What's Work-Life Balance All About..

What is work-life balance? 

Well, it has different meaning to different people. Basically, it's about achieving equilibrium in a state of work and personal or family life. It's becoming a basic human needs for your own self, family and for the community as a whole.

In employer/ employee perspective, work-life balance is a win-win solution which the initiatives can brings to a more balance life for employees with other responsibilities in life as well as the employer on their employee relation's effort. Among others, it includes issues such on productivity, work retention, stress-related problems, low employee morale and absenteeism for the employer and as for the employee, work-life balance is about balancing work and other responsibilities in life and promote equality in life especially in terms of their obligation as parents and also taking care for their elderly.

A little history

According to Lockwood (2003), the term work-life balance was first coined in 1986 but the concept originated way back in 1930s when the Kelogg Company created four six-hour shift in replacing the original three eight-hour shift to increase employee morale and efficiency. Of course, during those time, it was perceived only to accommodate the demands of the factory workers which mostly are female that complaints there is not enough time for their children or family life. Lockwood (2003) also asserted that IBM was the first organization that recognize work-life balance as a value and was first to change their organization policies to accommodate their female employee.

Initially, work-life balance started as an extended wellness program. It was associates with issues of  the working mothers as many issues brought up includes difficulty in balancing their responsibilities between being an ideal worker and a responsible mothers. Torn in between, working mothers find it is hard to juggle between the two as they believe they have not enough time to commit to their families needs. Today, this issues are much more that working mothers problem but also a global issues which involves almost everyone  Everyone that have to work for a living.

Why is it important?

The work-life balance concept in a bigger picture, was introduces to address the changing face of family in today's globalization. With the growing  diversity of family structures in the workforce such as blended family, dual-earner family, commuter couple and sandwich generation forces the human resources professionals to understand the problems that employee face which will impact the workplace.

Failure to address these issues not only will lead to stress related problems but also other problems such as decreasing employee morale, poor productivity and job dissatisfaction (Lockwood, 2003). Thus, it is also the employer's responsibility in providing and supporting the work-life balance and incorporate it into its organization to maintain positive, productive and happy employee.


Reference:
Lockwood, N. R. (2003). Work/Life balance: Challenges and solutions. 2003 Society for Human Resource Development Research Quarterly.