Work Life Balance - Essay Example

Introduction The term ‘work-life balance’ has become increasingly popular in the past handful of decades. Today the average working man or woman is being pulled in multiple directions by different responsibilities and activities, societal, familial and work pressures, and having only a limited amount of time a day to manage everything. There is incessant need to be able to manage one’s work life – which includes office activities, meetings, official phone calls and even checking official emails – and one’s personal life which includes one’s family, friends, leisure, hobbies and even spirituality. This is where work-life balance steps in. Work life balance has many facets. Wood describes this as the adjustments that need to be made to ‘working patterns’ in order to allow people to manage other facets of their lives along with the work (2001). Furthermore, the same term is used by other experts to denote the difficulties or the problems that arise in the efforts to carry work life and personal life simultaneously. The ideal, actually, is to achieve a balance between the two. This balance should be unique for every individual as the work priorities and personal priorities of everyone are unique to him or her. However, companies offer a standard set of programs that fall in the work life balance initiative which may or may not satisfy an individual. Therein lies the dilemma that upends this balance and raises the question: is work life balance important after all? This is discussed in detail in this paper. The emergence of this concept has been resulted from a variety of factors which are described by Tausig and Fenwick: “The notion of a perceived time bind between work and family/personal life (an implied imbalance between them) stems from the changing nature of work and families—e.g., longer work hours, the proliferation of non-standard work schedules, flexible schedules, part time work, increased participation of women in the labor force and the increasing number of “non-traditional” families.” Having taken a look at the need for this balance, lets take a look at the pros and cons. Argument Supporting Work-Life Balance Initiatives Companies that offer work life balance are able to attract a growing pool of men and women who are actively seeking a balance in their work and personal lives. This is manifested through a range of work life balance initiatives that come in many forms and offer something to every age group and gender including work that is part time, telecom-enabled or adjusted working days. Furthermore, many companies now make a block leave mandatory, along with implementing work cut off hours. In addition to that, companies offer volunteer-work leaves in a calendar year which an employee can use to perform his or her philanthropic work. All of these are very attractive to a very wide range of people. So companies that offer these initiatives are able to target more potential employees than companies that don’t. Work life balance is not just about the employee and his benefit. Hall reports that businesses lose an estimated staggering value of $300 billion in a year as a result of over-stressed and unhappy employees (2006). Companies do not want burned out, unhappy employees with little creativity and imagination. In fact, the richer and deeper an employee’s overall life, the more productive and creative he is going to be at work. The personal life and experiences of a person give him this depth and perception. A work life imbalance has a full-circle dominoes effect which starts with the employee and affects his work, his family, the company, the community and the government. These losses are emotional as well as monetary. When drafting the work-life balance plan, managers need to understand that this is not just about giving employees a so-called break, but also utilizing resources in such a way that the goodwill and creativity of the entire team is included in the mix. Clutterback (2003) argues that work life balance is a useful by product of effectively managed teams. Once team members understand each other and are ready to collaborate, the work life balance for each individual will flow into the cycle as the team members complement each other. In actuality, this will enhance team coordination, respect and overall culture of the organization as well. This means that the company does not have to develop concrete plans and boardroom strategies to enable this balance: all it must do is allow work-life balance to happen. Another important point is that the companies that offer work life balance initiatives also have lower chances of employee attrition. When an employee is happy, not only will he have no reason to leave the company, but will also recommend and advertise the company to other people and customers. Balanced work will translate into lower absenteeism as well: many people have to take the day off to run personal errands or go to their kids to a school event or PTA, etc; when they have balanced work with their personal lives, they will get more done in little time without missing work. These employees are the face of the company and are one of the most efficient and cheapest method of enhancing company image to stakeholders. That is ideal for a business. This balance is especially important for women as they are the natural and primary care giver of children. Furthermore, in later decades of their lives when their own children are older, the women are faced with the responsibility of caring for the aging parents. In line with the care-giving role for children, women are also assumed to hold the responsibility of elderly parents in many cultures, notes Caproni is his study on Work-Life balances (2004). This means that companies with strong respect for work-life balance will have more women employees also. As a non-monetary strategy and one that does not directly interfere with the time spent working for the company, the management can encourage the staff to take out time from their personal lives in doing things that give pleasure and are relaxing. Other than that, companies should encourage activities like going jogging, beach events, swimming galas, etc. which do not require a lot of money spending but at the end of the day allow staff to relax and unwind. This will bring balance into their lives. These initiatives do not overburden the company’s budget as most of these initiatives are carried out by individual employees; on top of that, these strategies can, as pointed out by Tucholka and Weese, actually translate into cost reduction in the long run for the company (2007). The company can save a lot of money by employee retention, lesser money spent on recruitment, higher levels of employee job satisfaction and higher productivity and efficiency. Argument Against Work Life Balance It is very difficult demarcating the line between work time and play time, so to say. If work is brought home, in the case of work from home initiatives for example, there is always likelihood that work time will be increased by thoughts like “Just a few more minutes and I will complete this project”; conversely, the play time will also extend as there will always be incentive to extend family and kids’ time. In this sense, there is no end to work. Another aspect of this is that the boss can expect more work to be done over and above the previously agreed upon hours, whether that work is compensated or not. Any person who is trying to achieve work life balance will try to objectify all the activities in his life and give weight to it in terms of the monetary or physical benefit it is giving him. In other words, simple things will need to have some sort of objectifiable meaning. For this purpose, the employee will most likely fabricate ways of cutting down on activities that give him only pleasure, and no other benefit, in order to save time and energy. Such activities contribute greatly as de-stressors but will unfortunately land very low in his list of priorities. To achieve the supposed ’Work Life balance’ and gain benefit from it, one must learn to live it in every aspect of one’s life. The downside of this is that the efficiency and the accounting of every minute becomes a habit to the person. Caproni argues that this efficiency spills over to other aspects of one’s life such as relationships with partner, children or parents in which efficiency adds no value and can actually be detrimental , argues Caproni (2004). Newer technologies and gadgets such as Skype and Blackberry and the internet in general have brought work very conveniently to the home. While these are offered by companies to be useful at times when the employee cannot be physically present in office for some reason, these are very easily and often abused. These gadgets tend to creep into the life, personal hours and holidays of employees, says OLoghlin (2010), which makes them constantly available for work. The employee is expected to be available on these media, even when vacationing in a foreign country. This wreaks havoc on the brain as employees are never able to completely relax with work pressures and deadlines constantly revolving around at the back of one’s mind. Irrespective of all the effort a company makes, it is impossible – or at least has proved to be so far – to create initiatives that satisfy the work and personal lives of all employees. There will always be some that are neglected and not included in the initiatives offered by the company. This can lead to resentment among some employees over others, leading to conflict. This is actually a drawback of most resource related plans as they have to be standard across the board, without exceptions. All of the above have every tendency of resulting in confused and unhappy employees. Conclusion This analysis leads us safe to conclude that there is actually no question of having work life balance initiatives in the company or not. Apart from the benefits discussed in this paper, these initiatives are the norm today and are expected from the best of companies. Therefore, not having any work-life balance policies goes strictly against the business interest. These practices enhance the marketability of the company to new hires as well. For example, between a company that does not offer flexible hours but a higher pay and another one which offers a lower pay but flexible hours, the latter will be more attractive to men and women having young children. In essence, the former company loses out on a whole group of potential employees just because it does not offer that work life balance. Research conducted for this paper surmises that the company mostly gains by incorporating work-life balance policies into its business and HR plan. These benefits affect the culture, overall employee satisfaction and most importantly, the bottom line (through reduced costs). On a personal level, that is, for the employee, work life balance is extremely beneficial if he or she is able to manage it properly. This includes managing how much time and attention to give to both aspects of one’s life given the greater freedom and time management opportunity. White and his team of researchers (2003) found out that the most important factor determining whether work tension spills over into personal life, irrespective of gender differences, is the amount of actual hours spent working. This spillover not only causes stress for the employee, but also strains his relationships. The method to reduce this spillover is better management of work-life balance. This means that the employee should be more disciplined in knowing when to start work and when to stop and managing to complete his day’s tasks in that time period. After the ‘finish’ time, work should be discontinued and should have no effect on the personal life and activities. This requires a lot of discretion, understanding (Albert 2011) and management on the part of the employee. Failure to effectively manage this liberty and autonomy with time refutes the purpose of work life balance. References Albert E 2011, Single. Women. Entrepreneurs, EBooklit.com, IN CM Wood 2008, “Work-life balance”, IEEE Engineering Management Review Caproni P 2004, Work/Life Balance – You Can’t Get There From Here”, The Journal OF Applied Behavioural Science, 40(2) Clutterback D 2003 Managing the Work-Life Balance, CIPD Publishing, WA Hall K 2006, A Life in Balance, AMACOM Div American Mgmt Assn, NY Tausig M & Fenwick R 2001, ‘Unbinding Time: Alternate Work Schedules and Work-Life Balance’, Journal of Family and Economic Issues, 22(2) Tucholka A & Weese S 2007, ‘Work-life Balance and Health Care Benefits - Essential Forms of Modern Life-cycle Benefits’ GRIN Verlag, Germany OLoghlin J 2010, How to Balance Your Life: Practical Ways to Achieve Work/Life Balance, ReadHowYouWant.com, NSW, AU White M, Hill S, McGovern P, Mills C & Smeaton D 2003, “‘High-performance’ Management Practices, Working Hours and Work–Life Balance”, British Journal of Industrial Relations, Vol 41, no 2, 175–195 Read More