5 Ways a phone system can improve your work life balance

It’s time to Improve Your Work Life Balance!

In our fast-paced digital age, achieving a healthy work-life balance has become more challenging than ever. As technology continues to evolve, so do the tools that can aid us in finding equilibrium between our professional and personal lives. One such tool is a modern virtual phone system, which, when utilized effectively, can significantly contribute to improve your work life balance. In this article, we’ll explore five ways a phone system can enhance your overall well-being.

Remote Accessibility and Flexibility

Now at first, this may seem counter intuitive. After all, if our goal is to achieve a better work life balance, surely taking our work everywhere with us does the opposite?

Virtual phone systems allow you to stay connected to your work regardless of your physical location. This newfound flexibility can be a game-changer for achieving a better work-life balance. Whether you’re working from home or on the go, a virtual phone system ensures that you can seamlessly transition between work and personal life without feeling tied to a specific location.

Put simply, being able to take our phone systems anywhere means we’re not tied to the office or anchored to a desk. For example, we can decide to work from home on Fridays and rather than spending an hour in rush hour traffic trying to get home before and after work. When we finish work we’re a few steps from feet up on the sofa or some quality family time together.

Find your balance with this, the idea isn’t that you take your business on holiday with you… that’s not contributing to our goal here of a better work life balance. There are free tools you can use to help with this, we’ll get to them further down.

Scheduled Do Not Disturb Features

Many phone systems offer features like “Do Not Disturb” that can be scheduled during specific hours. This allows you to establish clear boundaries between work and personal time. By customising your availability based on your daily schedule, you can prevent work-related calls and notifications from intruding into your personal space, providing you with the mental and emotional separation needed for a healthier work-life balance.

The best thing to Improve Your Work Life Balance, is that with Virtual Phone Systems there’s no compromise on your business enquiries. We can achieve a better work life balance without missing any possible sales by using features like Timed Diverts, Voicemail and Hunt Groups… which are all completely free by the way.

Instead of just hitting do not disturb, we can set our working hours then any calls outside those hours can go to either another member of your team, a Call Answering company or simply just a branded Voicemail message which you can then follow up later and get the sale. Features like these are essential for work life balance because it can be impossible for us to truly switch off from work if in the back of our minds we are worried about missing business opportunities and sales. Use these features to switch off knowing that your business is running efficiently while you’re taking some time to better yourself.

Call Routing and Voicemail Management

Efficient call routing features like Virtual Switchboard can help filter and direct calls to the appropriate channels, minimising disruptions during your personal time. Using a simple tool like Virtual Switchboard you can reduce the amount of time you waste answering calls that weren’t meant for you, giving you more time to focus on the things that matter.

Additionally, combining this tool with some Voicemail management will allow you to prioritise and respond to messages at your convenience. By reducing the constant barrage of incoming calls and messages, you gain greater control over your time and can allocate it more effectively between work and personal commitments.

For example, your Virtual Switchboard could have 3 options. Press 1 for sales, 2 for billing and 3 for general enquiries. Incoming sales enquiries are your money maker and you can have those calls come straight through to you to get the sale. However, billing enquiries are perhaps less of a priority for you, so if you don’t have an accountant for these calls to go to why not utilise Voicemail as a call management system. Have any billing calls go to a custom, branded billing Voicemail greeting and you can respond to these enquiries in a time that suits your schedule, better than just accepting calls at all hours. The same principle for option 3, general enquiries. If this is less of a priority for your business then have the calls go to another Voicemail that gives them a greeting with an email to send enquiries to.

By using Virtual Switchboard combined with Voicemail you can create a professional call routing setup that ultimately gives you a better work life balance by managing your workload in a way that suits your lifestyle.

Holiday Mode

Now as I mentioned in step 1, just because you can take your business with you on holiday doesn’t mean you should be checking in constantly, and that’s really what we’re trying to balance here. Achieving a better work life balance requires us to ACTUALLY be able to switch off for holidays and remove that background inkling in our brain that we need to check in with work.

Holiday mode is a free tool that allows you to utilise a lot of the tools we’ve mentioned in this article to work harmoniously to keep your business moving forward, while you get some much-needed holiday time. You can set certain dates for when you go on holiday, or we’ve added options that will pre-select every bank holiday to activate holiday mode for you.

When your Virtual Phone System activates holiday mode you won’t receive calls while you’re away. Instead calls can go to other members of staff, call answering companies or even just voicemail greetings. Any automated answering can simply say you are closed and when you will reopen. You can give them a number for urgent enquiries or even just an email address. You can switch of knowing your business queries are being taken care of in the background.

Differentiate Between Calls With Call Whisper

Part of the problem of using a mobile phone instead of a Virtual Phone System is that you can’t always tell if an incoming call is for your business or if it’s just spam or someone calling your mobile.

A Virtual Phone System with Call Whisper lets you know when incoming calls are for your business. That way you can assess if you’re in an appropriate place to answer, then answer professionally. Alternatively, you can see it’s a business call and choose to forward to a colleague or just simply send to voicemail. Another way to Improve Your Work Life Balance.

Being able to differentiate between personal and business calls means you’re in control of your work calls and you can respond accordingly. Helping you again to Improve Your Work Life Balance.

Conclusion

As technology continues to evolve, leveraging the capabilities of a modern virtual phone system can be a key factor in achieving a healthier work-life balance. By incorporating features that facilitate remote work, streamline communication, and provide tools for better time management, you can create a more efficient and flexible work environment. Ultimately, finding the right balance between your professional and personal life is crucial for long-term well-being, and a well-designed phone system can be a valuable asset. NHS England have more advice to improve your work life balance on their website.

If you’d like to talk to a professional about getting the right Virtual Phone System for your business, you can call 0800 772 0000 free from landlines and mobiles and we’ll answer any questions.