Striking that balance between career and family is increasingly becoming a challenge. Our schedules are becoming busier than ever before, which often causes our work or our personal lives to suffer.
Work-life balance practices are deliberate organizational changes in programs or organizational culture that are designed to reduce work-life conflicts and enable employees to be more effective at work and in other roles.
It is important to understand that work-life balance does not mean to devote equal amounts of time to paid work and non-paid roles; it is generally associated with equilibrium between the amount of time and effort somebody devotes to work and personal activities in order to maintain an overall sense of harmony in life.
Work-life balance involves juggling competing and multi-faced demands between work and home responsibilities. The issue of work-life balance responds to demographic, economic and cultural changes such as greater number of women in the workforce, dual career couples, transformation in family structure to nuclear families and technological advancement. A quality relationship, between paid responsibilities at workplace and unpaid responsibilities related to family, friends and self is critical for success in today’s competitive business environment.
Research has indicated that those employees who have some form of control over their work environment tend to suffer less stress related ill health. Organizations can implement various work-life balance initiatives that may assist their employees to better balance their work and family responsibilities, which include but are not limited to:
- Flexible working hours
- Part-time work
- Job-sharing
- Compressed work week
- Parental leave
- Telecommuting
- On-site child care facility
The effects of introducing work-life balance practices on employee attitudes and perceptions include job satisfaction, organizational commitment, job stress and turnover. All of these factors, in turn affect job performance, direct and indirect absenteeism costs, costs associated with the loss and replacement of staff, customer satisfaction and organizational productivity. The most commonly used measures of benefits to organization include:
- Reduced absenteeism and lateness
- Reduced Turnover rates
- Increased retention
- Improved productivity
- Enhanced organization image
- Employee loyalty and commitment
The most common benefits to employees include;
- Better physical and mental health
- Reduced job stress levels
- Increased job satisfaction
- A greater sense of job security
- Enhanced control over work-life environment
The following distinct aspects of barriers to work-life culture should be considered when attempting to implementing practices to improve employees’ work-life balance
- Managerial support
- Managers play an important role because they are in a position to encourage or discourage employees’ efforts to balance their work and family lives.
- Career consequences
- Perception of negative career consequences.
- Time expectations
- The number of hours employees are expected to work – generally, long working hours have been identified as a signal of commitment and motivation for advancement.
- Gender perceptions
- Perceptions that work-life policies are for women
- Co-worker support
- There is increasing evidence that employees who use work-life balance practices suffer negative perceptions from colleagues.
In conclusion, the more control employees feel they have over their lives, the more able they are to balance work and family. Availability and use of work-life practices, when provided in the context of supervisor and organizational support can reduce work-life conflict and increase positive appraisals of the organization. Building an organizational culture that supports work-life balance is a long-term process resulting in cost savings, higher customer satisfaction and higher levels of organizational performance.