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By: Soyoung Hwang, Principal
Work-life balance is more than just a recruiting buzzword; it’s a critical priority to most U.S. workers today. Recent data from Mind Share Partners’ 2025 Mental Health at Work report revealed that employees value work-life balance and flexibility more than traditional benefits and self-care resources when it comes to supporting their mental health at work. And this trend is consistent across all worker demographics.
But in a world where performance and productivity reign supreme, how can modern employers cultivate genuine work-life balance for their teams? This article explores the meaning of work-life balance today. We’ll cover practical tips for individuals to take control of their choices and protect their well-being, as well as tangible strategies for employers to create a culture where balance is more than just an idea. Let’s start with a definition.
What is “Balance” in the Modern World?
Historically, work-life balance was a straightforward concept, focused almost exclusively on the number of hours spent on work compared to the hours spent on life outside of work. In this early view, “life” was often narrowly interpreted as family and caretaking responsibilities (i.e. duties to a spouse or child). Today, our understanding has broadened.
Today, work-life balance can be defined as a measure of long-term sustainability in how we navigate the demands of work and life outside of work. Work-life balance is:
Personal and individualized — defined by each person and supported (not dictated) by the organization.
Inclusive of mental and emotional energy, not just time. Example: If you’re thinking about a presentation while lying in bed, that mental load counts.
The ability to disconnect and be fully present in non-work areas of life—whether that involves family, hobbies, friendships, or other personal domains.
Achieving an equilibrium that allows sustainability and growth in both work and life.
While the “right” balance may vary person-to-person based on individual needs, goals, lifestyles, and preferences, research does offer some concrete guardrails. A landmark 2016 study by the World Health Organization and the International Labour Organization, spanning data from 194 countries, examined the health impacts of work-related stress. The findings were clear: working more than 55 hours per week is linked to a significantly higher risk of ischemic heart disease and stroke.
This means that if individuals want to minimize their risk of cardiovascular disease developed due to job-related stress, a good rule of thumb is to keep the amount of time they work in a week under 55 hours.
In recent years, terms like “work-life integration” have emerged to describe how people manage the relationship between their work and personal lives. While balance often emphasizes boundaries, integration highlights flexibility and blending work and personal responsibilities in ways that better fit people’s lives. For example, a parent might step away for school pickup and finish a project later in the evening. Many people find this flexibility not only helpful but essential. At the same time, integration can come with risks if it isn’t thoughtfully supported by organizations.
Regardless of what it’s called, these terms share common goals: sustainability, autonomy, and well-being. The question isn’t whether balance or integration is the “right” model, but how we design work in a way that supports people’s long-term health, allows for presence in their personal lives, and avoids placing unrealistic or unbounded demands on their time and energy.
Actionable Strategies to Achieve Modern Work-Life Balance
Creating a mentally healthy workplace where balance is possible requires intentional effort at every level, starting with leadership, and including a supportive system at large. While individuals can strive to set boundaries, they operate within a larger workplace ecosystem. Things like company culture, leadership behavior, and heavy workloads can create structural barriers that make balance impossible. Employers therefore play an important role in overall work-life balance, and can either facilitate a healthy balance for their workers, or prevent them from being able to achieve it.
Leadership Actions That Support Balance (Without Sacrificing Performance)
Leaders have an outsized influence on whether balance feels possible. Leaders, especially founders, often set the tone on the culture of an organization, defining the norms and behaviors that are perpetuated across teams and employees. Here are practical ways managers, directors, and executives can empower their teams to do great work and protect their well-being.
1. Normalize Autonomy and Flexibility
Autonomy and flexibility are two of the most powerful drivers of workplace mental health. They’re so essential that the former U.S. Surgeon General’s Framework for Workplace Mental Health & Well-Being calls them out as core components of achieving “work-life harmony”—their modern name for work-life balance. To do this, leaders can:
Listen to Your People: Regularly gather employee feedback to understand what makes the biggest difference for your workforce, and the many ways that balance can be achieved in your work culture. For some this might look like having greater flexibility around when and where they work, for others it’s about maintaining boundaries around the number of hours worked or the workload itself.
Set Clear Expectations—Then Trust People to Meet Them: Shift from tracking hours to defining outcomes. When people know what success looks like and feel trusted to manage their time, they can structure their work in ways that support both productivity and well-being.
Make Flexibility and Boundaries a Team Norm, Not an Exception: Talk openly about flexible options during team meetings, and boundaries on communications, staff availability, and workload burdens. Clarify what’s possible, whether it’s adjusted hours or shifts, advance warning on scheduling changes, no-meeting days or blocks within the workday, hybrid days, or asynchronous work, so that employees don’t feel they need special permission to take care of their needs.
Understand that balance is dynamic, not static. Work-life balance is a dynamic concept that shifts with different life stages, career phases, and personal needs. What works now, might not work five years down the road.
2. Protect Capacity and Model Healthy Habits
Leaders can significantly influence team well-being by planning better and modeling healthy work norms. These strategies can also help mitigate burnout for yourself and your teams.
Create Predictable Ebbs and Flows in Workload: Plan workloads so intense periods are followed by real recovery time. Take project management, timelines, and capacity planning seriously so teams know what’s coming, and build in buffers in project timelines to accommodate inevitable delays, vacation days, sick time, and unforeseen contingencies. This prevents relentless, chaotic sprints and protects well-being.
Model Healthy Work Habits: Take—and protect—your own rest time, and be transparent about it. Showing sustainable productivity (not 80-hour weeks with no personal time) gives your team permission to do the same and sets a healthier standard for everyone.
Have Capacity Check-ins: Regular conversations and capacity check-ins help teams feel empowered, heard, and supported. Ensure that your teams have the necessary support, tools, skills, and time to execute on what is expected of them.
3. Build Supportive Systems and Processes
For real change, work-life balance must be embedded in systems—not left solely to individual effort. Some ways to do this include:
Review and Right-Size Workloads and Timelines: Make sure that what’s being asked is achievable and fits employees’ skills and interests.
Set Realistic Expectations and Proportional Incentives: Be transparent about the work culture from the very beginning, starting with the job description. And if expectations are high and demanding, make sure employees understand this, and derive real benefits in pay, growth opportunities, and general recognition for performing at that level.
Value Sustainability: Question the need for constant, excessive growth. Success can also mean sustaining healthy operations. Prioritize the long-term well-being of your employees and thus the long-term, stable operation of your business, over flashy, short-term gains.
Individual Actions To Take Charge of Your Own Balance
While organizations set the stage, individuals have agency to make choices that protect their wellbeing and long-term sustainability. Here are steps employees can take:
Identify Your Non-Negotiables: Know what you need—from set working hours to time for family or personal pursuits. Your priorities and boundaries may change over time, so check in with yourself regularly about what feels important, and what feels sustainable.
Manage Your Time Effectively: Use planning and time management strategies to focus on high-impact work during peak energy windows. Being efficient when you are working gives you the space to fully step away when you’re not.
Set and Enforce Boundaries: Be clear about your availability. Communicate your boundaries to colleagues and supervisors, and practice turning off notifications or logging out after your workday is done.
Incorporate Time for Recovery: Make it a priority to take breaks, use vacation days, and ensure there’s space for mental and emotional recovery. True balance means building in time to recharge, not just keeping pace with work demands.
Evaluate Alignment with Company Culture: Assess whether your workplace and its values actually support your ability to maintain balance. If not, consider advocating for change, initiating conversations about wellbeing, or, if necessary, seeking a better fit elsewhere.
As we move forward, organizations that cling to outdated models of overwork will likely face high rates of burnout and difficulty retaining talent. The future of work requires a fundamental rethinking of productivity, success, and leadership. Sustainability is no longer just a perk, it is a necessity for long-term success.
Soyoung Hwang, Principal, Mind Share Partners
Soyoung leads impact-focused advising for organizations and leaders on how to create a culture of support for mental health in the workplace. She facilitates Mind Share Partners’ workplace training and leads strategic projects. Before Mind Share Partners, Soyoung served as Projects Director and Principal Behavioral Designer at ideas42, a Public Health Advisor for New York City during the COVID-19 pandemic, and VP of Standard Development at the International WELL Building Institute, leading the creation of the first global standard for healthy environments.
