For employees

Active recreation and sports

Active recreation is crucial for strengthening your physical and emotional health, and balancing it with work when you are training or working out alone can be quite simple. However, practicing professional sports, especially team sports, can be more challenging because you typically are unable to set your own daily routine and schedule, since you need to coordinate your time with that of your trainers, team members, and the dates of relevant competitions. The following measures may help balance your sports activities with your work:

1. Unpaid time off during the workday. At the request of the employee and with the consent of the employer, unpaid days off may be provided to the employee for personal reasons during his/her working day. In this case, missed working hours shall be transferred to other working days. It is important to note that the use of unpaid time off to meet one’s personal needs must not violate the requirements of maximum working time and minimum rest time. This measure is intended for less common work-life balance cases and is not a long-term solution.
2. Flexible work schedule. A flexible work schedule is a working time regime set by the employer, when the employee must be present at his or her workplace during specific fixed hours of the working day (shift), and may organise the rest of his or her working time by working before or after the fixed hours. Applying a flexible work schedule can help facilitate the day-to-day care of a disabled family member.
3. Individual work schedule. Where the application of a flexible work schedule simply changes the start and end times of work, an individual work schedule allows employees to organize their work depending on the workload and personal life needs. For example, if you train one or several days per week and begin training during your workday, you can ask your employer to permit you to work less hours during your training days, by transferring the missed working hours to other days of the week.
4. Temporary remote work. If you are not required to be at your workplace for the entire day in order to do your job, you may request your employer to enable you to temporarily work remotely. In professional sports, it is often necessary to travel to other cities or countries when participating in competitions, and this may not be possible to do during a half-day off. It is sometimes much more convenient to go to the competition venue on the eve of the competition and work remotely on the next day.