Work-life balance can be defined as creating and maintaining supportive and healthy work environments, which will enable employees to have balance between work and personal responsibilities and thus strengthen employee productivity. Numerous studies have been conducted on work-life balance. According to a major Canadian study conducted by Lowe in 2005, 1 in 4 employees experience high levels of conflict between work and family, based on work-family interference and caregiver strain. If work overload is included, then close to 60 percent of employees surveyed experience work-family conflict.
Of all the job factors that influence work-life conflict, the amount of time spent at work is the strongest and most consistent measurement. The higher levels of work-family conflict reported by managers or professionals often are a function of their longer work hours. Other reasons include: job security, support from one’s supervisor, support from co-workers, work demands or overload, work-role conflict, work-role ambiguity, job dissatisfaction, and extensive use of communication technology that blurs the boundaries between home and work. Today’s workers have many challenging responsibilities such as work, children, housework, volunteering, spouse and elderly parent care and this places stress on individuals, families and the communities in which they reside. Work-life conflict is a serious problem that impacts workers, their employers and communities.
It seems that this problem is increasing over time due to high female labour force participation rates, increasing numbers of single parent families, the majority of the dual-earner family and emerging trends such as elder care. It is further inflated by globalization, an aging population, and h...
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... managers, helps to increased work-life balance. Work-life balance programs have been established to have a positive impact on employees in terms of recruitment, retention, commitment and satisfaction, absenteeism, productivity and accident rates.
Companies that have implemented work-life balance programs recognize that employee welfare rebuilds the foundation of the business. Parameters are required to ensure that programs are having the desired effect on both employees and the company. Six parameters that can be used to evaluate work life balance programs are: degree of management buy-in and training, how programs are communicated to employees, corporate culture, management controls, human resources policies and employee control. Finally, self-management is important; people need to control their own behaviour and minimize expectations regarding work-life balance.
As if being the father of two children and a dedicated husband were not enough, Victor Terhune has to balance his family life with his job. Victor currently works as a Technical representative for the sales department at Weastec in Dublin, Ohio. Though work holds him back from doing some of the things that he would like to be doing, like spending more time with his wife and sons, this is a common theme for many workers today in a relationship with their desire to be with their families. Victor strives to get resolution to this by making time by driving home right after work and focusing on that quality time with his family.
at some point all employees will eventually need time off from work to deal with either a serious personal illness or other family obligations. “Many European nations took to the idea of making balancing family and work easier for employees but the movement did not gain momentum in the United States until the late 60s and 70s when working women were no longer the minority” (AAUW). There was a general shift in the nature of the common everyday american household and a two income household was slowly but surely becoming the new reality of american life.
Through life, one must make choices in their personal and professional lives in order to maintain a healthy work-life balance. Through the plays Bull, Waste, Little Eyolf, The Homecoming, and the musical Kinky Boots, it is evident that creating a distinction between one’s personal and one’s professional life is essential to living a healthy life. When one’s personal life and professional life overlap completely, trouble ensues.
The inability to achieve “work-life balance” has become a major focus for workplace equality activists. When this topic is brought about it is primarily used to describe how woman cannot have a work and home life but instead are forced to choose. Richard Dorment took on this point of interest from a different perspective in his article “Why Men Still Can’t Have It All” published with esquire. Going against the normal trend he describes how women are not the only ones put into the same sacrificial situations, but instead that men and women alike struggle to balance work and home. Dorment opens up by saying “And the truth is as shocking as it is obvious: No one can have it all.” In doing so Richard Dorment throws out the notion that one
There is a need to adjust to a workforce that is increasingly diverse. Diversity is not only determined by traditional categories such as age, race, and gender. Diversity also includes generational differences, lifestyle, work style values and differences, employment expectations and goals, learning styles and abilities, educational levels and technological sense. In order to build a successful workforce for the future, adaptations to the vast array of differences in applicants and employees is a challenge to be recognized and addressed in the workforce action plan. With efficient occupational health services and smart occupational health personnel this can be achieved. Competitive industries invest more on workforce as they are well aware of its implications. This proactive approach of organizations impact both direct and indirect cost to industry. This clearly indicates that healthy organizations are more likely to be successful as they are more skilled of retaining workforce who is healthy in all aspects including physical, mental and psychological capabilities. I will conclude this document with a statement by Employees Benefit Journal Ann 2004, offering your workforce a full behavioral health program is one of the wisest decisions you can make to increase workplace wellness and
Although there is a plethora of possible sources of conflict in any workplace, the ones in this case are rather explicit. These include personal differences, Informal deficiencies’, role incompatibility, environment stress, perceptions, and expectations. Personal differences could be related to personal values, physiognomies, family bonds or ties, and material belongings.
(Marsh,2010). As for me, this is the very reason why I work so much. After watching the video and evaluating my life, I understand I now need to develop a balance of the two and consider the needs of my family. All too often we neglect our families because of the importance of finances or the satisfaction we receive from escaping home life. We neglect work because it becomes uninteresting, so our attendance suffers.
The impact from changes in economy, technology, social and lifestyle in today’s environments have boosted the awareness of flexible working arrangements in an organisation. Evidence from the previous study indicated that the competitive working environment and increasing workload had caused family and personal life being neglected (Mary & Chris, 1998). Smith (1993) pointed out that working women should have balance between tasks in the office and responsibility to the family especially on safety, health and children needs. Therefore, Cook (1992) suggested that through the implementation of flexible working hour’s schedule, the responsibilities over children’s safety and education will be more secured. This is due to the fact that they are able to engage for a better coordination between work and responsibilities to the family. This statement is than further supported by Emmott and Hutchinson (1998). They found out that the implementation of flexible working hours schedule could increase and balance women’s responsibilities in work and family. It is a fact that children need love, food, safety and parents’ attention to ensure that children lead to a normal life. This complies with Maslow’s theory of motivation that emphasizes the aspects of safety, love, needs for food, esteem and self-actualisation that needs to be fulfilled by individual in order to increase the motivation at work.
From single mothers and fathers to working Husband and wives who work long hour and spend along hour away from their family are effected by work and family conflict. Parent is unable to assist with homework, school project, and community issue to do work and family conflict. What is work and family conflict? It is when an individual is working to the point where their personal lives and family member are affected by their absences. The work and family conflict causes multiple problems in both the home and on the job. Many individual affected by the work and family conflict on the job for an example the employee come be frustrated on the job because they have a family emergency that they cannot handle. They boss or employer may become restless do to the missed time from work to handle family situation, doctor appointment, or school matter. The conflict could come from the family member for example the child or children could misbehavior in class do to the lack of attention in the home. The other spouse could feel neglected do the missed hour of quality time from the work mate. Work and family conflict can affected all parts involved whether it is the employer, co-workers, spouse, children, or even friends. The main idea will be to gather some background information and literature to see how they contribute to work and family conflict. Also discover some action to take and steps to detail with this issue.
Workaholics – people, who have a compulsive and unrelenting need to work (www.dictionary.com) – appear more and more among the working people of United States and other developed countries. At first glance, workaholics do not seem to be such a problem for industry and society as a whole. But in spite of all devotion to their work the workaholic will not be as valuable as a normal worker. Workaholics do not think about anything else except work that can cause severe health problems and can cause problems on their work. All that causes a reduction of economic profit for the company.
We each possess unique ideas, opinions, beliefs, and feelings about specific situations in life. This uniqueness is a large part of what makes us human. Because we all have our own individual way of looking at things, we each have a different viewpoint on what is proper or improper. With all that variation in society conflict is inevitable! Conflict is antagonistic in nature and we all must find ways to work through conflict issues both at work and at home. This paper describes different types of conflict, the influences I personally had in learning to deal with those conflicts, some of the conflicts that I commonly experience, how I go about dealing with those conflicts, and how conflict affects me on a personal level.
In this topic I will address the conditions at the workplace such as employee centred flexibility, paid and unpaid leave, length of working hours, health care and the effects of these conditions on the work life balance (Skinner & Chapman, 2013). The project will be examined by a qualitative method seeking verbal experiences and surveying techniques. The results will be based upon the verbal interaction, surveys and research literature from the public sector and the hospitality industry. The outcomes in conclusion will demonstrate how the workforce conditions affect the work life balance of the employees and what measures can be taken by the employers to improve these working conditions.
Late 1980's: work stress received increasing attention in I/O research, theory, and practice Balancing work and family lives received increasing attention.
One of the most common reasons for high levels of stress in families today, is caused by dissatisfaction and/or tension in the workplace. People have often heard the addage “Leave your Job at the Office”, but how many are capable of just turning things off, when they leave for the day? Not many, and becau...
The "conflict theory" this theory states that work and family domains are mutually incompatible, and that success in one area requires sacrifices in the other one(Friedman et al., 1998)..