Ask Us Anything: Work and careers expert Tim Duggan explains work life balance

This month we asked you for questions about how to strike the right balance between work and life, for your business or your personal life. Answering your Ask Us Anything questions, in partnership with Optus Business, is work and careers expert Tim Duggan.

We sent the four top questions to Tim. We hope his expert answers help you create the perfect balance between work and life, for both you and your team.

1. My team isn’t interested in having team bonding exercises, but I believe they are healthy for everyone to get to have a relationship out of their everyday. Is there something else you can suggest that can create the same team bonding benefits (to relieve stress) that I can share with my team without them feeling like I am constantly pushing them for it?

I get it, team bonding exercises are not for everyone. Some people really enjoy the forced sense of fun, while others might consider it a punishment they’ll do anything to avoid. However, the need for colleagues to forge relationships outside the usual day-to-day workplace has so many benefits.

My suggestion would be to not automatically assume that team bonding is the best way to do this, and instead come up with creative solutions that are tailored to your workmates and your team. To do this, ask everyone to submit their suggestions on what they’d like to do to get to better know each other. You might be surprised with the options, and co-creating ideas with your team is always better than telling them what they’re going to do. Often unplanned activities like a long lunch, a picnic or going to a trivia night together might be just as effective at forging bonds after hours. 

Once you’ve got an idea from the group, hand some of the power over to your team to help bring it to life. By involving them in the planning and execution they’ll get a greater sense of buy-in and, ideally, enjoyment. 

2. I run my own startup. I have no idea what normal work hours look or feel like anymore. Without a team and no one to report to, what boundaries do I set for myself, when I need this business to succeed? If I bring more people onboard, do I set those boundaries on them too?

You might not realise it, but when you bring people on board, they will be looking at you. As a founder, the actions you live and work by becomes the default that everyone who works for you will follow, despite what you say. With that comes enormous responsibility, and it’s only too easy to let your boundaries blur so much that all you ever do is work. 

Of course you want your business to succeed, and of course you think that the only way to do that is by working more. But I’m here to tell you that if you don’t start to set healthy boundaries yourself, it could be the start of a toxic work culture that starts with the top. 

To address this now, pick one area instead of trying to make firm boundaries in every area of your life all at once. It might be to do with how you can spend more time on things that contribute positively to your mental or physical health, or maybe your relationships. Choose one way you’d like to improve in this area, add it into your diary and do it. It might be leaving by a certain time each day, attending a yoga class at lunchtime, or taking Friday afternoons off. Whatever it is, start small, enjoy the benefits, then use the good vibes as motivation to gradually claw some more of your life back, minute by minute. 

3. What is your take on the four day work week? Is this something that will rise in popularity, or is it a concept that will just fade into obscurity?

Out of all the possible ways that we have to rebalance life and work together, I firmly believe that the four day work week is one of the best tools we have. Its rising popularity over the last few years has been heartening, but it’s still only a tiny fraction of companies that implement it. 

As part of the research for my book, Work Backwards, I spent some time with Andrew Barnes, one of the key global architects of the Four Day Week global movement. He advocates for the ‘100–80–100’ model, where workers get 100% of their pay for working 80% of their previous hours in exchange for a commitment to maintain 100% of their productivity. 

The reason I love it is that it’s a dramatic change that brings about a genuine shift in how we approach work. A lot of research that continues to come out now that more companies are testing it confirms that it doesn’t have any real effects on reducing productivity. In other words, there is generally enough fluff in our working week to be able to absorb 20% less time in the workplace. The resulting benefits for employees is immense. 

The other reason for hope is that of the thousands of companies that have experimented with their version of a four day week (as no two businesses or employees are the same), over 90% of them continue it in the long-term due to all the positive benefits that they see. So yes, consider me a huge fan of it!

4. I have an employee who doesn’t know when to switch off. My business takes pride in knowing when to switch off after hours but they don’t know how to. Can you share tips on how I can help manage as I am scared they can get burnout.

There are generally two types of workers, and understanding which one your employees are can really help in this situation. 

Researchers have classified most of us into segmenters and integrators. Segmenters are those who can draw clear, distinct lines between their work and everything else outside it. They can shut off the work part of their brain the moment they finish for the day, and concentrate on the rest of their life outside their job. A study from 4,000 Google employees found around one-third of people considered themselves segmenters.

The other types are integrators. They have more fluid lines between work and life, where unfinished jobs tend to loom constantly in the background as they go about other things. One sign of an integrator is that they find themselves checking work emails at all hours of the night and weekends. And yes, even on holidays. This doesn’t mean that your job takes over your lives all the time, just that it’s integrated into many aspects of it. Around two-thirds of people are integrators. Both have things they can learn from each other, like integrators can understand boundaries, and segmentors can be better at flexibility. 

Once you acknowledge that your employee works differently, try to understand why they seem to be putting such pressure on themselves, and see if you can help alleviate that. One reason might be that they are desiring praise or recognition. Sometimes the solution can be as simple as showing them how appreciated they are for them to take their foot a tiny bit off the pedal. Integrators and segmentors think about work differently, and knowing which one each of your staff are can help you better understand and deal with them.