Vagaro's Tips for Better Work Life Balance

With so many ways to keep us constantly connected, achieving a healthy work/life balance has become more challenging than ever. This issue is especially challenging for service providers who interact closely with clients regularly, including hair stylists, estheticians, barbers, tattoo artists and many others. Let’s explore the importance of achieving work-life balance, some tips for creating a necessary division between your professional and private life and how your management software can help service providers keep necessary boundaries with their clients, and business owners with their employees.

What is Work/Life Balance? 

There’s no set definition for work/life balance because it can mean different things to different people. But it refers generally to the equilibrium between time and energy given to your professional responsibilities and the relationships and personal activities in your personal life.

Creating a healthy work/life balance is accomplished through mindful time management and the setting of boundaries between work, personal life and self-care. Where exactly you place those boundaries is up to you but doing so is essential for both your physical health, mental health, and your performance as a business owner, service provider or both.

Signs of an Unhealthy Work/Life Balance

You already know what the benefits of a good work/life balance are. Maybe you’re balanced enough already! Then again, maybe you aren’t and are experiencing the negative effects of poor work life balance, such as stress and anxiety...

Let’s do this another way:

1. Are You Burned Out & Emotionally Drained? 

• Constantly Stressed & Short-Tempered: Are you finding yourself snapping at clients, colleagues or employees? Does even a minor setback send you into a tailspin? This could be a sign of an unhealthy work life balance, which can disrupt your physical and mental health.

• Diminished Job Satisfaction & Tips: Are you starting to dread work or feel less passionate about your clients? Can’t imagine doing this job for the rest of your life, even if you once loved it?

• Strained Team Communication: Team communication is unclear and rife with impatience and testiness.

2. Are Client & Employee Relationships Strained?

• Difficulty Building Rapport & Repeat Business: Are you struggling to build trust and rapport with new clients? Is client retention down? 

• Impatient or Short with Client Needs: Do you find yourself rushing through appointments, getting frustrated by client requests, or struggling to connect with their needs? 

3. Are There Dips in Productivity & Appointment Quality? 

• Constant Fatigue & Missed Appointments: Are you constantly tired and finding it difficult to focus during appointments? Are you experiencing a rise in missed appointments as a result? 

• Rushing Through Appointments & Decreased Service Quality: Do you feel like you're going through the motions during appointments, leading to rushed or subpar service? 

4. Are Work-Life Boundaries Blurring? 

• Can’t Disconnect After Work: Do you find yourself constantly thinking about work when you’re not at work, checking emails, texting employees and clients, or mentally replaying appointments?

• Strained Relationships: Are your relationships suffering, both inside and outside of work? You may be easily irritated with coworkers and distant with loved ones?

Work/Life Balance Tips

If any, or all (oof!) of the above describe your daily experience, your work-life balance needs an adjustment. In the service industry, being mentally and emotionally well-rested is crucial for providing exceptional client care. Let’s move on to how you can create a better work/life balance through effective work life integration.

1. Time Management: Smooth Client Flow

Anywhere in service industry, crafting a well-organized schedule is key to achieving work-life balance for both you and your staff. By creating a scheduling system that considers client needs and staff availability, you can improve work life balance, avoid last-minute scrambling, and prevent stressful overbooking. Blocking out realistic appointment times with buffer periods prevents client overlap and ensures a quality experience, minimizing stress for both staff and clients.

Allocating dedicated time slots for administrative tasks outside of appointments allows staff to focus on client service during appointments and avoid feeling overwhelmed by a constant mix of tasks.

You must also factor in personal breaks for staff, which promote well-being and reduce burnout, leading to a more positive work environment for everyone.

2. Stress Management & Mental Well Being

A calm and collected team translates to a positive client experience, but also contributes to improved physical and mental health and a healthy work-life balance for your staff. Helping your staff develop stress-management strategies empowers them to stay focused and composed during busy periods. This could include offering training on techniques like deep breathing to alleviate stress or encouraging short breaks throughout the shift for team members to recharge.

Consider incorporating mindfulness practices or subscriptions to meditation apps to equip your team with long-term stress-reduction tools, allowing them to leave work feeling centered and ready for personal time.

3. Flexibility: Adapting Your Schedule 

Long hours are inevitable and the unexpected is a reality in the service industry. However, developing a system to adapt your schedule when needed can prevent work from overflowing into personal time. This could involve accommodating last-minute changes or adjusting staff breaks to ensure smooth operations without sacrificing staff well-being.  

Communicating any changes effectively to both clients and staff is crucial to maintaining a sense of order. Obviously, utilizing appointment management technology with features like online booking and automated reminders minimizes scheduling conflicts and frees up time for staff to handle unexpected situations without feeling overwhelmed. 

4. Respecting Boundaries

While you may truly view clients as friends and employees as family, remember that you’re a service provider and business owner first. You need to draw boundaries between work and personal life, when and how its appropriate to communicate. More than just relieving stress, setting boundaries enhances professionalism, helps you avoid potential conflicts and keeps relationships from becoming potentially inappropriate--with employees and clients.

At work, establishing clear closing times and encouraging staff to “turn work mode off” when they leave for the day creates a clear boundary between work and personal lives (more on how to do this below).

Implementing a designated closing routine for staff to follow ensures a smooth handover and minimizes the need to check in after hours. Respecting these boundaries allows your team to recharge and return refreshed the next day.

5. Use Technology to Help You Unplug

This may seem counter-intuitive, but technology can be a powerful tool for achieving work-life balance in service businesses.  

• Online booking systems: Allow clients to book appointments 24/7, reducing phone calls and front desk workload while increasing efficiency for your staff. Investing in appointment reminder apps minimizes no-shows and cancellations, freeing up valuable staff time previously spent on follow-up calls. You’ll also want to invest in a very flexible and dynamic digital calendar that can accommodate small stretches of time in-between appointments  

• Automation tools: For tasks like appointment confirmations, sending marketing emails & texts, or managing client intake forms can further reduce administrative burdens on employees, allowing them to focus on client service during working hours and enjoy their personal time without work worries.  

By using these technologies, you can create a more efficient operation and empower your staff to achieve a better work-life balance.  

But there’s one more feature you should have in your toolkit that’s important enough to warrant its own section... 

6. Use An Employee/Client Communication Channel 

Defining your working hours and response times is good for boundaries, but this only covers when it’s appropriate to communicate, not how.  

Using your personal phone number and email address to communicate with clients and employees can set you up for a range of potential problems. These can be easily avoided by setting a dedicated channel for direct, clear communication with your clients and employees. A 2-way text messaging app, such as Connect, by Vagaro, is one such example.  

A bespoke messaging app like this can: 

1. Improve Privacy: Separating personal and professional communication channels helps support boundaries and protect your personal information from being accidentally accessed by clients. It also prevents clients from reaching out to you at all hours of the day and helps you choose specific times for work-related tasks. 

2. Ensure Professionalism: It conveys professionalism and reinforces the distinction between personal and professional interactions. Despite ourselves, we sometimes forget the “rules” of professional etiquette and customer service when slinging personal text messages and e-mails. Think about the difference between a work email and a personal email, or the phone that some professionals are given for work purposes/communications only. With a different platform comes an automatic difference in your tone, grammar and subject matter. 

3. Improve Organization: Having separate contact channels for personal and professional communication makes it easier to stay organized. You can prioritize and manage client inquiries separately from private messages, reducing the risk of important client communications getting lost or overlooked. The same can be done with employee communications, whether you’re reaching out to them or they’re speaking to each other about work-related matters. 

4. Preserve Personal Relationships: In a way, this one can be thought of as the twin sister to #2. Keeping personal and professional communication separate helps preserve your personal relationships by preventing work-related issues from intruding into your personal life. It ensures that your personal contacts are not inundated with work-related messages, supporting the integrity of those relationships. 

5. Offer Flexibility: Separating personal and professional communication channels provides flexibility to adapt to changing circumstances. For example, changing your personal phone number or email address wouldn’t disrupt your professional communication with clients and employees. 

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Building a successful business and a strong brand requires dedication and long hours. However, it's crucial to remember that work isn't everything. Burnout and fatigue, both mental and physical, as a result of poor work life balance can hinder your effectiveness as a professional and leader. This can also negatively impact your relationships with clients, employees, loved ones, and even your passion for the job. If you struggle to maintain a healthy work-life balance, Vagaro can help. 

Our booking and management software automates many daily tasks, reducing overall stress in your professional life and contributing to your overall well being. Vagaro provides tools that ensure a clear separation between your professional and personal spheres, preventing work from "crossing streams" into your personal time. 

Start your 30-day FREE Trial today. Consider it an investment in self-care for both you and your employees.