Balancing Work Life and Home Life

Work-life balance has been a popular topic for employees across all age and occupations for years, representing a rising concern of contemporary human resource management and labor policies. This topic has attracted the attention from the millennium generation, who is stepping into the market and beginning to grow a career. Therefore considering the increasing demand, well-designed workforce planning with diverse scheduling options offered to employees appears to be extra credits for most companies. This research paper aims to communicate the positive effects of four-day workweek, and providing support for why employers should adopt this schedule for employees and themselves through 1) introducing background and history of four-day workweek as a work schedule option and 2) demonstrating benefits of four-day workweek from both employer and employees’ perspectives.

Thirty-eight percent of Americans report some tension between their work and home lives. Today’s highly publicized work/life balance conflicts are multiple, and their nature differs significantly depending on the jobs individuals have and on their family situations. Tensions between work and family life clearly have implications for the well-being of individuals and their children and ramifications for society in general. Yet because the personal needs, desires, motivations, and economic circumstances of Americans are so varied, there appears to be no single way to resolve these tensions, no universal best practices with regard to work/life balance. For example,

The Work-Life Balance: The career life and the personal life sometimes lead anxiety to women as they have to handle both their workplace and home at the same time smoothly.

Everyone has been told from one time or another – don’t bring your personal life to work, and vice-versa. Easier said than done. In our current economy, families are having to work harder, and longer thus leaving less time for family and creating stress and anxiety. One thing that has statistically shown why people are stressed at work and home – the instability of work-life balance. This paper exemplifies the barriers and measures one can take to secure the balance.

Arlie Russell Hochschild presents an interesting phenomenon in her work The Time Bind. She explains that “The more attracted we are to the world of work, the more its deadlines, its cycles, its pauses and interruptions shape our lives and the more family time is forced to accommodate to the pressures of work.” The attempt to balance personal and professional lives is a growing challenge for today’s working parents, who are seeing a change in the amount of time they spend at work and home, all of which depends on “the nature of a person’s job, company, and life at home.” In her book, Hochschild presents a case study of employees working at Amerco, a Fortune 500 firm that “had been identified as one of the ten most ‘family-friendly’ companies in America by the Families and Work Institute, by Working Mother magazine, and by the authors of Companies that Care.” In an attempt to keep from spending money to hire workers every time a parent left his or her position, Amerco began offering “options for part-time work, job sharing, and flextime,” only to find that many employees do not take advantage for their opportunities,

When working in an organisation it is important to maintain a work-life balance. This means that you are able to separate work life from your home life. It is important when working in an organisation to put in as much effort as possible into your role and to achieve goals that you have set yourself to impress employers and earn personal satisfaction. When you are in a work place for long periods of time it can be hard to shut off emotions that you are feeling at work ready for when you go home this means that when you go home sometimes you may still feel as though you are still at work, even if you enjoy your job this can be hard to deal with and can become too much for some people to handle. Not being able to maintain a work-life balance

The overall purpose of this project is to investigate if a work environment in which work life balance is anticipated and supported will provide positive impact on employees’ performance and attitude. In addition, this research will examine the current understanding of attitudes toward the concerns of work life balance across the gender roles. This review of qualitative data will provide answers to the following questions. First, would implementing a work life balance provide employees with a happier and

Thesis: When there is a cohesive balance between work and family life, it leads to a more productive working environment and family atmosphere.

Companies whose organizational design supports its employees’ work-life balance may be more financially successful than those that does otherwise. Many employees consider work-life balance more important than the monetary reward. Employees with a balanced personal and professional life demonstrate a better job performance than those who feel “pressured” in either their personal or professional life. In ideal situations, employer demands and employee’s ideal work situation rarely meet the middle ground, those who do, perceive that they are in control.. The purpose of this paper is to analyze the Healthcare Clinic’s organizational design based on the employees’ work-life balance.

The importance and impact of work-life balance is very significant as it affects and benefits a person in many ways. Professor of Psychology at California Polytechnic State University at San Luis Obispo, Shawn Burn, summarized it well when she said, “Work-life balance is important because it affects the well-being of individuals, families, and communities. After all, people need time and energy to participate in family life, democracy, and community activities. They also need time outside of work for rejuvenation, and to develop and nurture friendships and their ‘non-work selves.’” This is to say that work-life balance affects the wellbeing of individuals both at work, and allows for major developments for the non-working self as well. It is important that the two roles, an individual’s working and non-working self, enrich each other and do not take away from one another. Applying this concept in life will allow an individual

These types of workplaces have been directly linked to less work-family conflict (Kelly 267). By providing schedule control, employees have the ability to work closer to home and spend more hours a day with their families, decreasing the effects of negative work-family spillover. An example of this type of workplace would be the ROWE, results only work environment, initiative. At this workplace employees can do “whatever they want, whenever they want, as long as the work gets done” (Kelly 269). By setting this mentality in workers, they are far these prone to the work stress that triggers negative work-family spillover. According to the American Psychological Association psychologically healthier workplaces produce higher rates of employee satisfaction and 50% less employees reporting chronic work stress (“APA Center”). This then allows the workers a less likely chance of seeing any work-family spillover in their lives. As with every solution, creating psychologically healthy workplaces has its withdrawals and

Workers’ ability control their work environments greatly influences job satisfaction. When working mothers lack control over job conditions such as work hours, work-related stress can negatively affect the family. Working mothers who are able to control work conditions are better able to adapt to the demands of work and home. Given the negative effects of shift work and nonstandard work hours on family quality, organizations should implement corporate policies that offer workers more control over work.

Analyze about the quality relationship between paid work and unpaid responsibilities in an organization. The work life balance practices not only for employees themselves, but also for their families, organizations and society. The work-life conflict has significant relationship between business costs and with lack of engagement, absenteeism, turnover rates, low productivity and creativity or poor retention levels. It is also found that there are some factors of organizational work-life culture that may compromise availability and use of these practices.

When one thinks of work-life balance, one needs to determine what that means for them. Each person has an opinion of areas that are more and less important, but this is where it needs to fit the individual. “Work-Life Balance is not a problem to be solved. It is an issue to be managed,” according to Jim Bird, CEO of Worklifebalance.com (Bird, n.d.). The best way for companies to assist the employee achieve a work-life balance is through work-life training programs. Success at work is just a portion of work-life balance.

Research Question: How does technology impact the work-life balance for employees? Null hypothesis: Technology integration helps organizations attain the objectives of employee work-life balance. My survey was concerned with how much technology has been integrated into normal work life. In addition, the survey was to study how this technology has affected the work life balance of employees. This survey seeks to evaluate the value of technology in terms of its relationship with the achievement of work-life balance. Although not all employees can use technology or possess sophisticated technological devices, it is important to pinpoint the need for integrating technology in company strategies for the purpose of achievement of work-life balance among employees. I believe my survey can prove this strong correlation between work-life balance and technology.