Want Good Work-Life Balance? Work In Tech, Says Study

When looking for a job, getting a good balance between work and home life is always important. According to research, the best industry to work in is technology.

For the third year running, the technology industry has been rated as the number one industry for work-life balance, according to a study by Glassdoor. Oil, gas, energy and utilities were replaced in second by Aerospace and defense and Media took third place.

The findings also showed that employees who rated their companies as providing a stronger work-life balance are significantly more likely to mention flexible working and wellbeing in their reviews.

Government, Tech and Finance Companies Best For Work-Life Balance

Companies such as the Office for National Statistics (ONS), Softcat and Arm lead the rankings when it comes to work-life balance, says Glassdoor. Of the employee reviews for ONS, 36% of them praised the company’s flexible working policy. 10% positively mentioned their work-life balance.

At Arm, Glassdoor reports that employees say they have access to a workplace mental health app and are encouraged to use workdays to volunteer. They are also offered four extra “Day of Care” holidays each year.

Nine of the 20 companies featured in the Glassdoor rankings represent the technology industry. Others include government, construction, real estate, telecommunications, finance and energy. For job seekers, this shows that work-life balance can be found in any sector.

Mental Health, Wellbeing and Burnout See Discussion Spike

Since 2018, Glassdoor found that terms such as mental health, wellbeing and burnout in discussions had increased. It does say that each term follows a different pattern.

For mental health, mentions have steadily increased over the three years, it says, from a low 0.26% of all reviews in January 2018 to a high of 1.68% most recently—a 500% increase.

When it came to discussions on wellbeing, there was a rapid increase immediately following the first pandemic lockdown in the UK. This pattern has continued, spiking during periods of lockdown. According to the report, mentions of wellbeing have remained consistently high with a 1.16% rating prior to the pandemic and 1.83% in January 2021.

It wasn’t until summer 2021 that mentions of burnout in Glassdoor reviews saw a sharp rise. Prior to April 2021, its rating was 0.07%; in September 2021, it had risen to 0.16%. This indicates that employees have recently found themselves experiencing burnout that their employers have failed to address.

The company analysed more than 600,000 reviews left by full-time UK-based employees on its website between 1 January 2021 and 28 September 2021. To ascertain pre-pandemic levels, the company also looked at the industries rankings in 2018 and 2019.

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