What is Work Life Balance?
A Juggling Act
Work-Life Balance nirvana can be defined as the goal of perfectly balancing the responsibilities on the job with the responsibilities at home."
But this is not always easy. The lines between work and home are being blurred with the increased use of laptops and mobile devices. Employees are bringing their work home, and conversely home to work.
Employers are downsizing while at the same time upsizing their work load.
Everyday, employees are faced with the ever increasing challenge to maintain the delicate balance between their careers and home lives, which is often compounded by dependent care issues. There are many employees with children and special needs children. That and an increasing employee population with elderly parents as well as those that belong to "the sandwich generation." Employees juggling both young children as well as elderly parents.
Now let's add in employees who have relocation issues or who have legal or financial needs. Not to mention those employees who juggle all or most of the above.
The most productive employees are those who can balance their family and personal issues with the ever increasing demands at work.
Our Job? Helping employees balance their work and personal lives by providing them quick and easy access to quality consultation, information and resources.
Consistency Is Key
How We Keep Workers In Top Performance
For both the private and public sectors to stay competitive in today's global market, an effort must be made to address work/life issues. Challenges such as work schedules, child and adult care, time concerns, gaining administrative support, meeting family needs, and work expectations are becoming increasingly more complex for employees throughout the world.
A different kind of employee is emerging in the workplace. Increasingly, workers' commitments may be more to themselves than to their employer. Younger workers, particularly those with children, are more willing to make sacrifices in their education, career, and/or job in exchange for increased time for family or personal life. This reorientation of values is contributing to changing patterns of thinking and decision making for employees (Galinsky & Friedman, 1993).
Due to demographic shifts within the American workforce, changing values have influenced company organization and business policies and practices. Work is a way to sustain a living and lifestyle, as well as an opportunity to productively contribute to the function of the economy and society as a whole. The workplace has become a setting for human development and employee self-fulfillment. A major challenge for managers in today's workplace is to be able to compete effectively in the marketplace and provide growth opportunities for employees at the same time.
The combination of a fluctuating work environment with competing job and family commitments can negatively affect employees. This negative effect can occur in the form of lowered morale, diminished motivation, reduced productivity, and increased burnout and turnover (Benedict & Taylor, 1995). Each of these is costly to an organization from both an economic and time efficiency standpoint.