Human Resource Management: Worklife Balance - Essay Example

Running Head: HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT (WORK-LIFE BALANCE) Human Resource Management (Work-Life Balance) s Name] Human Resource Management (Work-Life Balance) Introduction There has been growing interest among both academics and practitioners in the issue of work/life balance. This is doubtless a consequence of the fact that many UK employees work long hours - men in full-time jobs, in particular, work longer hours than those in any other European country (DTI, 2002). Furthermore, there is evidence from academic research that generational values differ (Brandth and Kvande, 251-267, 2001) and that young people today emphasise achievement of work/life balance more than their predecessors (Lewis et al, 2002). If this is the case, then organisations need to understand how any perceived 'imbalance' or conflict between work and non-work arises and by what means it might be alleviated if they are to motivate and retain their younger employees. This paper contributes to the work/life balance and work/non-work conflict literature by analyzing the literature of various studies, which examine the attitudes and experiences relating to work/life balance among UK, employees in the first 10 years of their careers. Specifically, the analysis explores the extent to which work/life balance matters, the extent to which it is being achieved and the factors that determine perceptions of work/non-work conflict, including the state of the psychological contract between employer and employee, work involvement and organisational support. The potential impact of work/non-work conflict on organisational commitment is examined, and the policy implications for employers considered. Discussion Corporate leaders understand that employees' work and family lives rare inextricably linked. They al ways have been but today, with increased pressures in both domains, the overlap and the challenges created are increasingly obvious and complex to resolve. Solving the paradox seated in an organisation's need to be optimally productive and the individual's need to find quality time to meet domestic responsibilities, to establish, maintain and grow relationships and to relax and re-charge, is the great challenge of the new millennium. Most managers have yet to overcome the conundrum for themselves let alone help employees resolve it in their lives. The prospects for easing the work/ life imbalance dilemma lie, at least in part, in establishing what is creating it. 'Know thy enemy' and so forth. Enemy number one must surely be the 'time distribution imbalance' trap - consistently committing too much time to work where this is having a detrimental impact on personal life. However, the concept of 'work-life balance' means different things to different people, and there are always shades of grey. What is an imbalance to one person is perfectly acceptable to another. In addition, commercial realities cannot be ignored. Somehow, the needs of key customers and/or other stakeholders must be met or they will take their patronage elsewhere. These and the myriad of other related issues are why the problem is so vexed and why many leaders effectively suspend their attempts to solve it. It ends up in the 'too hard' basket. However, given the gravity of the problem and the potential upside that comes with finding a remedy, at some point the issue must come back to the fore. So where to start Most managers agree that a so-called 'quality work environment' reduces the employment stresses that can spill over to staff's personal lives and create distress. The quality work environment bundle might include job characteristics such as work time flexibility, individual responsibility and autonomy, the physical office environment, pay, equity and advancement conditions. Lastly, but certainly not least, the nature of interpersonal relations in the office is very important. For some time, it has been argued that achieving a 'balance' between home life and work life is increasingly a priority for many people. As long ago as the late 1980s, Scase and Goffee (2004) concluded that UK managers were becoming less interested in career success as it has been traditionally understood and more interested in a career that enhances personal lifestyles that are separate from, rather than subordinated to, work roles. This is supported by Schein's latest research theories of work-life balance, which shows that growing numbers of people are endorsing a 'lifestyle' career anchor (Schein, 2000). This implies that their primary career objective is to balance and integrate their personal needs, their family needs and the requirements of their career. A growing aspiration to balance work with other aspects of life can doubtless be linked to the long hours that many individuals have to devote to work. It is acknowledged that UK organisations have contributed to this by encouraging a long hour's culture, to the extent that more than 20 per cent of the total workforce and a considerably higher proportion of managers and professionals work in excess of 48 hours a week (DTI, 2002). This culture is partly perceived to be the result of downsizing and the more demanding workloads with which those who remain in employment must contend (Hakim, 2000). There is good evidence to indicate that the intensity of work - reflected, among other things, in perceived workload - has increased in recent years, and that this increase in intensity has been greater in the UK than in other European countries (Green, 53-80, 2001). It has been suggested that the relationship between work and non-work may be even more important to young employees than it is to other groups of workers. It is argued that, as a cohort, young people wish to develop and manage their careers on their own terms, with an important part of this career individualism being the achievement of balance between the work and non-work aspects of their lives (Loughlin and Barling, 543-558, 2001). This conclusion is supported by Lewis et al (2002) who, in a study of young peoples' values across four European countries including the UK, found evidence of a strong desire to lead a balanced lifestyle. Brandth and Kvande (2001) concluded that younger people were less likely to feel that work should be an important part of life than those of the same age a generation earlier. Work-life balance has been defined as 'satisfaction and good functioning at work and at home with a minimum of role conflict' (Clark, 2000: 751). As such, it is sometimes characterised by 'the absence of unacceptable levels of conflict between work and non-work demands' (Healey, 219-233, 2004). Thus, when demands from the work and non-work domains are mutually incompatible, conflict may occur. For this reason, a lack of balance between work and non-work is commonly conceptualised as work/family conflict or work/non-work conflict (Frone et al, 351-366, 2000; Duncan, 305-314, 2002). Such conflict can occur both when work roles interfere with non-work roles and vice versa. The focus of this paper is on the former relationship, as it considers work/life balance in the context of the impact of work on non-work. It is important to note that most previous research has examined a specific conflict between work and family roles. However, it is increasingly accepted that a broader definition of the non-work dimension is required if it is to encompass individuals other than those with 'traditional' family responsibilities, such as caring for children or parents (Kossek and Ozeki, 2000). Therefore, following Wallace (2001), this paper conceptualises the relationship as one of work/non-work conflict, not just work/family conflict. It has been shown that the number of hours worked contributes directly to feelings of work/non-work conflict (Frone et al, 351-366, 2000; Duncan, 305-314, 2002). However, other variables are also likely to have an important influence on the degree of conflict that may be experienced. For example, it is probable that the psychological contract - defined as an individual's beliefs, shaped by the organisation, regarding terms of an implicit agreement between the individual and the organisation (Rousseau, 2001) - is linked to experience of work/non-work conflict. A psychological contract emerges when the employee believes that 'a promise has been made and a consideration offered in exchange for it, binding the parties to some set of reciprocal obligations' (Rousseau, 2004: 123). Part of the employee's expectations that constitute the psychological contract may concern working hours and workload and the anticipated returns that are associated with this. If the psychological contract is breached in this regard, because individuals have to work longer hours than they had expected, then work/non-work conflict may be exacerbated (Guest, 649-664, 2000). Some previous studies have indicated that work involvement has a positive relationship with work/family conflict (Carlson and Perrew, 513-540, 2001; Adams et al, 11-420, 20004). Other research, conversely, suggests that individuals who are highly involved in their work do not necessarily experience work/non-work conflict (Guest and Conway, 2000). The degree of work/non-work conflict reported by individuals is also likely to be affected by employers' attitude to employees' out-of-work responsibilities (Greenhaus, 23-44, 2000). Carlson and Perrew (2001) have demonstrated that a supportive culture at work can reduce the degree of work/family conflict individual's experience. A supportive culture has also been shown to enhance the perception that an organisation 'cares' about its employees (Lambert, 801-815, 2000). There is a need for further elucidation of these relationships in the context of experience of work/non-work conflict by younger employees with fewer family responsibilities. While some negative links have been established between experience of work/nonwork conflict and organisational commitment (Kirchmeyer, 515-536, 2001), again this relationship has yet to be fully explored, especially among individuals in the early years of employment. If work/non-work conflict undermines commitment early in the career, this is especially significant because the early years at work are considered to be a crucial time for the establishment of organisational commitment (Meyer and Allen, 195-209, 2000); met expectations - for example, regarding workload - have been shown to be important for its establishment (Redman, 2006). In addition, the pressure to demonstrate commitment by working long hours is likely to be strongest in the early stages of the career (Coffey, 943-956, 2002), at the point when competition to succeed in the promotion tournament is fiercest (Rosenbaum, 220-241, 2000). The theory of work-life balance suggests that employees are drawn into a situation where they work increasingly long hours and experience an increasingly unsatisfactory balance between home and work. This is despite the fact that they claim they value this balance highly, aptly expressed in terms of a focus on 'working to live, not living to work'. The number of hours the employees work increases with tenure; and tenure in turn is associated with greater work/non-work conflict and a stronger belief that employers are not keeping the promises and meeting the expectations of employees regarding working hours and workload. The employees intimate that this is not a situation they are prepared to tolerate forever, and the theories of work-life balance suggest that the longer they do so the greater the lack of work/life balance they experience. The absence of a clear association between work/non-work conflict and a lower degree of organisational commitment does not mean that organisations can neglect this issue. In fact, the research theories of work-life balance suggest that work/life balance is an issue that organisations have to manage carefully. In particular, as employees gain more experience, they become increasingly disillusioned with the extent to which employers' promises and employee expectations regarding workload and working hours are met. Thus, organisations are breaching the psychological contract that exists between them and their employees in this regard. As managers themselves are aware, this is likely to have potentially damaging consequences, since there is strong evidence to suggest that unmet expectations can undermine organisational commitment (Redman, 2006). An 'expectations gap' - a discrepancy between what a person encounters on the job in the way of positive and negative experiences and what he or she expected to encounter (Porter and Steers, 151-176, 2001) - is frequently linked to retention problems. It is therefore important for organisations to be honest and clear about the workloads and hours they expect employees to encounter, both at the beginning of their career and during its early years. In addition, the level of employer support for out-of-work responsibilities and activities has a crucial impact on the extent to which employees experience conflict between work and home. It is negatively linked to experience of work conflict, and has a close positive relationship with organisational commitment. This indicates that individuals may be less likely to feel that their lives are out of balance if they know that their employer has some consideration for their lives outside work. This confirms the theories of work-life balance of previous studies (Carlson and Perrew, 513-540, 2001). Significantly, however, the theories of work-life balance suggest that this is an issue for all employees and is not only important for parents. It is noteworthy that, in the regression analysis, individual background and personal circumstances - including marital status and children - had no association with either work/life conflict or organisational commitment. This adds support to the argument that work/life balance matters to young professionals, regardless of their life circumstances, and that the perception that an organisation 'cares' about its staff can affect whether they feel they have the right balance between home and work or not. In the past, helping staff to balance work with home lives has generally meant offering a range of 'family-friendly' policies. The theories of work-life balances of this research suggest that employers need to adopt a broader perspective on policy regarding work/life balance in order to include those without conventional family responsibilities. Such a perspective may require organisations to attempt to combat a long-hours culture and increase the possibility of flexible working for all staff. Conclusion The theories of work-life balances confirm and extend existing research on work/life balance and work/non-work conflict in a number of ways. First, they confirm the theories of work-life balance of Lewis et al (2002), Smola, and Sutton (2002) that young workers place a high value on work/life balance, irrespective of any family responsibilities. They also show that the hours employees work undermine the possibility of achieving it. Secondly, related to this, they show that it is important to adopt frameworks that consider work/non-work conflict, rather than the more restricted notion of work/family conflict, thereby exploring the issue with workers of all ages and at all stages of their career and personal life. Thirdly, they highlight the important roles organisations can play in ameliorating work/non-work conflict for younger employees, both through support for out-of-work responsibilities and through the psychological contract, while also confirming the role of organizational support in maintaining organisational commitment (Eisenberger et al, 51-59, 2001). Finally, the theories of work-life balance show that while, as Schein (2000) notes, the 'lifestyle' career anchor has increased in prominence in recent years, the more traditional 'general managerial competence' anchor associated with a managerial career remains powerful for employees entering large organisations. Where values relating to these career anchors come into conflict, it appears that many employees decide in favour of emphasising the managerial career anchor, at least for a while and for as long as the rewards of career advancement are available and attainable. At the same time, they keep their competing priorities under review, and while they maintain their organisational commitment in the face of work/non-work conflict this appears to be very much a conditional commitment. Further longitudinal research is needed to confirm and explore in more detail the theories of work-life balance presented here. 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