Work-Life Balance (WLB)

Work-life balance (WLB) is about feeling comfortable with both work and personal commitments. There are three essential components in WLB namely paid work, unpaid work and personal time. There is no one accepted definition for WLB in practice and the term usually refers to the following two factors.

• Organizational factors for dependent care.
• Flexible working arrangements and personal, family leave.

WLB consists of five aspects of one’s life at any given time namely, work, family, friends, health and safe. Some factors are key and lead to disruption in WLB such as increased level of stress, competition and insecurity in the work place. In the past decade changes in the work place and employee demographic were the increased concerns for the gap between employee work and non-work lives. Huge impact made on employee’s personal time by mandatory overtime, shift work, on-call duties and week end / holiday coverage imposed by the employer (Agha, et al., 2017).

Importance of Work Life Balance

Interrogations between work and non-work responsibilities can result a number of negative out comes. Finally, it goes to a lower level of job satisfaction and organizational commitment. Both work -to-life and life-to-work dispute have also been connected with increased stress level and burnout, psychological difficulties such as staying wake, low level of concentration and alertness as well as decreasing level of health and energy (Bloom , et al., 2009).

Every person needs to have a time to relax and recharge. It increases the ability to improve their performance level. Hence from a Management point of view it is essential to encourage employees to take time off from work without putting them in long working hours. Creating a culture that helps a person to do activities what they love to do, will help them to be better employees, friends and family members. Once the time to work is over the employee need to walk away from the office. This is not easy to achieve since there are people who demands on individual’s time. People need to learn to say “NO” and agree to take only an essential work.

With Work-life balance employees are able to take time to enjoy the life they have work so hard to create. They have time for family and friends too. Without creating a WLB person they take their stress out in their loved once. Prolonged Stress resulted employees’ physical disorders and illnesses like, heart decease, diabetes and are associated with health risks such as increased smoking and alcohol consumption, weight gain and depression (Meenakshi , et al., 2013).

Figure I : Work life balance

Source : (Career Advancement)

 

Steps to a better Work-life Balance

1. Effective and efficient time management.
2. Spend some time thinking about what is most important, and create a list of top priorities for home and work.
3. Structure the day, plan the work assigned for the day and accomplish the target.
4. Leave work at the work place and don’t bring the work to home and viz versa .
5. Learn to say No to self and others as an when required.

The modern workplace has experienced many changes and with these changes comes added pressure and stressors.  The need for balancing work and life has never been more prevalent as both the pressure and stressors are indeed link to the health and well being of the employees.  It is important that work-life balance and wellness programs be partnered to full effect. The nature of work environments has changes in a significant manner with the recent time and employers need to set up their minds to manage their employees’ WLB in order to achieve the organizational goals (Morganson, et al., 2010).

 

References

Agha, K., Azmi , F. T. & Irfan , A., 2017. Work-Life Balance and Job Satisfaction: An Empirical study Focusing on Higher Education Teachers in Oman. International Journal of Social Science and Humanity , 7(3), p. 164.

Bloom , N., Kretschmer, T. & Reenan, J. V., 2009. Work-life balance, management practices and productivity. International Differences in the Business Practice and Productivity of Firms, 1(1), pp. 15-54.

Meenakshi , S. P., Subramanium, V. & Ravichandran , K., 2013. The Importance of Work-Life-Balance. IOSR Journal of Business and Management , 14(3), pp. 31-35.

Morganson, J., Major, D. A. & Oborn, K. L., 2010. Comparing telework locationsand traditional workarrangements : Differences in work-life balance support, jobsatisfaction, and inclusion. Journal of Managerial Psychology, 25(6), pp. 581-583.