From 0 to 10, how is the balance between the personal and professional life of your tech talents and developers? If you are not sure about this answer and are even frustrated when you realize that the life of these talents is out of balance, believe me: you are not alone in this.

83% of developers suffer from burnout, according to a Haystack analytics study.

The main reasons cited for burnout include high workload (47%), inefficient processes (31%), and unclear goals and objectives (29%).

During the pandemic, 81% of developers reported increased workload, which raises a wake-up call to remember that there is a fine line between being highly productive and overworking.

It’s time to pay attention to the balance between their personal and professional lives.

Why should technology professionals strive to maintain a work-life balance?

The first and most obvious reason to start balancing their personal and professional life is to preserve the health of their body and mind.

Recent data from the Labor and Social Security Entities show that, in the last three years, the share of mental illnesses in sick leave increased from 4% to almost 5% of total leaves.

Therefore, the most urgent break we need to pull is to reduce unnecessary overtime work. Replacing physical activity, sleeping hours, or neglecting their own diet to deliver a project in an unrealistic time frame can lead to disorders such as ulcers, insomnia, headaches, blood pressure problems, among others.

The imbalance between personal and professional life in the long term can make the team develop even more serious illnesses such as depression and Burnout – which is total mental exhaustion. According to the Healthy Entities, the symptoms of Burnout are:

• Excessive tiredness, physical and mental
• Frequent headache
• Changes in appetite
• Insomnia
• Difficulties in concentration
• Feelings of failure and insecurity
• Constant negativity
• Feelings of defeat and hopelessness
• Feelings of incompetence
• Sudden mood swings
• Isolation
• Fatigue
• High pressure
• Muscle aches
• Gastrointestinal problems
• Change in heart rate

Balancing work and rest or leisure hours in addition to helping to preserve their health can make the developers more productive.

Yes, emptying their mind and not thinking about work can help give you innovative ideas and even make them smarter.

See the more benefits of creative leisure:

• Reduces physical tension, stress, and anxiety, in addition to limiting feelings such as frustration and incapacity
• Increases the performance of their activities and personal growth
• Makes it easier to deal with stressful situations and organize daily tasks
• Increases proactivity in decision making
• It increases the joy of work and study and the feeling of belonging

What are the main challenges to balance professional and personal life

Although we know the importance of quality of life, balancing personal and professional life is often more complicated, isn’t it? After all, external factors can keep developers from working less and catching up on your personal life. Some common challenges are:

• Deliver urgent projects with unrealistic deadlines
• Lack of openness to communication with project management
• Imposter Syndrome – a psychological disorder in which a person believes that failure is inevitable and that someone who experienced will unmask it in front of others.
• Inability to leave work
• Denial of own needs
• Escape from conflicts

How can company leaders empower team members to improve their quality of life?

But after all, what can you or your leaders do to help break the vicious circle of overwork, burnout, and begin to balance the quality of life scale?

Some studies show that there are actions that help to promote quality of life at work. Among these actions we can list:

• Offer adequate compensation for work performed. This means that it is necessary to ensure that there is internal and external equity, fair compensation, sharing of productivity gains, and proportionality between salaries.
• Fair and healthy working conditions. The working hours must be reasonable, the physical environment must be safe and healthy and there must be no unhealthy conditions.
• Develop careers and skills of professionals and encourage autonomy, self-control, multiple qualities, and information about the total work process.
• Have a great social integration to ensure that there is no prejudice, equality, mobility, relationships, and sense of community.

How to Improve Mental Health and Reduce Anxiety Ratings

The first step in improving mental health and reducing anxiety levels is to know everything that affects their mental health and makes them anxious.

For example, if they feel overwhelmed and tired because of frequent overtime, you need to reduce that work time. According to Fast Company, 22% of American workers check their email in the middle of the night, while 58% check-in bed right after waking up.

If they don’t have the autonomy and deadline to deliver their projects, they need to report this to your superior or to you so that it can be adjusted and so on.

They must communicate with mindful attention to reduce misinterpretation, timing conflicts, lack of detail, and ambiguity.

Diversity and Inclusion as Drivers of Creativity and Confidence

According to data from the 2020 edition of the study “Diversity Matters” (“Diversity Matters”, in free translation), conducted by the McKinsey consultancy, only 21% of Brazilian professionals claim that their company has high ethnic-racial diversity. The study interviewed 3,900 employees from 1,300 large companies in Brazil, Chile, Peru, Argentina, Colombia, and Panama.

Published in 2019, the survey “Diversity and Inclusion in Organizations in Brazil”, by the Brazilian Association of Business Communication (Aberje), indicates a likely reason for this perception: the recurrence of prejudiced attitudes.

This is because 40% of the 269 respondents reported having witnessed discrimination at work due to gender identity or expression, 35% due to age, and 30% due to color or ethnicity.

On the other hand, according to the Diversity Matters survey, by McKinsey consultancy, organizations that have executive teams with gender diversity are 14% more likely to outperform their competitors.

Companies that, in the employees’ perception, bet on gender diversity are also 93% more likely to obtain a financial performance superior to the competition.

When we are in an environment that encourages diversity and inclusion of professionals, we tend to be more creative and confident. Some groups of professionals that help make up a diverse and inclusive group are:

• Age
• Gender
• sexual orientation
• ethnicity
• PCD

Why Ubiminds puts people first

Ubiminds believes that by promoting meaningful relationships between professionals and companies, everyone wins. That’s why, by connecting teams of digital products from the USA and Brazilian technology experts, we help you accelerate the career of your tech talents, but much more than that: we put them in a unique, reliable, transparent, and responsible environment.

Ubiminds leads the technology recruiting industry with a custom curated approach to ensure professional success for top IT professionals looking to pursue rewarding careers and develop meaningful products.

Ubiminds provides a white-glove service that is concerned with saving candidates time and effort and emphasizes cultural fit as well as experience to help build distributed teams close to shore. It is this innovative and thoughtful approach that keeps Ubiminders at the heart of our best practices.

Learn more about how we can help your team to find a position that offers you the quality of life and career opportunities:

Scheila Farias Silveira

International Marketing Leader, specialized in tech. Proud to have built marketing and business generation structures for some of the fastest-growing SaaS companies on both sides of the Atlantic (UK, DACH, Iberia, LatAm, and NorthAm). Big fan of motherhood, world music, marketing, and backpacking. A little bit nerdy too!