Work-Life Balance Issues - Coursework Example

Question 4: Work-Life Balance

Work-Life Balance (WLB) refers to the concept of employees prioritising and balancing their professional work and family or off-work responsibilities. Hudson (2005) defines WLB in its broadest sense as “a satisfactory level of involvement or ‘fit’ between the multiple roles in a person’s life”. Julie Morgenstern proposes a simplified definition of WLB as “It (WLB) is not about the amount of time you spend working vs. not-working. It’s more about how you spend your time working and relaxing, recognizing that what you do in one fuels your energy for the other.” While there may not be one agreed definition for WLB, in essence, it means for a person to have the “right” combination of participation in paid work and other aspects of life. This combination is generally different for different persons and evolves with time for a given person with changing responsibilities for the person at work and/or at home.

It is not without reason that the famous cliché goes as “All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy”. Improper WLB not only affects employee behaviour and performance, but can also significantly impact the companies. Without a proper WLB, an employee could suffer from several medical issues including obesity, stress, depression, and other medical problems caused by these (Sterett). This leads to an increase in employee absenteeism and a drop in productivity.

Several studies and statistics support the need for WLB. A study has revealed for example that in UK, employees spend an average 49 minutes a day managing their emails while they manage to spend only 25 minutes a day playing with their children (Zdnet). Another research on the UK workforce market found that 73% of the full-time works wanted to spend more time with their family (Jones 2003). Further, the study found that nearly 36% of the employees in the survery said that they so tired in the evenings that they could sleep right after work. 60% of full time workers said that they employed someone for household work and 64.5% said they employed someone to look after their children. A pan-European research suggested that in UK the employees worked an average of 43.6 hours per week compared to 39.6 in France, 38.5 in Italy and 40.1 in Germany (Parsons 2002). Also, 44.8% of workers in UK believe that they have a high number of working hours.

Clearly, companies realise that there is a definite need to provide WLB program to their employees. The companies design their WLB programs keeping in mind that the people want to be able to have (DOL 2009):

• a good quality of life
• an enjoyable work life and career progression
• training and development
• good health
• affordable childcare or eldercare
• further education
• more money
• time to travel
• time with friends and family
• time to do sports and hobbies
• time to do voluntary work

Some of the examples of how companies have provided certain benefits to their employees to help them better manage their WLB are:

• Flex-timing: This refers to companies allowing their employees to choose the timing for their job. They are told the minimum number of hours they need to put in work. For example, some employees might prefer 9AM to 5PM kind of timing while other might prefer 8AM to 4PM. Flex-timing allows employees to choose their own job timing.
• Working hours change: Some companies may allow their employees to change from a 5-day work week to a 4-day work week. Or even with 5-days work week, the employee may work for les number of hours per day. This allows the employees more free time to engage in other personal activities.
• Compressed working weeks: Under this program, the employees are allowed to work longer on some days and take other days off. For example, an employee might work 10 or 12 hours a day for some days and take a day off in lieu of this.
• Job sharing: Job sharing is mostly related to part-time working. It refers to having 2 employees for the same job. One of whom may work on Mon-Tue-Fri and the other can cover the other two days. Alternatively, one employee might work in the morning and the other in the afternoon.
• Telecommuting: Telecommuting refers to working from home. This is really for the white collar workers who can access their work on computers from home. The employees may be required to report to a centralised or satellite office on set times. As long as the job is being done, the employee can get significantly high degree of flexibility in his/her time at work and off-work.
• Child care and elder care program: Some companies may either internally provide a crèche and/or an elder care home, or have a tie-up with a facility close to the office with timings in accordance with the office timings. This helps the employees solve their problems of child/elder care with relative ease.
• Special leaves: Longer maternity and paternity leaves, special days-off for marriage (self/near and dear ones) are some examples of how companies support their employees on special occasion that demand extra responsibilities of employees. Some companies, in France for example, even offer a day off for moving to a new house.
• Sabbaticals: Some companies allow their employees to take sabbaticals either to complete higher studies or even for them to pursue a personal project. The employees may be full or partially paid during this time especially if the sabbatical is taken to complete studies that would benefit the companies later.
• Vacations: Some companies allow employees to take longer vacations or even allow them to align their vacations with those of their kids. This brings immense relief for parents who must plan their vacations according to school holidays of their kids. Also, some companies even make taking a certain minimum number of vacations mandatory for employees
• Overtime compensation: Some companies pay higher wages for the number of hours that an employee works over the normal working hours
• In-house store/services: Some companies provide additional services to their employees like dry-cleaning, grocery shopping etc. This saves the employees a lot of time from off-work duties.
• Concierge services: Some companies provide concierge services to their employees so that they do not have to worry about collecting postal deliveries.
• Gym subsidies: Some companies either provide an in-house gym subscription to which is at subsidised prices. Other companies may provide subsidies for gyms outside work.

The WLB programs naturally mean some cost for the companies. These costs are however more than recovered with the benefits of the WLB program. Some benefits that the companies have realised through the WLB are:

• 29% employers report the biggest benefit as “a happier workforce” (DTI)
• 71% companies report a positive effect of WLB on employee relations, 69% on employee commitment and motivation, and 54% on labour turnover (DTI)
• 28% employers report no problem using the WLB. 22% reported that there was a problem but it was only related to being short-staffed (DTI)
• Nearly 50% employers believed that WLB had positive effect on recruitment, absenteeism, and productivity (DTI)
• By introducing WLB, the absenteeism in BT (British Telecom) is 3.1% compared to 8.5% average for UK (Jones 2003).
• Hill et al (1998) in a study of 157 teleworkers and 89 traditional office workers, found higher productivity from the teleworking group. Another review of telecommuting studies reported measurable productivity increases of between 10% and 30% (Pitt-Catsouphes and Marchetta,1991 cited in Hill et al, 1998)
• By introducing a WLB, The PNC Bank found a saving of $112,750 in turnover costs in seven months of its introduction. Also, IBM and Ernst & Young have seen higher revenues and stock prices connected to employee flexibility options (Working Families, 2006)
• According to another study of self-perceptions of employees using the WLB, 42% employees who were very satisfied with the WLB reported that their productivity had increased significantly. (Working Families, 2005)

Despite the huge advantages of WLB programs, not all companies yet offer a WLB to their employees. Some of the perceived drawbacks of WLB that prevent companies from doing so are:

• Employing more part-time workers to cover the absence of employees taking WLB may lead to higher costs for the company.
• For job sharing aspect of the WLB, it may take longer to recruit, administer and train two part-timers than one full-timer to cover the same hours of work. In addition providing continuity of service may be more difficult.
• For overtime, it may be a moral hazard as employees might deliberately work slow to earn overtime compensations
• Flex-timing may also lead to higher cost for the company due to administration cost. This may be due to cost of keeping records, extra heating and lighting. Also supervising employees across different timings may be more difficult to manage.
• For compressed working weeks, it may be difficult to schedule work on the days of longer work. Also, if the work is interdependent on other employees, this program may not be very successful in increasing the productivity
• Telecommuting may be costly for providing the right technology to the employees. Also it may be difficult to communicate with the employees in case of technical glitches. Further, training and development of employees also suffer due to this.
• Sabbaticals may be costly for replacing the employee on sabbatical. Also it may increase the training cost for bringing the employee to the right level of training on return from a sabbatical.

The WLB programs have several advantages for the employees and the employers. At the same time, there are some drawbacks with introducing the WLB program. These drawbacks, however, can be eliminated or significantly reduced by customising the WLB depending on an organisation’s structure and the industry they operate in. In the long term, the benefits of WLB definitely outweigh the costs as has been seen by number of companies through productivity increases, reduced absenteeism, and the generally higher job satisfaction of the workforce.