Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Work Life Balance is a state of wellbeing that a person can reach or can
set as a goal in order to allow them to manage effectively, multiple
responsibilities at work, at home and in their community. Work life balance
is different for everyone and it supports physical, emotional, family and
community health and dose so without any stream or negative Impact.
There are several factors which are affecting the Work life balance.
The first factor is the demographic change including the increase in the
number of women in the workplace, dual career families, single parent
families and an aging population have generated on increasingly diverse
workforce and a greater need of employees to balance work and home
life. (Brough & Kelling, 2002; Frone, Russell & Cooper, 1992; Frone &
Yardley, 1996; Hobson, Delunas, & Kesic, 2001).
Conflict between work and home life has been linked to job dissatisfaction
and turnover and increasingly organizations are using work life balance
initiatives to recruit and retain key personnel.
WORK LIFE BALANCE initiatives give employees flexibility and help ensure
that dependents are cared for whilst employees are at work. Both work-to-
family conflict and family to-work conflict can be reduced when employees
use WORK LIFE BALANCE initiatives (Allen,2001; Anderson et al, 2002;
Haar & Spell, 2001; Thompson et al, 1999),but not all employees make
use of the initiatives that are available to them even when those
initiatives would be helpful. The present research aimed to identify
demographic and workplace factors that influence the extent to which
employees use available WORK LIFE BALANCE initiatives and whether the
use of these initiatives impact on work-life balance and other outcomes.
Older employees will use more WORK LIFE BALANCE initiatives relating to
dependent care than younger employees. Younger employees have
entered the workforce at a time when employability is valued more than
job security and may place a greater value on non-work commitments or
developing their careers through ongoing education (Finegold, Mohrman &
Spreitzer, 2002).Younger employees have been found to make more use
of initiatives such as fl exitime, compressed work weeks, telecommuting,
and working from home than older employees (Allen, 2000; Thompson et
al, 1999).
Younger employees will make more use of work flexibility initiatives than
older employees. Women tend to use more WORK LIFE BALANCE
initiatives than men (Allen, 2001; Thompson et al, 1999). Compared to
employed fathers, employed mothers were more likely to use childcare,
flexible working hours, job sharing and the opportunity to work at home
(Department of Labour, 1999; Frone & Yardley, 1996).
Female employees will use more WORK LIFE BALANCE initiatives than
male employees. Employees with dependents have been found to have a
greater need for WORK LIFE BALANCE initiatives and to make more use of
these initiatives than those without dependents (Brough & Kelling, 2002;
Thompson, Beauvais & Lyness,1999). Frone and Yardley (1996) found the
age of the youngest child was significantly related to the importance of
initiatives such as flextime, compressed workweeks, childcare and
working from home but not to reduced hours or job sharing, while the
number of dependents was significantly related to the importance of
childcare.
Employees who are aware of the availability of more WORK LIFE BALANCE
initiatives will use more WORK LIFE BALANCE initiatives. The availability of
WORK LIFE BALANCE initiatives does not always mean that these
initiatives will be used. There may be unspoken rules, peer pressure or
perceived negative consequences from the organization that inhibit
employees from using available initiatives (Kirby & Krone, 2002).
Thompson et al, (1999) investigated the effect of workplace culture on
work-family initiative use and found that managerial support, perceived
career damage and organizational time demands predicted the use of
work family initiatives. There is a need for further research into the
organizational factors that influence employees use of available WORK
LIFE BALANCE initiatives.
Thompson et al, (1999) found that managerial support was the strongest
predictor of WORK LIFE BALANCE initiative use. Management can
influence hours worked through the timing of meetings, deadlines, the
scheduling of training and holidays, monitoring work, and role modeling
long hours at work (Perlow, 1998). In contrast, family-supportive
managers may provide staff with the flexibility to meet external
commitments or may model good work-life balance.
Employees using more WORK LIFE BALANCE initiatives will report lower
levels of work-to-family and family-to-work conflict than employees who
use fewer WORK LIFE BALANCE initiatives.
Employees using more WORK LIFE BALANCE initiatives will report higher
levels of commitment to the organization than employees who use fewer
WORK LIFE BALANCE initiatives. Employees using more WORK LIFE
BALANCE initiatives will report lower levels of intention to leave the
organization than employees who use fewer WORK LIFE BALANCE
initiatives.
Spector (1997) emphasized that Job Satisfaction is the degree with which
people like their jobs where some people enjoy work and find it to be a
central part of life and others hate to work and do so only because they
must. In other terms, Job satisfaction simply means that how people feel
about their jobs and different aspects of their jobs. It is the extent to
which people like (satisfaction) or dislike (dissatisfaction) their jobs. As it is
generally assessed, job satisfaction is an attitudinal variable. In the past,
job satisfaction was approached by some researchers from the
perspective of need fulfillment means whether the job met the
employees physical and psychological needs or not (e.g., Porter, 1962:
Wolf, 1970).
Researchers found that against the odds, a public sector organization can
attract and retain a high quality workforce in a highly competitive market
(Curson J.Y., and Skidmore T., 2010).
However, as far as professional women and their quitting from the jobs
are concerned Balasubramanian L. further quotes that another important
reason for professionals, especially women quitting their job is relocation
after marriage, or the call of being a mother. Whereas, as revealed by
Comfort et al., (2003), a satisfied workforce may be valuable because
employees are then less likely to be absent and consequently affect the
bottom line whereas Clutter buck D.(2003) had his view point that
overwork causes stress- related absenteeism, poor retention levels, low
creativity, appalling customer service and unethical employees behavior.
Clutter buck D. also quoted that [the] companies offering positive policies
on Work-Life Balance also benefit from shorter absences by people on
maternity leave.
References
Work Life Balance, Wikipedia Encyclopedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Work%E2%80%93life_balance
http://www.ijbmss-ng.com/vol2no1_ijbmss/ijbmss-ng-vol2-no1-pp33-
42.pdf
Global Journal of Finance and Management. ISSN 0975-6477 Volume
6, Number 7 (2014), pp. 697-700 Research India Publications
http://www.ripublication.com