National work life week - advice from charity leaders

Monday, 7 October, marks the start of National Work Life Week, Working Families' annual campaign to get employers and employees talking about wellbeing at work and work-life balance. Increasingly, we're hearing that charity leaders and their teams are grappling with demanding workloads and are on the edge of burnout.

We're keen to hear how you're feeling about your work-life balance and welcome you to join the conversation on LinkedIn. Let us know how you feel about your work-life balance, and share your top tips for getting the balance right for you and your employees.


Blumer D'Arcy Myers, who himself has been chief executive of thirteen different charities, interviewed a dozen charity chief executives to ask them how they cope with excessive workload both personally and in their organisations. Here's what he found out:


It's tough out there:

Running a charity has never been easy. The cost-of-living crisis following the pandemic has made it even harder. How do hard-pressed charity CEOs cope with the heavy workload and support their team? I have had some fascinating discussions with the CEOs of a dozen charities, with teams ranging from 180 staff to a handful.

Managing your time:

First, I asked them how they managed their own time and what techniques they had to let them know when there was just too much work.

As you can imagine, their approaches are varied, but the overwhelming theme was the need to take time to plan and reflect, whether that was
going for a walk, which almost all of them do, or using very structured management practices, like using a block diary system: when something new doesn’t fit in the diary, there is too much work!



Tom Lawton from Turn2Us impressed me with his self-discipline, something I need to work on, in having a system to capture and control work, ideas and tasks straight away.



There is a danger of taking on too much and becoming exhausted. Interestingly many of the CEOs have missed the daily commute. Having a long train journey gave them the time to prepare for the day ahead and on the way home they could digest and think about what their next steps would be.

Practising a little bit of self-care and a bit of self-acceptance that you can’t be in five different places at once is critical. It is better to have fewer higher quality meetings. It is also helpful to set up protected time slots of two to three hours, a couple of times a week and ensure there is time to reflect.


Having a sounding board:

As I said in the beginning being the leader of an organisation can be tough anywhere, but it is especially true in the not-for-profit sector. The CEO may not feel comfortable sharing all their concerns with the board, although the majority of the CEO’s talked about their supportive Chair of Trustees. The CEO cannot really share personal concerns or anxieties with staff members who are employees, who want to see their leader as being able to solve all the problems.

Ten of the twelve CEO’s talked about the benefits they got from having the experience, skills and support of a mentor to help them navigate through the current difficulties. They emphasised the value of having someone who can ask questions that clarify the situation and can help relieve the anxiety that builds when there is nowhere to articulate the doubts that they may be feeling.



Top tips:

I found it difficult to end the conversations as it was both fascinating and inspirational talking to such caring and dedicated leaders. I rounded off by asking them for their top tips on how you stay current and relevant?






This research was first published on 21/04/2022 - you can find the original article here.