Work can be defined in dictionary terms1: (1) Exerting oneself by doing mental or physical work for a purpose or out of necessity, (2) Be employed, (3) Shape, form, or improve a material, (4) Proceed towards a goal or along a path or through an activity, (5) Physical or mental effort or activity directed toward the production or accomplishment of something. (6) A job; employment: looking for work. (7) A trade, profession, or other means of livelihood. (8) Something that one is doing, making, or performing, especially as an occupation or undertaking; a duty or task: begin the day's work. (9) An amount of such activity either done or required. (10) The part of a day devoted to an occupation or undertaking. (11) One's place of employment. (12) Something that has been produced or accomplished through the effort, activity, or agency of a person or thing. (13) Full action or effect of an agency. (14) An act; a deed. (15) Of, relating to, designed for, or engaged in work Life can be described as2: (1) The sequence of physical and mental experiences that make up the existence of an individual. (2) One or more aspects of the process of living. Work-life Balance can variously be described as: (1) 'Work-life balance is about organizations identifying with their staff to determine how both can benefit from a more imaginative approach to working practices3. (2) The expression "work-life balance" was first used in the late 1970s to describe the balance between an individual's work and personal life. (New Ways to Work and the Working Mother's Association in the United Kingdom, 19704). (3) The relative importance of work and personal life to a particular individual5. (4) A balanced life6 is one where we spread our energy and effort - emotional, intellectual, imaginative, spiritual and physical – between key areas of importance. The neglect of one or more areas, or anchor points, may threaten the vitality of the whole. (5) Work life balance is about people having a measure of control over when, where and how they work7. (6) The achievement of equality between time spent working and one's personal life8. (7) The ability to give a sensible amount of time and effort to your work and to your life outside work, for example to your family or to other interests9. (8) “Working practices that acknowledge and aim to support the needs of staff in achieving a balance between their home and working lives.”10 (9) 'Work-life balance is about organizations identifying with their staff to determine how both can benefit from a more imaginative approach to working practices.’11 (10) Work Life Balance consists of the implementation of working arrangements and policies which assist workers in combining employment with other aspects of their lives. Employers can benefit from these policies too as they can help to develop a more committed and productive workforce.12 Work-life balance is not13:- (1) Work-Life Balance does not mean an equal balance. Trying to schedule an equal number of hours for each of various work and personal activities is usually unrewarding and unrealistic. Life is and should be more fluid than that. The best individual work-life balance will vary over time, often on a daily basis. The right balance for today will probably be different for tomorrow. The right balance when single will be different when married, or if there are children; when starting a new career versus when nearing retirement. There is no perfect, one-size fits all, balance one should be striving for. The best work-life balance is different for each because all have different priorities and different lives. However, at the core of an effective work-life balance definition are two key everyday concepts that are relevant. They are daily Achievement and Enjoyment, ideas almost deceptive in their simplicity. Engraining a fuller meaning of these two concepts takes us most of the way to defining a positive Work-Life Balance. Achievement and Enjoyment answer the big question. The equilibrium between the amount of time and effort somebody devotes to work and that given to other aspects of life14. Work-life balance is the subject of widespread public debate on how to allow employees more control over their working arrangements in order to better accommodate other aspects of their lives, while still benefiting their organizations. The agenda consists primarily of flexible working practices and family friendly policies, although good practice demonstrates that flexibility should be open to all, including those without caring responsibilities. The work-life balance debate has arisen through social and economic changes, such as greater numbers of women in the workforce, the expectations of the younger Generation X, a growing reluctance to accept the longer hours culture, the rise of the 24/7 society, and technological advancements. It has been supported by government and by organizations which see it as a means of aiding recruitment and employee retention. Work-life balance is not about the amount of time one spends working vs. not-working. It’s more about how one spends time working and relaxing, recognizing that what one does is one that fuels energy for the other.15 For example, if one organizes workday efficiently, staying very focused, and getting lots of things done, one feels a sense of accomplishment and satisfaction that enables one to leave at the end of the day and relax into one’s personal life. Similarly, if one can mindfully plan the activities one does in time off to be ones that truly recharge, getting the mind off of work and into things that bring pleasure, joy and rest, then one is energized and able to perform well at work. One has the perspective, objectivity and adequate rest to bring best focus to the job. That, is work-life balance, and is attainable to everyone. Although the term work-family/life balance is widely employed, an agreed definition of this term has proved elusive.16 Instead, an array of definitions and measures populate the literature. The variety of work-life definitions and measures provide limited value for both the theoretical advancement of the construct and for practical human resource (HR) interventions. There are six conceptualizations of work-life balance found in the literature: Multiple roles Equity across multiple roles Satisfaction between multiple roles Fulfillment of role salience between multiple roles A relationship between conflict and facilitation; and Perceived control between multiple roles. Work-life balance is a form of metaphor17; but a metaphor of what? In the English language “balance” is a complex word with a variety of meanings. As a noun, a balance is a set of scales, a weighing apparatus; it is also the regulating gear in clocks. If we use the scales, then balance occurs when there is “an equal distribution of weight or amount” (OED); but this presents problems for work-life balance since both sides may be very heavy or very light. Furthermore, the type of work-life balance sought by many may not imply equal weight on both sides. However balance also has a physical and psychological meaning as “stability of body or mind” so that suicide is sometimes officially recorded as taking one’s life “while the balance of the mind was disturbed”. However this version of the metaphor, whether it applies to body or mind is somewhat more appropriate since it implies both the possibility of external verification and human agency. Put another way we can observe when someone has lost their balance; and we know that in given circumstances some people have better balance than others and may perceive that they have better balance. This gives rise to the need to recognize that balance can have both an objective and subjective meaning and measurement, that it will vary according to circumstances and that it will also vary across individuals. In the English language, balance is also a verb; as the Oxford English Dictionary puts it “to off-set or compare; to equal or neutralize, to bring or come into equilibrium”. The use of the verb implies human agency; we can take steps to manage balance. In all this there is an implicit normative assumption that balance is good. We therefore refer to the balance of power and the notion of a balance sheet. On the other hand, a positive balance of trade or balance of payments, in other words an imbalance, can be something that may be valued. If we apply this to work-life balance, then when might some form of imbalance be viewed as positive; or is the idea of a positive imbalance a contradiction in terms? This brief analysis of the meaning of balance is sufficient to highlight the dangers in the loose use of metaphor. The problems in analyzing work-life balance only begin with the concept of balance. we also need to consider work and life. Work can be initially defined as paid employment. But this soon breaks down when we begin to take into account extra unpaid hours, the time taken to travel to and from work and the more intractable problems of farmers, hoteliers and others who work from home and where the border between home and work is very porous. Part of the interest in the subject arises from the view that the scope for increased work from home, facilitated by new technology, has helped to blur the border between home and work. At the very least, the definition of work in the analysis of work-life balance is problematic. The same can be said for life or non-work. The term work-life balance is in itself a misnomer and serves simply as a convenient short-hand for work and the rest of life. If we look at the sphere outside work, then W/O psychologists need to recognize the complexities that cloud the analysis. Much of the research, some of which is illustrated later in this paper, has been concerned with the spillover of work into family life. However family life is only one aspect of life outside work. Leisure analysts draw a distinction between free time and leisure time. Others have explored committed time and free time. W/O psychologists and others have examined the amount of time outside and away from formal work that is spent on work-related activities. In other words, there are many ways in which we can study and conceptualize life outside work and many studies of work-life balance are conveniently and partly inevitably imprecise in specifying what they mean. (In defence of this, it might be argued that in many studies the focus is on the subjective experience of imbalance and on subjective attributions of causes and therefore imposing a definition would be unhelpfully restrictive). In much of the debate about work-life balance, there is a loose use of language. Ideally, we should define work and life carefully. On the other hand, it is partly the blurring of the distinctions and the borders between them that has stimulated interest in the topic. In simple terms, “work” is normally conceived of in this context as including paid employment while “life” includes activities outside work. An important part of the policy debate has concerned the importance of family-friendly policies while leaving unclearly specified what is meant by the family. Indeed, Rothausen (1999) has presented a detailed analysis of how the concept of “family” has been operationalized by W/O psychologists and other work-focused researchers and offers five different models. In the absence of an agreed definition she suggests that a “realistic definition of family would include all others who meet certain needs or functions formerly thought to be met by the family; this is a functional, or effective, rather than a ‘traditional’ or legal definition of family” (1999, p.820). Life outside work also includes free time. This is normally conceived as time when there are no commitments determined by others. It can be distinguished from leisure, which is normally considered to be the pursuit of specific activity. There is an extensive literature on the nature and consequences of leisure activity and the implications for mental health and well-being of filling free time with leisure activities rather than passive behavior (see, for example, Haworth, 1997). Many of these points will be familiar to those who have worked in this field, but they highlight the importance of careful conceptualization of terms that fall outside the conventional domain of W/O psychology. Utopian writers and commentators have sought to address the complexity of definition and boundary by setting out what they believe to be an appropriate balance. These utopias can serve as both theoretical propositions, templates and sometimes as indicators of a distinctive type of normative value system in society. Well-known examples are provided by Marx, Freud and Huxley. More recently observers of contemporary society such as Handy (1994) (The Empty Raincoat. London: Hutchinson.) and Pahl (1995) (After Success: Fin-de Siecle, Anxiety and Identity. Cambridge: Polity Press) in the UK and American sociologist Wuthnow (1996) (Poor Richard’s Principle: Recovering the American Dream Through the Moral Dimension of Work, Business and Money. Princeton, NJ.: Princeton University Press.) have argued that societal cohesion depends on the re-discovery of a more appropriate balance between the competing demands that individuals face. By implication, all believe that work has become too dominant. In the face of these challenges, we need to find ways of operationalizing and measuring work-life balance. An initial definition might take the form of “sufficient time to meet commitments at both home and work”. This seeks to integrate objective and subjective definitions but cannot easily accommodate those who are under-utilized at both home and work. We may therefore seek to separate the subjective and objective definitions thereby raising the empirical question of how they are related. A subjective definition then simply becomes “a perceived balance between work and the rest of life”. This subjective balance can come in a variety of guises. For some the preference may be to spend long hours at work, perhaps because of career stage, perhaps because of a limited life outside work. For others, the opposite may apply and balance is perceived to exist where some work takes place but it is subordinated to the demands of home. Imbalance can also occur because of an absence of work. Subjective perceptions of balance are central to any analysis of this issue. However evidence about the consequences of certain patterns of behavior, such as very long hours at work, have led to legislative and social attempts to define balance more objectively. These definitions risk conflating outcomes of balance with the measure of balance; for example, Clark (2000) (“Work/family border theory: A new theory of work/life balance”. Human Relations, 53, 6, 747-770) defines balance as “satisfaction and good functioning at work and at home with a minimum of role conflict”. In practice therefore, definitions have focused on time and role enactment. European legislation defines 48 working hours a week as an appropriate maximum and reviews of the literature on working hours and health (Sparks, Cooper, Fried and Shirom, 1997, “The effects of hours of work on health: A meta-analytic review”. Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology, 70, 4, 391-408.) provide some indication that when people work much beyond these hours, their health and performance begins to deteriorate. The “objective” definition implied by this is that those who regularly work more than 48 hours a week will have an imbalance between work and rest of life. Various time studies have explored the amount of “uncommitted” time after work and family obligations have been dealt with. Another popular approach is to explore the roles of partners at work and more particularly at home to determine whether the “new man” is contributing to a range of household chores (all the evidence suggests not) or whether women still come home to what Hochschild (Hochschild and Machung, 1989, The Second Shift: Working Parents and the Revolution at Home. New York: Viking) has termed “the second shift”. Not surprisingly, much of the work by W/O psychologists and others combines subjective and objective measures of balance. Discussion of this topic needs to give some attention to ways of defining and operationalising balance. Does it make sense to adopt “objective” indicators? It might be useful to consider whether in practice it is easier to define balance by its absence. In other words, people are more likely to be subjectively aware of their state when there is imbalance. Factors affecting Work-life Balance18 Increased number of women working Majority of women with dependent children working Majority of women return to paid employment after childbirth Increased incidence of one parent families Increased life expectancy resulting in an ageing population Elderly relative responsibilities are on the increase care responsibilities for another adult Trend for starting family later will result in some employees having both Child care and elder care responsibilities Average age for first baby is going up. Why there is a Need for Change19 Workplace, lifestyle and demographic changes require employers to take a new look at flexible working practices. These changes include: o an ageing population requiring an increase in carers o increased numbers of lone parents o increased proportion of women in full time employment o from recent surveys of 18/24 year olds, a shift in attitude suggesting that a work focus is less dominant compared to other interests and that the workplace in any case should clearly value the employees' contributions o parents stating they want to spend more time with their children o men increasingly being involved in child care o increasing expectation that work experiences should be more meaningful o growing evidence of over-working particularly amongst managerial and professional staff and a recognition that overworking may cause ill health and restrict the ability to build and maintain personal relationships outside work. o recognition that when staff develop themselves more fully, they bring fresh approaches and new dimensions to the workplace. o increase in two-income families means that both parties need to co-ordinate their working lives to manage their family needs o skills shortages across a range of sectors which means that employers must work harder to recruit and retain skilled, experienced, productive staff. Impact of poor work life balance: Retention and recruitment issues are also relevant to work-life balance as more and more employers are recognising that their staff are their most valuable resource and the key to business success. Employers will increasingly have to make themselves attractive to current and potential employees due to the falling number of available (employable) workers. Between 1999 and 2010 it is estimated that there will be 2 million new jobs Difficulty in recruiting the right calibre of staff. Impacting on productivity. Research on Work-life Balance and Productivity The win-win view that better work-life balance will improve productivity is also rejected: there is no relationship between productivity and work-life balance once good management is accounted for20. A body of research21 supports a positive relationship between work-life balance and productivity. This includes individual case studies, research across a range of organisations and reviews of a number of studies. Some studies do not support a positive relationship between work-life balance and productivity, for example (Bloom et al’s 2003, Work life balance, management practices and productivity. Centre for Economic Performance, London School of Economics) study of 732 manufacturing organisations in the US, France, the UK and Germany found no direct relationship between work-life balance policies/initiatives and increased productivity. However, these studies can usually be analysed to find the confounding factor is workplace culture or management, or lack of implementation of work-life policies. For example, Bloom et al found management to be an intermediary factor, and they only measured having a work-life policy, not implementation or actual provisions. In New Zealand, a (Department of Labour 2006, Achieving balanced lives and employment: What New Zealanders are saying about work-life balance.) survey of employees found a strong relationship between employees’ ratings of productivity practices in the workplace and their own work-life balance. Similarly, a UK survey of 597 working parents (Working Families, 2005, Is less more? Productivity, flexible working and management) found a correlation between self-rated productivity, flexibility and satisfaction with work-life balance, and between satisfaction with work-life balance and enjoyment of one’s job. The authors conclude with a model that relates productivity to good management, flexible working, satisfaction with work-life balance and enjoyment of one’s job. While productivity comprises a combination of complex factors, flexible working options are perceived by working parents to be a key factor in their productivity. A US survey of 151 managers and 1353 mainly professional employees in six major corporations found that 70% of managers believed that allowing staff to work flexibly resulted in increased productivity, 76% reported higher staff retention and 65% reported increased quality of work. The remainder mostly reported no change on these outcomes, with approximately 5% reporting negative effects on productivity (Boston College Center for Work and Family, 2000, Measuring the impact of workplace flexibility. Chestnut Hill: Boston College Center for Work and Family). These studies have all relied on self-report by either employees or managers of perceived impacts on productivity. The following studies have used actual financial or statistical data. • In a US survey of 400 HR executives, 75% reported a positive or very positive bottom-line impact from work-life arrangements, with the remainder split between a negligible or negative impact (Hall and Parker, 1993:5, The role of workplace flexibility in managing diversity. Organizational Dynamics, 22(1):4-18). In this survey, organisations reporting a “very positive” bottom-line impact were those with the highest proportion of female employees and with cutting-edge philosophies. While larger companies were more likely to offer work-life balance options, smaller companies were more likely to report the greatest benefits. • Another case study in a US professional services top 100 company with 280 staff and 29 partners demonstrates net financial benefits from investment in childcare (Hayes, 2005, Outrageous employee benefits. Practice Management case study: staff retention. Journal of Accountancy May: 32-37.). • In a study of 195 private organisations in the US found a statistical relationship between work-life programmes and productivity, particularly for women and professionals. (Konrad and Mangel 2000, The impact of work-life programs on firm productivity. Strategic Management Journal. 21(12):1225-1237) • The PNC Bank found a saving of $112,750 in turnover costs in seven months of having a flexibility programme, and IBM and Ernst & Young have seen higher revenues and stock prices connected to employee flexibility options (Working Families, 2006:17, Moving mountains: the culture change challenge). • In a mixed method quantitative and qualitative study of 157 tele-workers compared with 89 traditional office workers, found greater productivity from the tele-working group than the traditional group. (Hill et al 1998, Influences of the virtual office on aspects of work and work/life balance, Personnel Psychology, 51:667-683)Another review of telecommuting studies reported measurable productivity increases of between 10% and 30% (Pitt-Catsouphes and Marchetta,1991 cited in Hill et al, 1998). Other studies have focused on factors or processes influencing productivity. A New Zealand Department of Labour review of international literature on business benefits of work-life balance (Yasbek, 2004, The business case for firm-level work-life balance policies: a review of the literature. Department of Labour, Wellington) concluded that work-life balance can enhance productivity in various ways. One argument is that productivity gains occur as a result of a reduction in home to work spill over (but other evidence eg. O’Driscoll, shows that most spill over goes in the direction of work to home). Another argument is that productivity is improved through reducing long hours at work and fatigue. The third argument is that in exchange for the “gift” of work-life provisions, employees “offer the ‘gift’ of discretionary effort, thereby increasing productivity” (Konrad and Mangel, 2000, The impact of work-life programs on firm productivity. Strategic Management Journal. 21(12):1225-1237). Many studies have found a relationship between work-life balance and workplace culture22. In New Zealand, the Department of Labour 2006 survey of employees found that an unsupportive workplace culture was associated with poor work-life balance. Almost 60% of employees said aspects of their workplace culture made work-life balance harder to achieve, particularly as expressed in the expectations and attitudes of managers, supervisors, colleagues and workmates. An Australian study (de Cieri et al 2002, Work/life balance strategies: progress and problems in Australian Organisations. Working Paper 58/02. Dept of Management, Monash University) which involved surveys of 1500 employees at three periods (1997, 1998 and 2000) found that uptake of work-life balance initiatives varied from 20% to 80% of employees in an organisation. There was also a time-lag from introduction of initiatives to uptake. Key barriers to the implementation and on-going effectiveness of work-life balance strategies identified in the literature and borne out in the Australian study were: • An organisational culture which emphasises and rewards long hours and high organisational commitment (to the neglect of other life commitments). • An isolated, hostile and unsupportive working environment for employees with life commitments outside the organisation. • Attitudes and resistance of supervisors and middle management. • Preference of senior management involved in recruitment to dealing with people perceived as similar to themselves. • Lack of communication and education about work-life balance strategies. The Australian research identified two key factors as barriers to work-life implementation and success: organisational inaction and organisational values. The most influential aspects of organisational inaction were lack of communication to staff, ineffective implementation, failure to evaluate/measure the impact of programmes, lack of middle management education and not getting line managers involved. These factors have all been identified in many studies on implementing diversity and work-life policies (Rutherford and Ollerearnshaw, 2002; The business of diversity. How organizations in the public and private sectors are intergrating equality and diversity to enhance business performance. Scheider-Ross, Andover, Hants Opportunity Now, 2004; Diversity dimensions – integration into organizational culture Mulholland et al, 2006, Managing diversity: words into actions. Chartered Institute of Personnel Development). The most influential aspects of organisational values as barriers to positive work-life outcomes in the Australian study were focusing on the programmes rather than culture change and the way work is done, and increased work demands over-shadowing personal needs. The authors state that what is needed to improve utilisation of work-life balance programmes is improved implementation and communication to managers and employees, culture change and the development of a ‘track record’ of achievements to encourage future management commitment to this area” (de Cieri et al, 2002:p.7), ie. case study examples that demonstrate it works. Thompson et al (1999), (When work-family benefits are not enough: the influence of work-family culture on benefit utilization, organizational attachment and work-family conflict. Journal of Vocational Behavior, 54:392-415) developed a measure of work-life culture based on their definition of work-life culture as “the shared assumptions, beliefs and values regarding the extent to which an organisation supports and values the integration of employees’ work and family lives”. They examined the relationship between work-life culture and use of work-family initiatives, organisational attachment and work-family conflict amongst 276 managers and professionals. Perceptions of a supportive work-family culture were statistically related to the use of work-family initiatives, reduced work-family conflict and positive organisational commitment. They identified three aspects of workplace culture that affected the use of work-family initiatives: managerial support, career consequences and organisational time expectations. A later study of 3,504 workers (Thompson and Prottas, 2006, Relationships among organizational family support, job autonomy, perceived control and employee well-being. Journal of Occupational Health Psychology. 11(1):100-118) found that informal organisational support (work-family culture, supervisor support and co-worker support) had a more positive impact on work-life wellbeing than availability of family benefits and alternative schedules/flexi-working. Kirby and Krone (2002), (The policy exists but you can’t really use it: communication and structuration of work-family policies. Journal of Applied Communication Research. 30(1):50-77) examined the effect of workplace conversations on the use of work-family initiatives. For example, co-workers complaining about “picking up the slack” for those using family leave will discourage use of such leave. The authors argue that the daily discourse can reinforce or undermine work-family initiatives. Kirby and Krone found that workplace discussions around work-family policies revolved around perceived equity and preferential treatment. These findings have implications on how to best alter workplace culture dynamics; just adding work-family policies to an existing workplace culture may result in under-utilisation. Recommendations follow those found elsewhere: integrate policies into the whole organisation, generate senior management support, provide training for managers on the benefits of policies and how to implement them, communicate success stories of using the policies, and communicate the wider benefits beyond women or employees with children. In New Zealand the EEO Trust 2006 Work-Life Survey found that the uptake of work-life initiatives related to actually putting work-life policies into practice rather than to the mere existence of a policy and a range of initiatives. Another New Zealand study of four EEO Trust Employers Group members found that the greater the perceptions of family oriented workplace support by supervisors/managers, co-workers and the overall workplace, the lower the levels of work-family conflict reported by staff (McAulay, 1999, Employee perceptions of support for family friendly initiatives in the workplace. MA thesis in Psychology, Massey University). Informal workplace support (culture) was more important than the availability of family-friendly initiatives. Given that the use of family-friendly initiatives was found to be significantly related to employees’ perceptions of family-oriented workplace support and men reported higher work-family conflict than women, it appears that men experience less workplace support to use family-friendly initiatives than women. McDonald, Brown and Bradley (2005), (Explanations for the provision-utilisation gap in work-life policy. Women in Management Review, 20(1):pp.37-55) found that the gap between work-life policies and initiatives and their use, particularly by men and career-oriented employees, was due to five factors: • Lack of managerial support for work-life balance • Perceptions of negative career consequences • Organisational time expectations • Gendered nature of policy utilisation Perceptions of unfairness by other employees (i.e. those without family responsibilities) Penalties of Ignoring Work-Life Balance Issues:23 o higher turnover, recruitment and training costs and loss of scarce skills o higher rates of sickness absence o increased absenteeism o reduced performance and productivity o competitive disadvantage There24 has been a much larger body of research on the consequences of forms of work-life imbalance and in particular various manifestations of work spillover and conflict. This has already been touched on in previous sections. In his review of the subject area, O’Driscoll (1996) identifies research on work and life satisfaction, on well-being, mental health and physical health and on individual performance in organizations. This reflects a set of traditional outcomes of interest to W/O psychologists. Recent research has increasingly recognized the complexity of the issues and the study by Kossek and colleagues cited earlier is just one illustration of this. More sophisticated research typically starts from a particular model of the family. For example, there is a large body of research on women’s careers that explores the consequences of various types of family commitment. Similarly, there is extensive research on dual career families. Such studies usually take into account the demands and rewards in both the workplace and the home. A fairly typical example can be found in the work of Mauno and Kinnunen (1999) (“The effects of job stressors on marital satisfaction in Finnish dual-earner couples”. Journal of Organizational Behaviour, 20, 6, 879-895) who report a Finnish study of 215 dual earning couples in which they explored the impact of a range of work stressors on marital satisfaction. One of the stressors was work-family conflict. Using structural equation modeling, they found that most of the stressors spilled over into marital satisfaction via job exhaustion and its impact on psychosomatic health. Work-family conflict and time pressure had a stronger effect than other stressors such as leader relations and job insecurity. However this affected each partner independently and did not spill over into the marital satisfaction of the other partner. In other words the women partner may have experienced work-family conflict; this had an impact on exhaustion and health which in turn had a negative impact on her marital satisfaction but despite this work spillover, the study detected no marital spillover from the satisfaction of one partner to the other. Another typical example is the research of Vinokur, Pierce and Buck (1999) (“Work-family conflicts of women in the Air force: Their influence on mental health and functioning”. Journal of Organizational Behaviour, 20, 6, 865-878) who examined the impact of work and family stressors and conflicts on the mental health and functioning of women in the US Air force. This goes a step further than the Finnish study by incorporating family as well as work stressors in the analysis. The study builds on and partly replicates an earlier community study by Frone, Russell and Cooper (1992) (“Antecedents and outcomes of work-family conflict: Testing a model of the work-family interface”. Journal of Applied Psychology, 77, 1, 65-78.) The findings are complex. Using structural equation modeling again, they find that marital and parental family roles had a different effect. They also found that high involvement in family and or work affected the outcome. Both job and marital distress and family-work conflict had adverse effects on mental health. High involvement in job and family had a beneficial impact on distress but a negative impact on work-family conflict. At this point it is perhaps appropriate to return to the other form of work-life imbalance reflected in unemployment. There is an extensive body of research from Europe, North America and Australia that demonstrates the negative consequences of unemployment on individual well-being and family functioning. There are two mains types of model to explain this which might be termed the deprivation model and the agency model. The deprivation model is particularly associated with the work of Jahoda (1982) (Employment and Unemployment: A Social-Psychological Analysis. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.) and emphasizes the latent functions of work such as providing a time structure, external demands to perform and a role and status in society, all of which are largely lost among those experiencing unemployment. In contrast, an agency model (Fryer, 1986, “Employment deprivation and personal agency during unemployment”. Social Behaviour, 1, 3-23.) gives much greater weight to individual interpretation and action rather than treating the experience of unemployment as standard and negative. Agency helps to shape expectations about the future and has been shown in quite carefully controlled experiments to be subject to change through cognitive intervention (Proudfoot et al, 1997, “Effect of cognitive-behavioral training on job-finding among long-term unemployed people”. The Lancet, 350, 9071, 96-100.) Whichever model we choose to adopt, and some sort of integration can be achieved, the evidence suggests that work-life imbalance reflected in too little work is at least as serious if not more than imbalance caused by too much work. But in arriving at this judgment, much depends on the outcomes selected for study. Unemployment may have little impact on the organization but a considerable impact on unemployed workers and their families. Practices Supporting Work-life Balance Work-life balance policies can be made up the following policies and working practices: Policies allowing flexible and innovative working practices. Leave provision, Employee support services Employee training and development. Some perspectives about Work-Life Balance25 Zedeck and Mosier (1990) and more recently O’Driscoll (1996) note that there are typically five main models used to explain the relationship between work and life outside work. The segmentation model hypothesizes that work and non-work are two distinct domains of life that are lived quite separately and have no influence on each other. This appears to be offered as a theoretical possibility rather than a model with empirical support. In contrast, a spillover model hypothesizes that one world can influence the other in either a positive or negative way. There is, of course, ample research to support this but as a proposition it is specified in such a general way as to have little value. We therefore need more detailed propositions about the nature, causes and consequences of spillover. The third model is a compensation model which proposes that what may be lacking in one sphere, in terms of demands or satisfactions can be made up in the other. For example work may be routine and undemanding but this is compensated for by a major role in local community activities outside work. A fourth model is an instrumental model whereby activities in one sphere facilitate success in the other. The traditional example is the instrumental worker who will seek to maximize earnings, even at the price of undertaking a routine job and working long hours, to allow the purchase of a home or a car for a young family. The final model is a conflict model which proposes that with high levels of demand in all spheres of life, some difficult choices have to be made and some conflicts and possibly some significant overload on an individual occur. Recently interest has been focused in particular on the conflict model, especially in dual career families, although research on the spillover and compensation models continues to be widely reported. What these types of model cannot so easily address is what constitutes a balance between work and the rest of life. At this stage we will just note that it may be helpful to distinguish between objective and subjective indicators, to recognize that any objective indicators, such as working hours are themselves reflections of subjective social values and to note that any use of subjective indicators may benefit from some kind of stakeholder analysis. In other words what may seem like balance to one individual may not do so to his or her partner or boss. The five models listed above are essentially descriptive models. To be of value they need to incorporate an analysis of their causes and consequences. Research will also benefit from a richer array of frameworks for the analysis of the boundary between work and the rest of life. One recent approach that might help to illuminate this is what has been termed border theory (Clark, 2000). It argues that people are daily border-crossers as they move between home and work. This opens up a rich vein of analysis of the nature of borders, their permeability, and the ease with which they can be managed or moved and so on. Interesting questions are raised about the existence of borders for those who work from home, either in the traditional sense of farmers and those with family hotels and restaurants or in the more contemporary sense of those who use new technology to work from home rather than the traditional office. For example, are borders desirable and if so under what circumstances? There are also potentially interesting parallels with the notion of the boundary-less career (Arthur and Rousseau, 1996) and the European Union Futures Project notion of a mosaic society in which the boundaries between work and leisure become increasingly blurred. In terms of any analysis of work-life balance, the analysis of borders can help to illuminate how far individuals are in control of issues determining balance. It also allows for analysis of physical and psychological controls. While a heavy emphasis in the recent literature suggests that technology and competition have resulted in more intensive and extensive work, any analysis needs to accommodate human agency. Border theory begins to permit this. In other words, it opens up scope for the social construction or cognitive distortion of boundaries to create a defensible subjective sense of balance. Models of work-life balance can also be enriched by the psychology of individual differences. For example, psychological theory concerned with aspects of personality can enhance our understanding of perceptions of balance. For example, there has been some research on “workaholics” who are characterized as those who choose to work long hours even when they may not need to do so. Furthermore, they tend to do so at the expense of other activities. In a review of some of the literature on workaholics, Peiperl and Jones (2000) note how it was initially viewed as a disease akin to alcoholism (Baylin, 1977) but that research by Machlowitz (1981) suggested that it was more properly viewed as a form of extreme work involvement. More recently, Scott, Moore and Miceli (1997) have linked it to three relatively stable personality types, the achievement-oriented, the perfectionist and the compulsive-dependent. Peiperl and Jones distinguish workaholics, who choose to work long hours and perceive some rewards from doing so, from over workers who may also work long hours but who have little choice in the matter and who do not believe that the returns they receive justify the long hours. This stream of research needs considerable development but it highlights the importance of taking into account individual differences in any attempt to establish what we mean by balance. One issue for discussion is how far the traditional models are sufficient for the study of work-life balance and in particular how far they can sensibly be used as a basis for comparative research on work-life balance in different countries. Determinants of Work-Life Balance26 There is a variety of determinants of work-life balance. An indication of the range of influences can be found in the more detailed analysis of the CIPD surveys cited. A regression analysis reveals that an imbalance was more likely to be reported, as we might expect, by those working longer hours. It was also more likely to be reported by those in managerial positions and on a higher income; by women rather than men and by those with dependent children; and by multiple job holders. On the positive side, those who reported that they worked in an organization with a friendly climate, where more human resource practices are in place and where they have more scope for direct participation and autonomy reported less imbalance. From a policy perspective, it is interesting to note that the presence of family-friendly practices was not associated with a reported work-life balance. This implies that they were either ineffectively implemented or that they may have lessened but did not eliminate the problem. In the UK, Green (2001) (“It’s been a hard day’s night: The concentration and intensification of work in the late 20th century”. British Journal of Industrial Relations March, 2001) among others, has shown that intensification of work has reached a point where there is very little slack in the working day. Typical examples include the jobs of those working in call centers where incoming calls are placed in a queue and where there is a pre-determined response time and pattern. The annual CIPD surveys have identified that one of the areas where workers believe the organization is least likely to keep its promises concerns the demands on their time. In the same surveys, subjective reports of effort show, typically, that about 30 per cent say “I am working as hard as I can and could not imagine being able to work any harder”. A further 45 per cent say “I am working very hard” and most of the rest say “I am working quite hard”. Invariably, less than 5 per cent will admit to “not working particularly hard”. In other words, people are feeling the pressure. We have already noted, from the CIPD surveys, that those who report a friendly climate report a better work-life balance. Clark (2000) (Work/family border theory: A new theory of work/life balance”. Human Relations, 2000, 53,6,747-770) has dissected the concept of “family friendly” to distinguish practices associated with temporal flexibility, which give workers some control over when they work, operational flexibility, which give control through autonomy over the content of work and supportive supervision, which allows for rules to be flexible in the case of family crises, illness and so on. Her research with an American sample found that somewhat contrary to expectations operational flexibility but not temporal flexibility was associated with better reported work-life balance. Supportive supervision did not improve balance but increased organizational citizenship behavior. These findings are in line with our UK surveys which suggest that autonomy and direct participation is important and that family-friendly practices have less impact than we might expect. In terms of border theory, the family-friendly practices do not succeed in making the boundaries more permeable. There is something of a puzzle about why family-friendly policies and practices do not appear to improve work-life balance to the extent we might expect. Perry-Smith and Blum (“Work-family human resource bundles and perceived organizational performance”. Academy of Management Journal, 43, 6, 2001, pp 1107-1117.) report a US study on “bundles” of family-friendly practices and corporate performance. They find, in line with other research on HRM, that isolated family-friendly practices will have little impact but that a comprehensive bundle of practices are associated with superior ratings of corporate performance. While their focus is on corporate performance, there may be similar implications for their impact on employees. One interpretation of the presence of a bundle of practices is that they have become embedded in the organizational culture whereas isolated practices operate on the margin. This would reinforce the importance of considering organizational culture/climate as a key unit of analysis as much as the specific practices. Research has concentrated on the demands of work rather than home. However in this context some of the work of Hochschild (Hochschild, 1997) is revealing in suggesting that the use of progressive human resource practices to generate commitment to work can risk making work almost too attractive. In contrast, the life of the American parent is increasingly programmed to meet a series of time-based obligations to transport children, meet specific needs and set aside “quality” time. With these demands made in the home, work, particularly where the social and physical environment is attractive and levels of autonomy and scope for development are high, can appear particularly appealing. An ambitious study by Kossek, Colquitt and Blum (2001), building on some of Kossek’s earlier work, has examined the influence of both work and family climate on aspects of work-life balance and related outcomes. The core focus is on what they term “care giving” decisions, in other words, decisions about care of children and elderly family members. The key issues are where they should be cared for and by whom. It is hypothesized that work and family climates, and specifically the climates of sharing and sacrifice, will influence the consequences of the decisions for work-life balance and for work and family performance and for well-being. The results confirm that the climate of sharing in the home and at work has a positive impact on performance and well-being. Indeed caring for an elderly relative in the home where there is a climate that does not support sharing has a particularly negative association with performance at home and at work and on well-being. The climate of sacrifice has much less influence than the climate for sharing. This study therefore manages to incorporate climates at work and at home, a range of individual differences including differences in care giving decisions, work-life balance and conflict and a set of organizational, family and individual outcomes. Reference has already been made to some of the research on individual factors. There has been comparative work on orientations to work and the extent to which work is a central life interest. The Meaning of Work Team (1987) asked the lottery question in a number of countries – would you still work if you won enough money never to need to work again? A positive answer is taken as an indication that work is a central life interest. Responses suggested that most people would continue to work; the proportion saying they would range from 93 per cent in Japan to 69 per cent in the UK. When this question was repeated in the late 1990s in the UK, 61 per cent said they would continue to do some sort of work. Evidence from those who have won the lottery indicates that over half do in practice continue to work. Another way of getting at work as a central life interest is to ask a more direct question. In the UK, a recent survey of 2000 workers, mainly form the public sector, showed that 14 per cent said they were more committed to work than to life outside work, 25 per cent were more committed to life outside work and the remainder, a little over 60 per cent said they were equally committed to both. A rather higher proportion, almost 20 per cent of those in the private sector, said they were more committed to work. Evidence of the relation between orientations to work and career and life stage comes from a longitudinal study of graduates in large organizations (Sturges, Guest and Mackenzie Davey, 2000). This reveals that at the point of entry into their organizational career, the issue of work-life balance is seen as very important and they are eager not to get sucked in to a long hours work pattern. As their careers advance, they work longer hours and become more dissatisfied with their work-life balance. They rationalize this by arguing that it is only temporary and that once the current assignment is completed, they will get back into a better balance. In other words, the belief in their ability to control their working lives remains central to their capacity to cope with and tolerate the long hours. Finally, in considering individual factors, we can return briefly to the concept of “workaholics”, or those with exceptionally high work involvement. Peiperl and Jones (2000) distinguish workaholics, who work long hours at high effort levels and who believe that they receive fair rewards for this from over workers who also work long and hard but are dissatisfied with the rewards. Their sample is made up of MBA students and their concern is with returns such as salary and career progression so they may not be typical. However they claim that workaholics appear to display more of a collectivist orientation and may be part of an organizational culture that supports long hours, high effort and high reward. In other words, they move away from personality towards explanations at the level of organizational culture for their behavior and its consequences. In a separate study, another CIPD survey (CIPD, 1999) but this time of over 800 people working more than 48 hours a week, about a third admitted to being addicted to their work. They also reported higher levels of work satisfaction and satisfaction with other aspects of their life than those working long hours but who did not admit to addiction to work. It appears that those who work long hours may fall in to various types and we need to distinguish those with high levels of work involvement from those who feel an internally-driven compulsion to work without high work involvement and those who are compelled by external circumstances to work for long hours. As a postscript, a recent follow-up study of this same sample found that partners of those working long hours and reporting high levels of satisfaction with family, health and other aspects of life provide a rather less positive picture of the consequences. By implication, if we are interested in accounts of the impact of varying means of achieving work-life balance, we need to seek independent corroboration of the consequences for behavior and performance. This section has dealt briefly with both descriptive and more complex research on determinants of work-life balance and its consequences. It has implied that we need to take account of a range of factors at both the individual and organizational level as well as factors in the family and possibly the wider community. In particular, issues of social support, reflected in the organizational and family climate, need to be incorporated into the analysis. The research raises issues about how far W/O psychologists should stray beyond their familiar territory. There is certainly a strong implication that to understand work behavior in relation to work-life balance, we need to explore aspects of family life. Benefits of addressing WLB27
Employers are recognising that work-life balance is not an optional extra, but a core strategic issue, that has wide implications for the quality of working life in the organisation Benefits Include: o improved employee flexibility - supporting innovation, creativity and ability to deal with change o increased morale, commitment, and loyalty o reduction in absenteeism, sickness and stress leading to reduced costs o attracting and retaining high quality staff o increased productivity and performance from "engaged" staff o improved quality of output o more efficient use of training and development resources According to the findings of the ‘2007 Deloitte & Touche USA LLP Ethics & Workplace’28 survey, there is a strong relationship between the two factors of work life balance and work place ethical behaviour. The survey, conducted by Harris Interactive on behalf of Deloitte & Touche USA also showed that the behaviours of management and direct supervisors, coupled with positive reinforcement for ethical behaviour, are the top factors for promoting ethical behaviour in the workforce. According to the survey, 91 percent of all employed adults agreed that workers are more likely to behave ethically at work when they have a good work-life balance. A combined 44 percent of workers cite high levels of stress (28 percent), long hours (25 percent) and inflexible schedule (13 percent) as the causes of conflict between their work responsibilities and personal priorities, hence contributors to work-life imbalance.60 percent of employed adults surveyed think that job dissatisfaction is a leading reason why people make unethical decisions at work, and more than half of workers (55 percent) ranked a flexible work schedule among the top three factors leading to job satisfaction, second only to compensation (63 percent). Work family conflict and work life balance issues have received a great deal of attention from researchers and contemporary employers. Nevertheless, there is a lack of reported scales for assessing the construct of work life balance. A Study by Hayman (2005)29 evaluated a 15 item scale for assessing the construct of work life balance adapted from an instrument reported by Fisher-McAuley, Stanton, Jolton and Gavin (2001) with data obtained from 61 human resource administrators of a large university in Western Australia. Factor analysis confirmed a robust three factor solution. This paper reports and validates a new measure to capture employee perceptions of work life balance while discussing implications for human resource practitioners in the Asia Pacific region. -O- References: (1) http://www.answers.com/topic/work (2) http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/life (3) http://www.humanresources.ed.ac.uk/Health_and_Wellbeing/2.2OverviewWorkLife.htm (4) en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Work-life_balance (5) en.wiktionary.org/wiki/work-life_balance (6) http://www.worklifebalancecentre.org/nickhalpinl.php (7) www.flexible-working.org/flex/glossary.html (8) http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/work-life+balance (9) http://www.ldoceonline.com/dictionary/work-life-balance (10) http://www.healthatwork.org.uk/pdf.pl?file=haw/files/Work-lifeBalance.pdf (11) http://www.humanresources.ed.ac.uk/Health_and_Wellbeing/2.2OverviewWorkLife.htm (12) http://www.worklifebalance.ie/ (13) http://www.worklifebalance.com/worklifebalancedefined.html (14) http://dictionary.bnet.com/definition/work-life+balance.html (15)http://www.businessweek.com/business_at_work/time_management/archives/2008/07/work-life_balan.html (16) http://jmo.e-contentmanagement.com/archives/vol/14/issue/3/article/2298/work–life-balance (17) http://www.ucm.es/info/Psyap/enop/guest.htm (18) www.dti.gov.uk (19) http://www.humanresources.ed.ac.uk/Health_and_Wellbeing/2.2OverviewWorkLife.htm (20) http://cep.lse.ac.uk/pubs/download/CP202.pdf (21) www.eeotrust.org.nz/content/docs/reports/Employee Engagement 2007 Report Rev... (22) www.eeotrust.org.nz/content/docs/reports/Employee Engagement 2007 Report Rev... (23) http://www.humanresources.ed.ac.uk/Health_and_Wellbeing/2.2OverviewWorkLife.htm (24) http://www.ucm.es/info/Psyap/enop/guest.htm (25) http://www.ucm.es/info/Psyap/enop/guest.htm (26) http://www.ucm.es/info/Psyap/enop/guest.htm (27) http://www.humanresources.ed.ac.uk/Health_and_Wellbeing/2.2OverviewWorkLife.htm (28) http://www.deloitte.com/dtt/article/ (29) http://en.scientificcommons.org/8096509:Psychometric Assessment of an Instrument Designed to Measure Work Life Balance (2005), Hayman J (30) http://www.worklifebalancecentre.org/nickhalpinl.php
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