Work Life Balance

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,

In the case brought to us in the text, it gave us two examples of employees seeking work life balance. The first example is a man that has risen in the ranks at his company. Instead of having less working as he had thought, he faced much longer work hours with very little time with his family. In the second example a woman is looking at changing companies and in her negotiations she negotiates items such as a flexible work schedule. Although this option works well for the women it does not work for every employee.

Work-life balance is a concept that supports the efforts of employees to split their time and energy between work and the other important aspects of their lives. It is a daily effort to make time for family, friends, community participation, spirituality, personal growth, self-care, and other personal activities, in addition to the demands of the workplace. Work-life balance will vary for each person and will change throughout life.

Explain (in 1 or 2 paragraphs) why it is important to maintain a work/life balance.

In a 2002 survey conducted by TrueCareers job site, seventy percent of 1,500 workers revealed that they have poor balance between their work and their personal lives. These results come to no surprise to any workers who devote all of themselves to the public, while abandoning themselves and their families. At work, employees are playing the roles of what others expect them to be, but when they are away from work, who are they really? When one stops to think about it, there are so many ways to turn one 's hectic work days into therapeutic and fun-filled days by simply discovering one 's interests and making them a priority. After-work activities to choose from vary according to one 's personality type, interests, and mood. For instance, some people enjoy the outdoors, while others prefer the indoors; some people like to always stay busy while others may want a breather every now and then. People with various preferences may choose a number of approaches to relaxation and renewal as listed below: Activities for people who love recreation and fitness (the kinesthetic type) 1. Playing with children or pets outside (helps to bring out one 's "inner child") 2. Exercising by going to the gym, walking, cycling, playing tennis, swimming, or bowling 3. Gardening (Planting or tending to flowers and crops) Activities for people who love meditation or reflection 1. Writing a poem, a short story, or a passage in one 's journal (releases one 's feelings and keeps things in

Hill, E. J., Hawkins, A. J., Ferris, M. and Weitzman, M. (2001), Finding an Extra Day a Week: The Positive Influence of Perceived Job Flexibility on Work and Family Life Balance*. Family Relations, 50: 49–58. doi:10.1111/j.1741-3729.2001.00049.x

In today’s world many people are trying to balance their work and their personal life which can be a huge challenge. There have been studies showing that having a poor work life balance can cause an unhealthy level of stress; unhappiness and it can actually reduce productivity. Also many people suffering from poor work life balance can find it impacts their relationships and ability to actually enjoy and value their lives.

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.

I believe that it is extremely important to have mutual support from colleagues for the best work-life balance. If your colleagues understand that you have obligations at home or children at home then there wont are much debate when they need you to do extra things at work. They will already know that unless you tell them so that you cannot stay past the time you come to work or that you can’t come to work early because you have life obligations. In order to leverage my colleague’s support as a administrator I would want everyone to gather initially to discuss what our obligations are outside of our job so that everyone can understand the needs of

An increasing number of people especially in the western industrialized countries of the world are working longer hours than people did in the past few decades. As a result, less time is being spent on activities such as family care or leisure, creating an imbalance of time spent between work and home life. In Britain for example, prospects for a work-life balance for many workers appear to be slipping away; Britons work the longest number of hours in Europe and one in six work more than 60 hours a week! (Crush, 2011).

Options for flexible work schedules--once nonexistent--have become a reality, with benefits for workers and employees alike. Job sharing, compressed work weeks, reduced hours, work at home, and flextime have provided employees with the means to realize a better balance between work and family and an opportunity to engage simultaneously in more than one endeavor, e.g., school and work, two careers, and work and leisure. They can also lead to economic and emotional stress and to limited opportunities for professional growth. This Digest examines flexible work options, including the characteristics of workers who select them, the organizations that offer them, and the influence they have on worker

Since there have been no significant results Cicei (2015) conducted a study in this article to examine the relationship between the flexibility benefits used and work-family conflict, focusing especially on the role flextime and telecommuting (Cicei, 2015). To validate whether flexible work arrangements have a negative effect on work and family conflict, the conducted study examined the relationship between the use of flexible work arrangements and three forms of work family conflict. The flexible work arrangements utilized in the study included flextime, compressed workweek, telecommuting, and part-time work (Cicei, 2015). The three forms of work conflict were time-based, strain-based, and behavior based (Cicei, 2015).

Work–life balance isn’t only about families and childcare. Nor it is about working less in the workplace. It’s about working smart and being fresh enough to give us all we need for both work and home, without hampering

There is a problem with health related issues in Black women involved in leadership roles. Despite the decline of Black women in professional roles, most encounter the task of attempting to balance work-life and home with a husband and kids. According to a poll conducted by the Washington Post and the Kaiser Family Foundation, forty percent of black women say they experience frequent stress, compared with 51 percent of white women; stress associated with ensuring a suitable lifestyle and working against the stereotypes created by society (Thompson, 2012). Warner (2014) compiled an online fact sheet that notes women of color make up 36.3 percent of the nation’s female population and approximately