In a society with contradictory tasks and commitments, work life balance has become a primary matter of concern at the workplace. The main factors that have led to this are aging workforce, increased interest in personal lives and global competitiveness. Therefore with the increasing diversity of family structures in the workforce, human resource professionals need to understand the interface of work and family relationships and seek innovative ways to retain the employees of the organization by ensuring work life balance.
Earlier, employers considered work-life mainly an issue for working mothers who struggled with the demands of their jobs and raising children but as the times evolved, organizations solidified the recognition of work life balance as a vital issue for every employee. Unfortunately companies were adopting policies that were family friendly but the employees and managers were not implementing them and these policies failed to have significant impact on most managers and employees.
Recently, most organizations have taken a one-sided “systems” approach to the work life initiatives taken by them. Their focus has been on adopting policies, benefits, and procedures to solve the work-life balance problem. According to this approach the organizations can create a better work life balance for the individual. However the other half of the work -life strategy is the “individual” approach that involves what individual employees and managers do for themselves to create their own best work life balance.
In the work life strategy ladder the systems approach is termed as the left leg of this strategy. If an organization has already existent policies as health insurance, vacation time and other benefits it is very important to reinforce these policies so that the business objectives can be achieved. However this approach cannot work alone and therefore the “individual” approach is equally important for any...