Competition at any level in the corporate sector is tremendous and firms are hard pressed to innovate and deliver. This exerts a lot of pressure on the employees to perform and manifests into a deadline-driven work life which in turn translates to longer work hours. In effect, the employees get very little time to spare for their family and themselves. If managed poorly, this situation brings about a lot of personal stress leading to under-performance at the workplace and unhappiness outside. In the worst case, this leads to employee turnover.

Simply put, for effective employee engagement, employers must realise that at any given point a happy and an engaged workforce is a great asset to the company with a special impetus being laid on the mental wellbeing of an employee. Many companies have therefore been forthcoming with employee friendly policies such as flexi-timings, occasional work-from-home, fun-at-work initiatives, spot recognitions, a cultural ethos at the workplace and many other similar initiatives.

While savvy employers (magicbricks included) strive to put in cutting edge employee focussed processes and policies in place, the employees need to understand their role in an attempt to better manage the work-life-balance.

To illustrate, magicbricks.com believe employees can do on their own accord to 'balance-better'

1. Negotiate- First and foremost, learn about your employer's policies on flexitime and work from home. If you're a strong performer, you have better chances of negotiating. The important aspect is to not take these benefits as 'virtual holidays'. Learn to finish your personal tasks quickly and 'get back to work'. Ideally send in a summary email of achievements on the day you work from home to keep your manager informed that you have managed time better.

2. Communicate Better -  This leaves nothing for further emphasis. You have to leave on time - communicate, you cannot finish the presentation on time - communicate, you need help at excel -communicate. In short, communicate anything that impacts a target or a stated work-output, so that you or your manager can re-plan and reassess. Try not leaving a vital piece of information out for the last minute when nothing can be done. At the same time try and understand that communicating better is not the same as communicating more. Prioritising what you want to say and when you say it, is equally important. Better communication not only makes you a more productive player, it also makes you Feel Better, while working in an open environment, and is therefore very important to manage work-life-balance.

While employers strive to put in cutting edge employee focussed processes and policies in place, the employees on their part, need to learn techniques of superior work-life-balance management.

3. Respect Family Time - Respect your alone-time and time for your family. Enjoy weekends and vacations, enjoy an hour or two set aside for yourself - watch TV, read a book, do something creative, eat something nice, play a sport, meditate and do yoga, meet friends - all those things that you LIKE to do. It is not a question of finding time to do them- treat them as MUST-DOs - let other activities find time around these.

4. Introspect - Take a look at your personal habits and general lifestyle. Lack of sleep, poor nutrition, and bad exercise habits can cause you to feel a lack of balance in your life, and can counteract any efforts you are making to achieve work-life-balance. Healthy habits are paramount to physical well being and better performance. In the words of Mahatma Gandhi "It is health that is real wealth and not pieces of gold and silver."

5. Know When To Say No - Finally, learn to say no - When we think of the highly successful, we generally think of all the things they do - build great companies, design incredible products, close impressive customers, but the simple truth is that behind every impressive accomplishment stands a long list of things they didn't do. None of us has infinite time, and high achievers learn early that getting important things done means saying no. But say no when you really cannot do something -when you can, say yes with all your might.