Significance of Work Life Balance
Work-life balance is about creating and maintaining supportive and healthy work environments, which will enable to have balance between work and personal responsibilities and thus strengthen employee loyalty and productivity. A recent survey conducted among 707 respondents selected on basis of 3S sampling by outlook business and MDRA to understand how corporate in India are balancing their work and life, shows some interesting findings which highlights importance of Work Life Balance among employees and specifically within females and Gen X employees.
• A whopping 87% consider Work Life Balance as a precious commodity.
• Employees need to balance their work and life at every stage of their life and thus companies
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• Majority of employees belonging to Gen Y admit that in order to manage familial responsibilities they would consider switching to other companies with flexi-work options. 31 20 11 11 Figure 8
In lie of above findings few work life balance strategies are being suggested in order to retain key talent in organization and gain utmost performance by ensuring wellbeing of its employees.
Work life Balance strategies to achieve high Retention rate
Attaining work-life balance is a holistic approach that takes into consideration management of multiple aspects of work as well one’s personal life. While it is the responsibility of both employees and employers to manage life effectively at the workplace and beyond, a 360-degree outlook, boosted with the right mindset and willingness to attain the balance is critical for this. Some of the strategies are suggested here in order to maintain physical and mental well being of employees and attain higher retention rate in
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So instead of creating a culture where everyone eats lunch at their desks, encourage your employees to take long lunches so they can recharge their batteries.
• Invest in tools and technologies To stay on top of their ever-increasing workloads, many employees are forced to take work home with them which adversely affect work-life balance. By investing in the right tools and technologies, however, can make their jobs more manageable. By investing in the right tools, employees will likely be able to reclaim a good chunk of their days.
• Energy management
Work-life balance is largely driven by efficiency, which is not just time management, but also energy management. For better energy management, companies could conduct workshops for leaders and employees. Managing energy is a powerful additional way of streamlining our work life better. Energy Workshops are a unique concept with modules that aim to create a sustainable high-performance culture by extending to employees, ideas and tips to manage their energy more skillfully, so that it leads to better time and stress management. The idea here is that for individuals to recharge themselves, they have to recognize the costs of energy-depleting behaviours and then take responsibility for changing them, regardless of the circumstances they find themselves
The job that I currently work at offers work-life balance like Best Buy; such as my boss letting me work only Friday and Saturday to help balance out with my fifteen-credit school schedule, as well letting me have Sunday off for church and being with my family. We are also goal driven, as being able to sell a lot of product during sales and increasing in the years has pleased our employer, and she rewards us for our efforts with scratch offs of a store product for free. Having a surplus of employees like Best Buy would not work in our situation because that would lead our employers to pay the surplus in employees and could result in an increase in product price and/or decrease in other workers’ salaries to compensate, and we have enough employees in our department to fill in the days when someone is gone. I would not make any changes because I believe our current work environment is
This source explains the relationship between working overtime and the work-family conflict. With this source, they “investigated whether work-family conflict is prospectively related to adjustments in work schedules… in this relation”. (Jansen) They also wanted to prevent work- family conflict. They also know that balancing work and family is a challenge in today’s society for individuals. Consequences associated with work and family “job burnouts, psychological distress, depression, life dissatisfaction, elevated need for recovery from work, prolonged fatigue, and increased sickness absence”. (Jansen) The companies are starting to notices that employees are looking for other jobs that support them balance their work and family. Jansen used questionnaires to figure out the work-family conflict investigation. Each questionnaire was use with different types of working people. For example, the part-time and full-time workers. The results for the work-family conflict, “employees might adjust their working time arrangement to better reconcile work and family life…” (Jansen) They are considering their next research on the adjustments to “result in an improved work-family balance, improved health outcomes, and ultimately whether these adjustments prevent workers from leaving the labor force early.” (Jansen)
Imbalanced, our lives are imbalanced. We do not have time to climb the ladder of success if we want to be home to raise our children. We do not have time to raise our children if we want to climb the ladder of success. There are not enough hours in the day to do all the things that we need to do to have a fulfilled life. We do not have time to cook a healthy meal from scratch. We grab a box of Hamburger Helper, a can of peas, and a bag of rolls and we have dinner. Exercise consists of walking between the car and the door and maybe a little wrestling around with the kids before bed. At work productivity is counted by how many hours you spend doing your job instead of the results that our produced in that time. Mindsets like this hold us back. Flexibility for the employee is the future to balancing our lives.
These generational issues come from a vast range of differences in areas including work professional attitudes, employer loyalty, attitudes regarding respect, technology, and the work and home life balance. The possible implications of these issues in the workplace contains
The organization’s management has a big role to play to foster the psychological wellness of its labour force. Firstly, the management should ensure the expectations from each of the employees are clearly stated. With an employee having precise knowledge of what is expected from them, he or she will undertake his or her roles in a more organized manner and this also enhances faster delivery.
Working in today’s society has changed in the last few decades. The economy and technology are the main reasons for this change. The type of job and environment where one works has also changed. The fact that many people work from home via the internet has drastically changed the workforce and the environment surrounding it. With this change have come new demands, expectations, and opportunities for employers. Everyone deals with these demands differently, affecting the employee’s quality of life and job satisfaction. Though the job and office types and locations have changed over the years the need for job satisfaction has not. In today’s economy the job is not as stable as it used to be. One must be prepared for changes in the future.
Once in the work environment the job of the employer should be to make sure that the workplace is organized and runs as smoothly as possible as to minimize some of the factors that may contribute to burnout such as understaffing and excessive hours. An enhanced quality of life at work would not only minimize stress levels but enhance performance as research has proven. A study done at Harvard University in 2010 showed that businesses that implemented wellness programs for their employees were able to cut healthcare costs drastically (Cutler, Baicker, & Song, 2010, p.1). For every dollar spent on these programs, they were able to save $3.27, so not only does the employee benefit but the employer as well. In terms of employee productivity all it takes is to look at some of the most successful companies in the world. Such companies often have great employee benefits and wellness programs such as Google, Facebook, and Costco (Adams, 2014, para. 1-3). In order to decrease the rate of burnout in the medical industry, such initiatives must be taken by the education system as well as the practices that employee healthcare
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.
Individuals who have the opportunity, to balance their professional and personal lives are happier, healthier and more productive. In order words work life balance expresses the affiliation between your work and the dedication to your life after the work place, and how they can affect each other. Government and management want to capitalize on involvement in the workforce neglecting the need to make life worth it after the work hour. Nevertheless, in our challenging lives many people find it really difficult to balance work and the household tasks of caring for children, family members with a disability or elderly parents. The employee at times really find it difficult and tricky to carve out quality time for study, get involved in volunteer tasks, take care of their own fitness or participating in games and
Human resources will need to place emphasis on employee wellness my initiating programs that “include work-life balance processes, stress management, and therapy programs, and facilitating an open dialogue about mental health and illness to remove much of the stigma that plagues the conversation and ailments (Guppta, 2016).” By utilizing flexible work schedule options, demanding jobs with high-stress levels are possible because employees’ free time does not have to be sacrificed.
Employers may get higher levels of productivity and job satisfaction. Employees may feel that they are trusted by management which improves the quality of employee relations. Small companies after different forms of flexible work schedules to employees to help them achieve balance in their lives and reduce stress. Now adays some organizations practice’s flexibility within the organization. In recent years a variety of factors- such as increasing economic volatility, competitiveness, new technology, and more recently, intensifying shortage of skills- have lead many organizations’ actively seek more efficient and effective ways ( Brewster et al). These organization practices different flexibilities like functional flexibility, numerical flexibility, work-time flexibility, financial flexibility, organization flexibility (Brewster et al, P102-106). According to Peers (2013) flexible working hours is arguable the way forward businesses to increase productivity and attract and retain the best talent and win for employees and employers. Increased competitive intensity requires organizations to do more profoundly. It also requires them to become more flexible. This is partly In order to increase efficiency and productivity, but developing a capacity for flexible also allows them to respond more quickly to changed and changing circumstance contemporary Issues in Human Resource Management (2011), Stephen Tylor, Printed in Maltaby Gutembers
There have always been various problems on how employees balance family life and work life. This is a problem that many employees from different organizations face. The challenge here is that they are not able to balance both lives. This in most cases leads to neglect of one life and giving too much attention to the other. This has been a major problem to many employees. They have always complained of how difficult it can be when a person tries to balance both lives (Philipsen & Bostic, 2010). This has been a big issue that should be tackled with a lot of concern. There has always been a need for people to be able to live comfortably with their families and to have a good working life in the work area. People should be taught on how to balance family life and work and to be able to give equal attention to both lives. This can be made possible by training and enlightening people on how these two can be achieved. There is need for all employees to learn how they ensure that they give equal attention to their family life and work life.
To begin with, employees in Samsung are enduring serious extent of stress, which largely hinder their motivation. For most of the employees, it is hard to realize work-life balance with loads of work. Work always comes first, and as a result, lives, families and health are ignored by the organization and individuals. To help employees release this kind of stress, ensuring work-life balance opportunities is of great significance. On the one hand, Samsung can implement flexibility programs and try to build a culture of engagement. It is critical to increase focus and motivation at work knowing that family
In Today’s world, the composition and how work is done has massively changed and is still continuing to change. Work is now more complex, more team base, depends greatly on technological and social skills and lastly more mobile and does not depend on geography. Companies are also opting for ways to help their employees perform their duties effectively so that huge profits are realized in the long term .The changes in the workplaces include Reduction in the structure of the hierarchy ,breakdown in the organization boundaries , improved and better management tactics and perspectives and lastly better workplace condition and health to the employees. (Frank Ackerman, Neva R. Goodwin, Laurie Dougherty, Kevin Gallagher, 2001)
...s in the corporate world by setting new standards to promote and better satisfy their employees. We chose four leading companies in four different industries. The above analysis definitely reveals that perhaps one of the reasons why these companies are the leaders in their industry is because they are well aware of the importance of the work force. They mention in their mission statements as well that yes in deed customers are important but in order to make the customer happy they first need to motivate and satisfy the employee as well. According to Citibank, the general belief is that a happy worker is a motivated and loyal one. So keeping employees' spirits high is a sure-fire way of maintaining a productive workforce. A productive work force would ultimately lead to a healthy organization which would not only promote the society its working for but also itself.