of success are very much linked. People think that others will ridicule them if they fail. A few others think that others will get jealous and desert them if they succeed. But these fears are unfounded. Not only that, those who have these fears can not lead extraordinary lives even if they have such dreams.

5. Work-Life balance

It is true that you will have responsibilities towards your family. But allowing these responsibilities to hinder your career growth is wrong. If you are passionate about your goals, you must learn to balance your work life and family life. 

6. Sticking to your childhood dream may be a barrier by itself

If you suddenly remember your childhood dream that you have already forgotten, that itself may act as a barrier. The problem is things are changing so fast that your childhood dream may not be suitable in your present circumstances. So, you should adopt a flexible approach and change your dream according to the your current situation.

Quitting Is Not The Right Option When Employees Are Unable To Achieve Work-Life Balance

In the recent years, a considerable number of employees including those of popular companies have quit their jobs declaring that they could not achieve work-life balance at all. These employees might be thinking that the step they have taken is right and may do good to them. But in reality, they have not done good either to them or to their companies.

Most importantly, their step of quitting does not help the thousands or may be, millions of other employees who may experience the same plight of over-working and not being able to spend quality time with their friends or family members. But since they may have other problems including lack of other resources, they are not able to quit their jobs.

One of the classic examples of those who quit their jobs due to this problem was Max Schireson, former CEO of MongoDB, who could not balance his roles of a dad and a CEO. Similarly, Patrick Pichette, former CFO of Google, quit the company citing the reason that he wanted to spend quality time with his family. Mohamed El-Erian, Pimco’s CEO, resigned when he was given a list by his daughter how he had missed more than 20 childhood milestones due to his work pressure. Thanks to their work-packed hours, these people lost the time they had to spend with their families. 

But instead of quitting, they should have chosen to make use of their experience and creativity to find work-life balance. In fact, if CEOs and managers strive to bring a good change in the corporate policies, all the employees will benefit. Their organizations will ultimately benefit also.

"Flexible working hours - A perk or a smart decision?

Companies have all along been thinking that flexible working is a perk to employees. But management experts opine that it is a smart decision made by business owners. Flexible working can do immense good to departments such as finance and HR management and most importantly, to employees.

The best benefit to companies is they can save substantially if they utilize the services of telecommuting employees. Further, these employees remain more engaged than the normal employees. Studies reveal that in companies that offer the flexible working option to their employees, employee satisfaction levels increase by more than 80%. Likewise, these companies are able to retain talents also.

How a flexible working program can be implemented

Assess the current situation as well as requirements of your company 

You must first know the problems the flexible working program you are offering will solve. Never make a guess but try to gather as much data as possible so you can know what work-life balance issues will get resolved by your offer. You can explore what types of options are available to you. You can offer the working-from-home option or you can accede to employees' request of choosing the starting and ending times of their working days. You must keep an open mind so when you stumble upon unique and new options, you can add them to your list of offers.

Change may take time

You should put in place a good strategy for testing new policies. The details of the policies you introduce in your company must be communicated in lucid terms to all the employees. You are not advised to implement the new policies in a full-fledged manner while taking the first step itself but at the same time, you need not hesitate to make a beginning. But be committed to your implementation goals so you can move forward steadily. For example, you can initially offer flexible working hours for a day in a week. If you think it works well, you can increase the frequency. You can make suitable changes to your policies as and when necessary. Do not hesitate to solicit feedback from your employees because this is a very good trust-building step.

Be a role model

When you introduce the flexible working policy, you must be the first to use the option. Most of the employees may not feel safe when they observe that their bosses themselves do not use the new option. So, you must inspire your staff to follow suit by leading from the front.

Your managers must be suitably equipped with excellent techniques

If your employees think that just attending office and being at the desk or the workplace throughout the day are enough, you must bring about a change in their attitude. They should understand that being productive is much different from being present in the office. Employees who choose the option of flexible working should know that they must focus on the company's goals and targets and work towards achieving them. This means your managers must proactively and clearly communicate the targets as well as goals of the company to their subordinates. Managers must also collaborate with the employees for making them work towards these goals. If employees realize that the company has realistic expectations from them, they may not hesitate to take all the steps to optimize their productivity.

Managers should get rid of all the passive and useless techniques they have all along been adopting and switch to new skills that may suit employees who work the traditional way as well as those who choose flexible working.

Findings of a study reveal that by 2020, more than 50% of employees will opt to work remotely. So, companies must provide employees with more control so they can choose where they work from, when they should work and how they intend to work. This will boost their productivity and their health will also improve. They may derive more satisfaction from their job. They may work for longer hours than the employees who work the traditional way. This will ultimately lead to better work-life balance.

So, those employees, managers as well as CEOs who decide to quit because they are not able to find good work-life balance must choose to stay so they can spur the necessary changes in their respective organizations. This will improve their relationship with their families. Thousands of employees who are forced to stick on to their jobs despite the fact that they are not able to balance their work life and family life will benefit also if business owners and managers introduce this viable option of flexible working in their organizations.