Work and Life Association - Essay Example

Name: Course: College: Course Tutor: Date: 18th April 2009 Work and life relationship is usually a major issue between employers and employees. Many a times, the employer ends up basing the employee’s term in form of working hours and the remuneration too is subject to the working hours. The controversy between work and life balance is the main reason why there are shifts at places of work. This is because the employers are more concerned with production while the employee is concerned both with production and their life that waits outside a work place. Lack of a balance between work and life either leads to laxity at work due to under working or stress due to overworking. Scholars have maintained a hard-line on the fact that work should always come first and life later and therefore it should always be apportioned more time. This is mainly evident in books written by human resource scholars. Human resource practitioners, tend to argue the same as scholars. On the other hand, governments, who are most of the employers in today’s world, consider having a proportional work life balance. This is because a government will consider both the productivity of a citizen and the social endeavours of the same citizen. To have a fair approach to the work-life issue, governments therefore strike a balance between work and life. The workers on the other hand will always want a system that gives them more relaxation time unless they are in management and they have targets to meet. The worker’s rank in an organization therefore serves as a determiner of the work life boundary that a worker sets. (Levey et al, 1998) The new economy is the current economic times that are faced with high competition between companies and therefore productivity of a company is challenged to a step-up. Step-ups are mainly implemented to keep up with the pace of competitors and also to increase profits. There are variables that come along with the new economy like the credit crunch that is hitting most of the countries in Europe and America. This has made most of the world business managers to change their models of running their investments to more efficient and cost effective models. With such measures in place, the productivity per worker is greatly considered and therefore a high proportion of the workers are forced to increase their work hours and reduce their life hours. The new economy is a terminology which is used to describe the changes in the business world since the adaptation of the computer technology in the world the internet technology. The internet technology changed the business operational aspect that existed before. (Levey, 1998). The contemporary world of work is the current situation of work where many working organizations are faced by problems like management and financial challenges. This has brought about high levels of competence in organizations across all working organizations in the world. This has brought about a complete overhaul in the work environment starting from hiring by the organizations. It is evident that most of the organizations are hiring individuals who are way above average graduates. Employers are also looking beyond the resumes of interviewees and they are even forced to call the organizations where one was working in the past. This is mainly because the current work environment needs a person who can keep up with the pace of dynamicity of the work environment. (Doris, 2005) Employers will prefer an individual who can easily multitask, or rather, a jack of all trades such that if need arises, the person can work in other departments and not necessarily the department in which the individual was trained. Such a person has to be a fast leaner and a person of keen interest to ensure that they quickly grasp the operations of various business systems and fit into them as fast as possible. Organizations will consider an individual who is ready to sacrifice some of their life hours for work or a person who is ready to walk an extra mile. (Bottero, 2004) The relationship between work and life is usually the way in which an individual operates at work and after work. In many cases, people will carry the stress they had at work home and therefore the brain does not switch from the work environment to the environment of life out of work. Such a person will easily be stressed up at work when there is an issue that is disturbing them at home and vice versa. On the contrary, there is another individual who really enjoys working time and is very cooperative, lively and jovial while at work. Such a person will never even speak about their life and they are very efficient at work, meeting deadlines and even having brilliant ideas when there a problem arises at the work place. Such people will never speak about their work while they are away from work and they have a clearly defined work life boundary. Though people of this kind are not common, once in a while they will show up for an interview and recognizing one will be easy since they exude the working energy within them and they have a great attitude all the time. Such people easily rise up management positions since they always have a vision and once their eyes are set on targets, they hardly veer off. (Levey 1998). There is another group of workers where most of the employed people fall, their relationship between work and life is not defined at all. They will be very efficient at times while at work and the next moment they can’t concentrate since they have life problems that keep lingering in their minds. Such people are not conscious of their behaviours at work or in life and they adopt the mood that best suits a certain moment. Work life balance is the point of equilibrium that an individual sets such that they work proportionately up to that point and also enjoy life away from work proportionately up to the same point. In other words, work life balance simply revolves around two aspects one of them being the daily achievement and the other one being enjoyment for they are the first leads in life value and fulfilment. This is so because the perfect life balance is different for the other because each and every person has his/her own priorities in life. Nevertheless work life balance can be said to be the balancing between work responsibilities and those of the family or personal life and having the control over how, when, where an individual works. The work life balance will most of the time favour the work side since the contemporary world of work is leaving very little time for relaxation. This is mainly determined by time since most of the people work by time limits. It could also be affected by the volume of work that a person accomplishes and therefore the work life balance varies depending on the individual and the above factors. Most of the workers in the contemporary world of work will not have a work life balance mainly because their working hours are determined by the employer and secondly because they have targets that sometimes require extra effort. This leaves the work life balance to the management who are in charge of making decisions. In management the work life balance can work but it will also depend on the independence of the individual. (Doris, 2005) Work life boundary is a limit that is set by a working individual beyond which they cannot work. This is not common since most of the working individuals do not enjoy independence at their work place. The work life boundary is therefore blurred in many cases. On the other hand, there is a group of workers who firmly believe that they must have this boundary but these are mainly contractual workers whose contract terms do not define their working hours. Instead, they are given a certain period of time within which they should hand in the completed work and since they negotiate with the employer about the contract performance period, they do so basing their argument on the work life boundary. A working individual who has two regular jobs could also maintain a work life boundary that serves as a schedule to ensure that they do not miss appointments or get to work late. (Doris, 2005) There exist similarities and differences between work life boundary and work life balance though in most cases, they depend on each other. The main factor that makes the two differ is the situation where they are applied. (Doris, 2005) The similarities include and the differences include Both are only practical when there is a clearly defined time period by an individual. This implies that both work only where there is effective planning void of any inconveniencing circumstances. Both can either be set by the working organization on behalf of the workers or by individuals. The latter is the better setter of both since they set them based on self analysis. The work life balance is easily maintained unlike the work life boundary since the balance is dependent on variables and changes with change of the same while the boundary is fixed. The work life balance and the work life boundaries are vividly visible in the new economy and they play virtual roles in the contemporary world of work. This is because they are decisions that must be made by an individual and when an individual is subject to instructions from ranks above, their decisions become insignificant. This has brought about the current situation where work hours have consumed a great portion of the life hours. The new economy does not respect the work life boundary. Instead, it is more concerned on productivity of an individual which is the main business of an organization. The new economy has come up with models that can only allow a working organization to set both the work life balance and boundary for their workers instead of the workers setting them for themselves. This is mainly because the organizations plan the time for their workers and they take better part of the worker’s time. The contemporary world of work is now looking for workers who are inconsiderate of the work life balance and boundary. (Levey et al, 1998) In conclusion, it is evident that the new economy is focused on the welfare of the working organizations more than that of the workers and this has brought about the contemporary world of work that does not recognize both the work life balance and the work life boundary. It is also clear that both the work life boundaries and balance rely on each other and this shows that there exists a great relationship between them. Efforts to achieve the work-life balance the world which is hysterically paced is not a simple task. In the work life balance, if an individual opts to spend more time at his/her place of work than that they spend at home, they will actually miss out on a rewarding personal life. Every time one is faced with the challenge their personal life, for instance caring for an aging parent or coping with marital problems, concentrating on your job can be difficult. It will not matter whether the problem is much in focus on work in bunch or too little, when your work life and your personal life feel out of balance, stress along with its harmful effects is the result. One can be able to control of work-life balance and giving time to do other things that of greater importance to them. To achieve this however, one should recognize the changes that have taken place in the world of work and then evaluate their relationship to work and then apply some strategies that are specific for striking a healthier balance. Bibliography Hyman, J., Scholarios, D., & Baldry, C. (2005). Work, Employment & Society. Vol:19, 705-725 . Lyness, K. S., & Judiesch, M. K. (2008). Management Personnel. Journal of Applied Psychology, , pp. 789-805. Clark, S.C. (2000). 'Work/family border theory: a new theory of work/family balance'. Human Relations, 53: 6, 747. Hall, D.T. and Richter, J. (1988). 'Balancing work life and home life: what can organisations do to help?' 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