Work-Life Balance

Work-Life Balance

Introduction

The world is endowed with elements of resources that transcend from natural to physical. Such resources are paramount to the creation of capital, technology, sources of livelihood and purpose among people. Essential to this realization is the competence of people required in the supply-chain model of manufacturing products and or service provision. From a broader perspective, it affects how well a nation thrives from both an economic and social perspective. From a systematic and smaller perspective, it impacts how well an organization, a business or an institution thrives in the current competitive market and transcending demand for diversity in skills, talent and knowledge-based workforce. Therefore, addressing the needs of the strategic human resource concept is a necessary element to achieve success regardless of the platform for a long time. One suggested structure is defining, conceptualizing and distinguishing the benefits of work-life balance among workers. The reason is that the present studies on work-life balance have shown results indicating that workers who are accorded work-life balance structure are more motivated, have improved individual performance and are quick to accept change in any organization. The present paper aims to delineate on work-life balance and exploit the topic from human resource management. The paper hopes to improve on current information regarding the merits and importance of work-life balance institutionalization in organizations as well as national policies to enhance personnel outlook on life.

Work-Life Balance

The greatest challenge that most organizations witness is the inability to bring about cost-effective measures within the human resource department without compromising on quality. The goal of this is ensuring that workers cultivate a culture of balance between their work life and home life. For years, the ability for companies to do so has always been challenged. In 1986, the term ‘work-life’ balance was created with the growing concern that individuals were complaining about how work-life was intruding in their home life. Initially, the term was referred to as ‘family-work conflict’ or vice versa. The ideology behind this coinage was that time at work took away time from family and vice versa. As a result, initiation of work-life programs was instituted in the 1900s in the United States of America and across Europe. As a result, it permitted workers to continue working while being given time for their families.

Despite the increased emphasis on caring more for human resource personnel, there is little regard on how to improve performance alongside career achievements. Extensive studies have concluded that in today’s world, the workforce suffers from a myriad of issues. These include obsolescence of skills, burnout, unemployment, disguised unemployment, hurdles in adjusting to changing economic climate and poor personnel practices. In part, economic researchers have blamed the loose and tight market structures that are geopolitically inclined to the increased limitations in workforce management and realization of potential. On the other, human resource studies have blamed the lack of poor management skills, policies and strategies in structuring the difference between absolute and relative needs of the human resource issues. These studies may present an umbrella understanding of ways in which organizations alongside nations are trying to boost productivity through dissecting the human resource framework. Nonetheless, there is little address on how to do so. Therefore, it brought about equilibrium between professional and non-professional lives.

With respect to the term, ‘work-life’ balance, the definition spans on professional and non-professional lives. Work-life balance can be determined as a state of equilibrium, in which the demand for both the professional and personal life is maintained. In other words, it is described as a means of being flexible working and being flexible leaving, which is available to the employees. The work-life balance gives the employees’ time for extra-career activities including improving their skills, continuing with their education, community or social work, hobbies or in general, family time. As such, it gives the term ‘work-life’ balance diverse meaning depending on how it is used. Specific sub-domains that explain the term have been used over the years. They include work-family, work-family conflict, family-friend benefits, work-life programs and work-life initiatives. Therefore, work-life balance has become a burgeoning element in any organization.

Despite the growing accommodation on work-life balance, aspects including changing economic conditions and demands have brought on diverse needs. Interestingly, it has changed the perception of survival and necessity when it comes to work-life balance. According to a survey conducted between men and women and their ideology about work-life balance, 82% of the men and 85% of the women showed that family time ranked highest in their work-life concerns. The age groups were between 20 and 39 years of age. The statistics underline a growing concern on how different factors, including culture, gender and ambition, play a critical role in how men or women perceive work-life balance. In today’s climate, personal and professional satisfaction alongside goal attainment is regarded as necessary in the work-life programs. In one end, the benefits accrued by any organization are enormous. On the other end, workers are attaining more in self-actualization, self-acceptance and self-realization than workers did in the past. Therefore, understanding the factors that contribute to work-life balance may shed light on why such programs are essential in the current economic climate.

Scope of Work-Life Balance

This section shall focus on two aspects: regulation and employee perception. With regulation, there is no direct administration or law regarding work-life balance. However, in-depth analysis of regulations that have existed in the past shows the governmental influence on how organizations are mandated to instil work-life balance. A comparative look at Europe shows that the region including Denmark, Finland and the United Kingdom have regulations in place to ensure that organization (either for-profit or non-profit) adhere to the policy on work-life balance. For instance, European Union workers are provided with twenty-paid vacation days in a year. In Belgium, it is required that individuals get 8.6 hours of leisure time a day. From a geopolitical view, these countries may not be comparable to the United States of America. However, the productivity rate is immeasurable in Europe compared to America. This is based on an International Labour Union survey on Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) in 2019 that showed the majority of the European countries ranked highest in work-life balance compared to America and the rest of the world. For example, according to the OECD survey, it showed that American spend at least 50 hours or more working (account for 11.4% of workers) and 11.4 hours for leisure or personal time.

On the other hand, Netherlands, 0.5% determined they work for long hours with dedicated 15.9 hours for leisure or personal time. The working theory is that Americans do not have a conceptualization on the term work-life balance. It is reported that in America, most workers receive fifteen days off per year, which means they get less vacation time than their European counterparts. The inclined argument is that European culture is generally profound to leisure pace compared to American culture. Therefore, work-life balance is a concept that is only individualized from an organizational level rather than a national level in America.

The idea of work-life balance is not shared equally among the different age groups. The reason is that responsibilities and interests often shift with age difference. According to studies, the challenge of balancing work and life becomes more difficult as workers progress in age. For example, work-life balance for adults who have families (more so, children) have difficulty balancing work-life compared to adults in the same age bracket without children. It gets worse when mid-life workers deal with two issues: children and ageing parents.

Nevertheless, individual aspects have been found to have more significant influence compared to cultural tenets. Employees who chose to stay unmarried still have critical and valuable interests and responsibilities outside work. For those with families, it is reported that their work-life balance is worse. Therefore, the idea that the organization indeed help to a certain degree in achieving work-life balance is often overlooked.

Work-Life Balance for Organizations

The work-life balance of the current generation is evolving compared to that of the previous generation. It may be attributed to the diversity in a change in societal needs. For instance, there is a growing trend of having single-parent households compared to the traditional two-parent household. As a result, this is characterized by increased parental responsibilities. Organizations that have implemented work-life balance programs are continually being riddled with more societal problems as well as individual problems. Addressing them has become a complex issue without having to compromise on quality or performance output. Therefore, organizations have to factor in a lot of human resource issues to ensure that workers competencies are not compromised.

Organizations are continually being forced to operate in unpredictable and volatile economic environments. The need to be more responsive to competitors has become a jargon with emphasis on why employee needs should be paramount if a business wants to achieve its success and align with the goals and strategies. Due to employee rights and importance, workers are pressurizing enterprises to be more rewarding to the personnel, including managing their lives outside their workplace, improving skill utilization and rewarding career achievements. As a result, it has compelled organizations to be more responsive and flexible with their workers. For instance, it has become common for workers to be productive while at home compared to being at work. Therefore, the strategy by organizations is to find a balance between the organizational approach and individual approach to work-life balance.

Theories for Work-Life Balance

The work-life balance is often established from a lack of established structures or constructs. In general, there is no single prevailing framework on how work-life balance is established. Nevertheless, constructs on theoretical frameworks have been developed and modified over the years. They include spill-over, compensation, resource-drain, enrichment, congruence, work-family conflict, segmentation, facilitation, and integration and ecology theories.

1. Spill-over theories: the theory embarks on expounding on how experiences on one role affect the experiences on the other. Studies on spill-over approaches determined that attitude, value, behaviour and skill are influential on how an individual handles one task over another. In most cases, spillover shows that experiences can lead to either positive or negative outcomes. The concepts are the positive association between life and work satisfaction, transference in skills and behaviours and fatigue from work experienced at home. Therefore, one role can justifiably affect another role.
2. Compensation: in this theory, the efforts intended to counter negative experiences by the implementation of positive experiences can correlate. This means that countering negative aspects in one domain can improve positively in the other domain. In this theory, it can be viewed in two ways: supplemental and reactive. Additional compensation occurs when positive experiences are insufficient at work. Hence, they are pursued elsewhere other than work. With respect to responsive, the compensation tenet occurs when negative work experiences are made up for positive non-work experiences. Therefore, the theory predisposes that there is a negative-positive relationship in work-life balance.
3. Resource-drain: the theory indicates that the transfer of resources from one framework to another is limited. For instance, if time and money, as well as attention, is reduced in work life, it is provided in non-work life. Therefore, the theory determines that resources can be shifted from one domain to another.
4. Enrichment: this refers to a degree in which experiences are pivotal to instrumental sources such as skills, abilities and values. The experience in one end can be detrimental or crucial to another. For instance, good work brings about good life outcomes.
5. Congruence: the theory refers to how supplementary values are not directly related to work. Spill-over theory demarcates that there is a direct relationship between work and life; the congruence theory projects a contradictory relationship. Hence, values such as intelligence and level of education can have different effects on work and life balances.

Models for Work-Life Balance

Organizational Models

When it comes to work-life balance, organizations and individuals play a differential role. However, for the organizations that demand to care for their workers, there are different types of models coined to provide a holistic approach to work-life balance strategies and policies. There are numerous types of work-life balance models that are proposed. The following were chosen as representative models that provided a more holistic approach to expounding on what organizations invest in when it comes to work-life balance.

1. Working Hours Model: the working hours model was proposed in 2009 by Alam et al. The model suggests that there is an inter-relationship between working hours and hours allocated for individuals. It highlights the issues regarding work-family conflict with the elimination of emotional burnout. In particular, it addresses the emotional exhaustion that female workers have regarding family and work balance. On one end, long working hours pulls workers away from their families whereas, adequate working hours help maintain a balance. Hence, the working hours model propose that employees should work between five and seven hours to bring about a work-life balance corresponding to organizational productivity.
2. Career Progression Model: the model was proposed in 2014. The purpose of the model is to identify if the number of employees within the organization dictate the type of work-life balance program adopted by an organization. The career progression takes into account the availability of time for workers to engage in further studies. It takes away family time which is only adoptable by the individual as well. Therefore, if adopted by an organization, the objective is to advance concepts of job satisfaction, employee retention and career development.
3. Emotion Exhaustion Model: the model determines that inter-role conflict arises based on two aspects: adult life, work-life and family demands which can bring about emotional exhaustion. The disadvantage of such conflict orbit around issues such as poor job performance and high propensity for employee turnover. Work-family and family-work conflict can impact on job outcomes. Hence, the model proposes that organizations view the emotional aspects of their employees, including moderation on developing unique programs that ensure more work-family or family-work balance.
4. Work Commitment Model: the model identifies that the work-life balance and job satisfaction are intertwined. It emphasizes that the organization should be more vigilant on a commitment to its employees. For instance, commitment can transcend to healthcare and other factors. Management and support of the personnel are pivotal to the implementation of a work-life balance.
5. Job satisfaction: this is the final model proposed. It emphasizes on job satisfaction which has been proven to have a remarkable influence on work and family-life balance. These are favourable factors that ensure satisfaction on how well employees balance their lives both at work and at home.

Individual Model

The continuum work-life balance is a model that has been used to expound on the work and home life of a single worker. This is shown in Figure 1 below.

Figure 1: Balance/Imbalance Work-Life Continuum

The continuum provides a two-extreme ended perception of individual work-life balance. On one extreme end is subsistence. It is characterized by working unceasingly for hours, leaving the personnel with little time for their personal lives. The second is the conflict stage. This puts in more effort in contradicting demands between the personal growth and work-life of an individual. The third stage is the integration stage. It is characterized by attainment of less or more satisfaction on aspects of both work and personal lives. The other extreme end is hedonism. It is characterized by an inability to work, and the individual spends more time working on unproductive activities. This is preceded by the fourth stage, which is idleness. Idleness shows that an employee lacks the willingness to work or engage in any productive tasks.

Conclusion

Work-life balance is a critical element that any organization needs to address within the human resource department. Based on the theories and models assessed in this report, it is evident that there are different methods of dealing with the work-life balance either for an organization or an individual. The recommendation, therefore, is that organizations and individuals should have a profound mechanism of integrating diverse programs of work-life balance. As determined in the present paper, work-life balance improves on performance for both the individual and the organization. Therefore, it is necessary for for-profit and non-profit organizations to put into consideration the need for a work-life balance program.