How Managers Understand And Manage The Work Family Balance Practices

Thesis Statement: Today, many working families are having issues finding a good balance between work and family life. There are options available for those who seek help to find a better balance between the two. Many of these options range from organizational practices or policies, training, corporate involvement and even laws.

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.

Strategies that can be done to support the families are first, “employment training programs that are geared to traditionally higher paying jobs, second, offering employment training programs for jobs that gain higher wages, such as employment in office administration, health services, trades, etc. should be explored” (R.A. Malatest & Associates LTD, 2006. p. 56). In addition, employment and training programs should be increased to better meet the needs of families. Lastly, flexibility in working schedule “organizations should provide formal supports such as family-oriented policies and benefits (e.g. parental leave, ability to take time off and make it up later, flex-time, job sharing, sick child care, and flexible work arrangements), which give employees autonomy over their hours and their absence from work. Second, the organization can supply a number of informal supports such as a family-friendly organizational culture (e.g. flexibility around hours and location of work) and supportive managers, which may help employees, deal with work–life conflict” (Higgings, Dusbury, & Lyons, 2008. p. 31). If these strategies are being implemented, it will help single parent balance their work place and family domain and reduce the risk of unhealthy living among lone-parent families. In addition, it will increase the level of commitment they utilize for the organization and their families in a healthy

It is important for employers to ensure that their staff can maintain a work-life balance and this will provide its own benefits for them, such as:

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.

it tough, now more than ever, to balance work with a family. The standard used to be

My recommendation to work-family conflict is to alter the conflict that causes employees to develop negative attitudes toward work due to an unbalanced life between their job and family, thus this can be remedied by some of the following suggestions of implementing workplace flexibility to allow families to plan their work lives and their family lives. Also, instituting short term and extended leave from work as well as including paid time off for family and medical leave and paid sick days are great benefits to reduce work-family conflict. Likewise, other recommendations include managers, allowing employees to tackle the small stuff during work time such as taking care of household-related tasks while at work, such as paying bills or arranging plans by phone. All the more another suggestion could be to leave work early in order to take care of family responsibilities, or coming in earlier or taking work home to accomplish the needed work. Equally important to emphasize is the fact that many households entail both parents working and thus there is not sufficient amounts of time being spent with family for recreational activities and just the idea of spending time with one another. Now more family oriented policies have been implemented to foster efforts for on-site day care accessibility for employees and even going as far as to pay for child care costs or implementing programs to assist employees purchasing their first home.

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.

My beliefs and view on the gender ideology towards work and family is more weighed on one side (Masculine) and partly on the other (Feminine). It is evident that the ‘Masculine’ gender is more dominant in our society and because of this; there is more expectation and responsibility for the masculine gender. However, there is a continual inclusion trend in which we are witnessing the feminine gender assume some roles of the masculine gender. But overall, the masculine effect is still dominant. I personally feel that there should be a good balance of work and family responsibility by the men. It is necessary that the ‘Men’ are mostly responsible for taking the role of the breadwinner of the family therefore, the working hours of the men would have to be met as required by the employer. For example, working 40 hours a week is the minimum in the US but varies in some other places. In a case whereby the man has to take an overtime shift just to meet the needs of the family.

For this paper, I will analyze three pieces of literature; a website article “Work/Life Balance for working Single Parent!” Published in Divine Caroline, a magazine article “Working Parents’ Strategies for Balancing Employment and Child Care” with an anonymous author published in Jet Magazine, and a Journal Article “Balancing Work and Family: A Literature and Resource Review” by Gary L. Hansen.

The generalizability of published studies related to harmonising the work and family domains are uncertain. The topic have been carried out in several studies investigating on aspects such as influencing the impact of practices in particular frameworks (Wood & Stephen, 2007; Beham et al., 2012; Stock et al., 2013). As earlier scholar in this work and family interaction, Rapoport and Rapoport (1965) reported that the effectiveness of the interaction between work and family domain involves a certain amount of conflict. This is because of a serious changing point in work and family role systems. Thus, in this study, we will disclose the important factors associated with the balancing role between work and family at the workplace. Some of these factors include personal variables, individual personalities, line-manager attitudes, macro-socioeconomic and cultural values (Dávila de León & Finkelstein, 2011; McCarthy et al., 2010; Poelmans et al., 2003). They are most common influences’ on work and family practices or programmes and have been identified based on the challenges faced by the employees at the workplace.

In recent years, employees were faced with more challenges between work and family, due to a series of changes of demographic characteristics and workforce construction (Beauregard & Henry, 2009; Martins, Eddleston, & Veiga, 2002; Premeaux, Adkins, & Mossholder, 2007). For example, Australia has around 21,507,717 population, 90% are employed (either full-time or part-time), and about 45% of people work more than 40 hours a week (Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2011). Additionally, nearly half of the families are a couple with children, and around 70% of the parent(s) are working (Australian Bureau of Statistics 2011). Therefore, this essay will focus on managing the work-life conflict, since it has negative effects on job satisfaction and performances. There are two forms of work-life conflict, work-to-family conflict (WFC) and family-to-work conflict (FWC). It is defined as an interrole confliction, which is the participation of one role leading to difficulties of another role, such as work and family role (Greenhaus & Beutell, 1985 as cited by Premeaux et al., 2007). The following essay will describe the problem in more detail and then propose two types of recommendations (problem-oriented and emotion-oriented) to cope with the conflict between work and family. Finally, the pros and cons of the solutions will be addressed.

There used to be a time when the borders between professional life and personal life were fairly clear. But, in today 's world, it has become a norm that to become successful in your career, you have to compromise your personal life. Maintaining work-life balance is a topic which is very much debated and discussed. Life balance involves all components of our life. For many, this includes career or paid work, child raising or elderly care, though not always, of course. No matter our circumstances, life balance is an important function of feeling satisfied in our lives. When our life balance is out of kilter, we might feel resentful, disappointed and burnt out, and our physical and psychological health may suffer.

The term work/life Balance has evolved around the idea of balancing work, life and family responsibilities in 1986 in USA. The concepts of work/life balance, work/family balance, work/life conflict, work/family conflict have gained prominence in the recent years due to the changes in the society and the workplace. The role of male as breadwinner is no longer relevant as more and more women are coming out to work and support the family in the best possible way(Charlesworth et al, Rajadhyaksha and Bhatnagar, 2000). With workplaces becoming more gender balanced (Bardeol et al, 2000), the ‘degendered’ workplace, ‘equally cohabited by men and women’ (Zetlin and Whitehouse, 1998), is exploring Work/life Balance and Work/life Conflict as conditions equally applicable to both men and women.