Work-Life Balance in the Global Human Resource Management - Literature review Example

DRAFT Work-Life Balance in the Global Human Resource Management Unit There has been much contention on whether organizations should make it a policy to have work-life balance programs. Work-life balance entails the balancing that is done between an individual’s career with his or her lifestyle. The lifestyle that an individual embraces may interfere with their career and the vice versa is true. Overdoing one aspect may result to health, social and financial implications. Therefore, there is needed to strike a balance between the two important aspects of human lives. Organizations across the world have adopted diverse measures that ensure the productivity of their workforce is maximized. One major strategy has been the adoption of the work-life balance programs. Many responsibilities make it difficult to strike a balance between work and lifestyle, in several cases family and other personal issues have been a major impediment to an individual’s productivity. In addition, lack of leisure activities can result to stress and fatigue, which can result to reduced performance. The most affected are the women who have a career to protect, children to take care of as well as the care for the elderly. A general trend that has been witnessed in the recent past is to have employees work for long hours, which in several cases has borne no substantial fruits. The social safety of among the countries facilitates work-life balance. The adoption of compassion, spirituality, and love has created a thriving environment for work-life balance. Countries in the Northern Europe are the best in terms of balancing work and life based on their social appeal; Denmark, Norway, and Sweden have been cited as some of the ‘feminine’ states where compassion thrives. In this regard, the working environment has been enhanced to incorporate the needs of the people (Thompson 2012, P. 1). Contrarily, the America has inculcated a culture of performance where the room for compassion is limited. According to OECD, the parameters used in evaluating work-life balance are “the share of labor force that works very long hours, time spent on ‘leisure and personal care’ and employment rates for women who have children” (Thompson 2012, p.1). A country like Japan demonstrates mixed phenomenon where these parameters are found on both extremes. For example, the individuals that work for over 50 hours in a week are very many in Japan while the employment rates for women with children are very minimal. The scenario in the United States is different; individuals work both for long hours and the population of mothers with children working is moderately high. According to Marks (2013), “workaholism is a very common thing in our nation (United States of America). I’ve met countless men and women… who are workaholics” (p.1). In the African context there is a balance in the number of hours worked and women get to be engaged in household chores unless where westernization has a bigger influence. Marks (2013) points out that “In European nations, when workers go on holiday, they really go on holiday—no answering work emails, doing work on their laptops, or making business calls” (p.1). Organizations in the western world as well as those across other parts of the world are shifting from the concept of work-life balance to work life integration. There have been increased responsibilities among the people today; this has made it important to initiate work-life balance programs within the organization. This is because the productivity of an organization is heavily reliant on its workforce. When the employees are having issues that affect their lives, their output is reduced. The work-life programs have been adopted to ensure that the employees give their best output to the organization. Burke (2006) has pointed out that facilities such as on-site day care centers, flex time, employee assistance programs as well as elder care programs can promote work-life balance. Despite such programs being beneficial for the general welfare of the employees, many organizations lag behind in the implementation. The career choice can play a role in work-life balance; it has been indicated that careers in engineering and science consumes ones’ time and may result to a poor balance (Williams and Emerson 2008). This means that the need for work-life integration programs should be more in such careers. On the other hand, women are more likely to be affected as compared to men especially in the western countries (Milliken et al. 1998). However, in a country like Japan, men are the ones highly affected because they subjected to so much work while their wives serve in their homes as house wives (North n.d, p.2). In addition, the financial and the insurance industries have depicted high propensity to adopt work-life balance programs (Goldstein 1994). Despite the United States and Europe sharing a number of organizational principles (western ideologies), there are distinct differences as far as work and life are concerned. USA has very long working hours with a very short paid holiday. On the contrary, Europe has adopted a more relaxed working environment where they work for lesser hours. Concerning the amount of annual leave, the US has no law that provides the minimum amount of time that can be awarded as leave; this causes a situation where an annual leave can amount to a day. On the contrary, the European working time directive should be adhered by all the Europeans (Smillie, Osborne, Haurant 2006, p1). According to Williams (2012, p.1), “A DIT research report found that 1 in 6 employees now work more than 60 hours a week”, statistic indicating the situation in the United States. Consequently, “According to U.S. Census and CPS data, the share of employed American men regularly working more than 48 hours per week is higher today than it was 25 years ago”(Williams 2012, p.1). The conflict theory provides that if energy and time are channeled to one role, then the other role is affected tremendously (Edwards & Rothbard 2000, p.7). Time and energy are limited resources, therefore, should be balanced. Friedman, Christensen, and DeGroot (1998) have observed that the time and energy that is spent in the family cannot be invested in work and the converse is true. When the demands for the family outweigh those in the job place, then it means that the job will be affected. The result of such an imbalance is that, one sector will be affected while the other depletes an individual’s resources. The imbalance can appear from any direction; the work can affect the lifestyle or vice versa. When there is an imbalance, productivity is adversely affected on one side. This means that programs to safeguard employees against burdensome lifestyles should be implemented by organizations. In this regard, we find that families in the western world are highly affected as a result of the imbalance where much energy is channeled to the job as opposed to the family. In Africa, the family is considered a very important institution; besides work, people get to engage socially with others and families thrive very well, the rate of divorce is limited and there are many polygamous families (World Business Academy 2003, p 2-3). In the Asian context especially in Japan, the families thrive on the basis of specialization; women are left to undertake household chores while men engage in income generating activities. In order to prevent conflicts emanating from work-life imbalances, organizations across the world have developed different interventions based on culture among other factors. Firstly, the programs are geared towards saving on time. This is a very important component. As stated earlier, time and energy are the ones that are limiting hence play a role in promoting an imbalance between the two aspects. Time is of essence in an organization, every employer pays for the time that is spent by an employee doing some productive activity for his or her organization. Secondly, the programs are geared towards helping the employee replenish their energy so that they are able to move on with other duties. In such a scenario, a replenished employee is much energized to work hence higher productivity (Tsui et al., 1997). A case scenario is that of Norton Rose, a UK-based law firm that has developed a music room and a choir for its employees (Prevett 2014, p.1). Finally, the programs help reduce conflict that could otherwise arise due to the imbalance of the two forces. When conflicts are eliminated or minimized, then there is adequate time to do the work while the psychological effects that could affect work such as stress are minimized. The cultures of different parts of the world influence work life balance depending on where the organization is based. In the western world especially in UK and USA where affirmative action and gender equality is highly considered, work-life dynamics have a gender variation. However, the gender view across the world is that the magnitude of the effect or work-life balance varies across the gender divide. William and Emerson (2008) have pointed out that the women are the adversely affected because they find themselves in having the responsibilities of looking after the elderly as well as the young members of the family. However, in a country like Japan were gender role is clearly defined, women are not highly subjected to employment, the same is the case in India and most of other Asian countries. In deed as pointed out by Chaudhuri (2010), “The Japanese have strong family ties and a strong sense of community.” Generally, the number of women in the workforce is generally low in relation to their male counterparts. The whole concept of developing the work-life programs was activated by the need to take care of female employees who have a number of issues to deal with (Cassel 1997). Men are good at establishing a good link between their personal lives and work, an aspect that makes them cope with work pressure. On the other hand, the women tend to have multiple activities, which includes broad aspects of family and other issues which ultimately influences their work (Pleck 1997). This means that women are able to handle a myriad of roles while men have the capacity to perform few tasks. Organizations across the world have varied reasons for adopting work-life balance with the ultimate goal of promoting productivity. The firms’ productivity, profitability, and competitiveness can be great boosted by work-life programs. However, these programs are not highly necessary in all scenarios and they vary according to the management system. For example, because the Americans prefer contract type of employment, they are less engaged in developing work-life balance. On the contrary, the Japanese who consider an employment as a long-life employment are more stringent in developing work-life interventions; a good example is the Nomura bank, which has a choir (Prevett 2014, p.1). These programs if well developed and implemented can help the employees become more productive. The strategy to develop the program should be focused on the specific needs of the employees and should be capable of incorporating all the relevant stakeholders. In many organizations, all across the world, this strategy has been made a key human resource strategy. Despite the need to implement a change in the organization, it is paramount that it should be smooth, consistent, and non-threatening. This is because resistance may result; emanating from the culture of the organization. To prevent this, all the stakeholders should be made responsible. Ballou and Godwin (2007) points out some of the programs developed which include, mortgage facilities, child care, subsidized cafeteria, take-home meals, elderly care resources, relocation services among many other benefits. The programs should however not strain the system. Every organization should handle its employees in relation to its capacity. In order to get the best employees some companies have utilized the strategy to woo them. Work-life balance influences the capacity of a society to progress. United States is one of the countries where working hours exceed the world average. In this case, a balance between progressive growth of the family has been a challenge. It has been evidenced that both the man and the wife spend hours working; an aspect that leaves the family in shambles. In a country like France, the working time is highly flexible and there is room for the employees to negotiate work-life balance (Passport to Trade 2013, p.1). Despite women being accommodated in the labor market, the terms of engagement allows them to balance between taking care of their children as well as the elderly while still delivering in their jobs. In France as well as the entire Europe, leisure is highly prioritized. Contrarily, Japan and Korean states are different, the engagement in leisure is quite minimal. According to “Japanese men’s identities and social standing continue to be defined by employment” (North n.d., p.2). Stress is a psychological condition that can emanates from inadequate balancing between work and one’s lifestyle. Indians have a character of disliking the western aggressiveness; they prefer going easy and perform better when directed and provided with trainings. In this regard, they try to avoid much stress and cannot thrive in such challenging environments. Therefore, as well put by Chaudhuri (2010) in his “I” theory, proposes that the Indians require more work-life programs as opposed to the western countries. On the other hand, Japan and China have entrenched cultural systems, which facilitates balancing of work and life. The same case is true for African organizations that have embraced the African culture. However, many African-based organizations have embraced westernization. Earlier in the discussion, we mentioned about the interplay of work and life in regards to energy and time. When these two resources are mismanaged, some physical or psychological conflict is highly likely. When the psychological aspect is the result, then most likely stress will prevail. 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