You, Your Family and Your Work – Priorities to Maximize Employee Success and Productivity

In today’s fully connected world, more and more people struggle with the priorities of balancing work with their personal lives. With that in mind I want to share my perspective on this topic. A perspective that I have shared with my employees on a regular basis over the last few years.

I summarize my position with the following statement, “Take care of yourself first, your family second, and your work comes third.”

This was not always my position. I used to personally put work ahead of both my personal well being and time with my family and that was not good for anyone. After years of life experience, and a wake up call on what is important life after a traumatic personal accident, I have changed my personal perspective.

Many people struggle with this priority in their lives but let me explain why this order is important.

Take care of yourself first

Regardless of anything else, if your employees – and you – do not stop to take care of themselves first they will not be ready and able to properly support their families or their work successfully due to the distraction and priority of personal necessities and challenges. This includes the basics of sleeping well, eating well, staying in good physical and mental fitness, keeping current and attentive to personal medical care, taking off time for vacation to recharge their batteries, and spending time on non-work related hobbies, sports or other activities. This investment in prioritizing their personal care first allows them to be their best self and positions them to be at their best as they turn their attention to their family and their work. It is important for leaders to support and champion this priority as a foundational building block that will contribute to enabling the personal and professional success of their employees.

Take care of … your family second

With the employee’s personal well being well maintained, an employee is now well positioned physically and mentally to focus their attention on the well being of their family or loved ones. Empowering an employee to support the care and well being of their family has to be the second priority as it directly contributes to satisfying the employee’s personal mental well being. Family bonds are strong. Stronger than the bond between employee and employer. Mentally, any significant family issue is going to take a priority over work in the mind of the employee.

When an employee is worried about their loved ones, due to sickness, medical challenges, a spouse’s job security, children’s educational success, safety, security or other family and social issues, their ability to be full attentive to their work will be impaired by the mental distraction of these challenges in their family life and thus they are very likely to be challenged in truly achieving and delivering at their full potential. By allowing your employees to deliver the proper support and attention to their family this allows them to put their best self forward in their work. An employee that is not able to achieve these aspects of family balance is, very likely, going to be distracted by these issues while they try to perform their work and this will likely result in the employee delivering work related outcomes with a lower level of quality or efficiency.

Your work comes third

All leaders are eager to see their employees deliver their best work. While it seems counter intuitive to encourage your employees not to position their job as their first priority, those leaders that recognize that placing an employee’s personal well being and family well being ahead of their professional responsibilities will yield a stronger employee relationship and commitment, combined with better physical and mental preparedness, and that will most likely result in an employee relationship that allows an employee to deliver outcomes that are aligned with the maximum potential of the individual. Leveraging this maximized potential across all of the employees in your team will then, very likely, yield improved outcomes for your organization. All as a result of your investment in prioritizing your employee’s personal and family well being.

So the next time one of your employees is coming to work sick or trying to work while balancing a family related issue that needs focused attention, give some thought to how you can support them in prioritizing their recovery or investment in their personal welling being. Support them in the resolution of their family challenges. Enabling the potential of your employees to be comfortable and confident with putting their personal and family wellbeing ahead of their work commitments will allow them to focus the energy of their best self on the delivery of their work related outcomes.

This level of investment in your employees can be worth more to many employees than the many other ways you could invest in maintaining an employee’s commitment to your organization.

Start today. Lead by example by prioritizing you and your family ahead of your work and then take those benefits and invest the learnings in the priorities of your team.