WORK LIFE BALANCE

Work Life Balance

Work Life Balance

Introduction

Contemporary organizations are taking initiatives to maintain social and work-life balance of employees. It requires addressing the factors such as working timings, personal life-related stress, and family related responsibilities to improve the performance of employees. Companies are changing the term of work/family or family-friendly to work/life or lifecycle for portraying wide range of issues that affect the workplace. This conveys the message that work/life balance programs are for providing benefit to every employee in company. RHI Management Process conducted a study which showed that managers are identifying the importance of organizational support for balancing work and social life of employees. Work life balance programs range in four dimensions which include Time-Based Strategies, Information-Based Strategies, Money-Based Strategies, and Direct Services. This paper discusses the work life balance strategies, employee retention, arguments in favor of and against the work life balance initiatives.

Work Life Balance

Different scholars have explained the concept of work life balance as the association among the cultural times, institutions, different fields of work and non work in the societies, in which the income is primarily originated and disseminated through labor markets. While some of the scholars have restrained the subject with family and work and have further carried the idea of “balance life” with a lot more point of view (cipd.co.uk). They described the work life balance as satisfying the requirements adequately within the three main aspects of life; family, work and private. The work demands for work hours, intensity of work and quantity of work hours utilized at the place of work. Extra work hours are deducted from home time, whereas maximum intensity of work or work pressure may act as tiredness, fretfulness or some other undesirable physiological outcomes that can influence the value of family and work life. Requirements from an individual as the role of family members include mother or father etc. Responsibilities of family e.g. house chores, childcare etc, taking care of the old members, children's. Along with this, some other demands are also there relating to work life balance than work and family life relaxation, sports, vacation and an individual's development programs (Carsen, 2002, pp. 125).

Balance of work life is not actually the distribution of time equally between family, work and personal requirements. It has been also focused that work life balance is particular experience that varies from an individual to individual. In this context, work life balance can be considered as distribution of the existing resources such as time, thought and labor intelligently among all phases of life (cipd.co.uk). Whereas some accept the values and beliefs of working to live and looks work as purposeful and objective, while some take it as living to work and place work into the center of life.

Work Life Balance Practices in Organisations

Work life practices are viewed as “those which, whether intentionally or not, increase the flexibility and autonomy of the worker in negotiating attention and presence in employment”. Diverse work life balance practices and programmes have been developed to facilitate the retention ...