Work-life balance has overtaken salary as the most attractive aspect of a job role, with over four in ten employees prioritising flexibility and personal time over other job aspects.
This sentiment becomes stronger each year as trends such as slow and sustainable living emerge on social media, especially as Gen Z enters the workforce with greater demands for societal change. With this in mind, the experts from Resume.io have offered 5 top tips to promote work-life balance in the new year.
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Maximise Your 2025 Annual Leave
Searches for 2025 bank holidays have skyrocketed 100% since the year began, highlighting a growing urgency among Brits for personal time and moments of rest.3 No matter how important establishing a healthy work-life balance is in your typical day-to-day, maximising your 2025 holiday entitlement will ensure your time this year is full of exciting moments.
Strategically requesting annual leave around bank holidays to maximise longer periods off will give you more time to travel, relax, and tend to your lifestyle outside of work.
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Embrace Slow Living
Trends such as ‘quiet quitting’, ‘lazy girl jobs’, and the 4-day working week made big waves in 2024, highlighting a deeper trend of slow living and taking a more mindful approach to each day.
This is a great practice to familiarise oneself with to begin ensuring a healthy work-life balance in 2025. Some simple aspects of slow living that you can bring into your everyday life include: spending time at lunch or after work cooking nutritious and fulfilling foods, embracing nature by working outdoors or going for a lunchtime walk, finding time to meditate in the work day, or even establishing work break traditions to discuss ‘topics of the day’ or other interests you have as a collective.
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Spend Time Outdoors
The typical office worker will sit at their desk for over 1,300 hours this year alone, so prioritising time to move and embrace daylight and fresh air is critical for maintaining mental health and productivity.4
The dark hours before and after work make this a tough goal initially, but maximising outdoor movement during lunch breaks, and prioritising time outside every weekend will leave you feeling refreshed, even if it’s just a 15-minute walk.
Make coffee breaks outside a habit and a non-negotiable part of your routine, and use of parks and green spaces to give your eyes a well-deserved rest from screens.
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Unplug and Disconnect
In the digital era, having a laptop or smartphone with us at all times makes staying connected effortless. But this ease can harm boundaries with work and negatively impact our health. Make sure to turn off your work email notifications to fully switch off during evenings and weekends.
Establishing limits on daily usage of technology is beneficial for your well-being, in general, too. Spending time offline makes you more present and mindful of your environment as you decrease artificial stimulants such as social media and online gaming. It might also grant you the illusion of more free time as you embrace quietness, tend to hobbies, and do what you enjoy most!
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Establish Genuine Social Connections
Genuine social connections contribute to our overall well-being. Experts are predicting that a focus on our real social connections will be a priority in 2025.5 Whether these connections are found at work, home, or elsewhere, embracing them is necessary to keep you fulfilled in and out of work.
Easy ways to embrace personal relationships include prioritising meetups with family and friends outside of work, whilst taking the time to connect with colleagues outside basic work tasks is also crucial. This could be as simple as including more skill-swapping sessions, shouting out your team more, or hosting more group activities.
