Work-Life Balance in the new Organization by Kamal Kant
In the new organisations that are emerging in the 21st century, the focus on work-life balance is increasing. Attention is increasingly being focused on balancing the demands of work and family & personal commitment. There is a clear distinction even in the semantics, work is a demand whilst family and personal needs are a commitment. Though most of us view work and family as competing priorities, few realize that in reality work and family are complementary. One cannot exist without the other!
If the employee can healthily and satisfactorily meet his or her family commitment (e.g. childcare, parenting, elder care, filiality, spousal relationship management), personal commitment (pursue personal interest & hobbies, participate in sports, maintain a healthy lifestyle) and community responsibility (e.g. participate actively in voluntary organization, social & community activities in the community), he or she is more likely to more motivated and driven to come go to work and meet the demands of work whole-heartedly.
Balancing of work and life involves all employees at the workplace. It involves the acceptance of a diverse range of family and personal needs and how these vary across the life span between work cultures. It also involves the empathetic understanding, acceptance and compassion for family and personal life issues and recognition of the depth that each person brings to work from their family and personal experiences.
Ensuring successful outcomes for work-life balance requires a mutual obligation of employees and employers as a must. The benefit to the employer in the work-life balance equation is the opportunity to utilize the unique talents and personality of the employee. Similarly the individual benefits by learning the more structured ways of the workplace and applying them in his personal and family to bring order and system in order to optimize the personal and family endeavours. It is benefit that is a sure win-win for the employer and employee.
Organisations as they advance into the 21st century where they view employees as assets often believe the value of the employees needs to be enhanced by appropriate investment in them. Organisations increasingly shifting into a paradigm where they manifest that they want to fully utilize their employees’ background, experiences and talents and provide a working environment that fosters an opportunity for employees to perform optimally. Employers in such a paradigm accept differing opinions and want employees to express them without fear or threat and different lifestyles are valued. It is in this direction that employers are willing to invest in family-friendly practices as well as incur expenditure on welfare projects so that not only the employee benefits but also his or her family and community concerns that the employee values.
Organisations are increasingly recognising that by acknowledging employees desire to have a balance in their life between work and family & personal life, they are helping employees in finding better solutions to their problems at work especially when faced with a dilemma. Also, it creates an opportunity to enhance productivity and find creative and innovation solutions to challenges. Further, customer services moves to a higher level as employees become increasing pro-employer as loyalty for a caring employer increases. This strategy also helps in the recruitment and retention of especially talented people.
Enlightened organisations are increasingly shifting to:
1. providing a work environment which distinctly and clearly demonstrates a valuing of work-life balance and actively promote seminars and discussion groups at the workplace for exchange of ideas to assist employees to achieve the balance desired;
2. providing flexible leave and work arrangements to enable employees to handle important and urgent family and personal matters or community issues without resorting to ‘absconding’ from work;
3. maintain an environment where work and life conflict and stress are minimized and dealt with openly;
4. provide flexibility in how, when and where work is done to support family, personal and community obligations and commitment;
5. provide flexibility for career options to address the varying needs of those with family and personal concerns;
6. facilitate close interaction with local community resources that cater for employee’s dependent’s care and other work and family needs;
7. recognise the needs of spouse, partners, children and other family members in work and family relationships.
In essence, enlightened organisations realize that responding to work-life balance issues is simply about being a good corporate citizen to encourage good organizational behaviour and attitude among employees resulting in commitment and loyalty to the organisation! It is all about developing winning formulas.
Forward thinking Human Resources Directors, Managers and Executives are rapidly realizing that leveraging on work-life balance will also generate honesty and integrity at the workplace. Employees would be more forthright rather than furtive and sneaky in disclosing their family and personal needs. Moreover, they will not resort to ‘cat and mouse’ games to ‘abscond’ from work to attend to pressing urgent family and personal needs.
Consequently, new value and belief systems will appear which will generate more positive attitudes and behaviour. More importantly, employees and employers will learn to stand shoulder to shoulder to deliver better outcomes arising from a concern for each other.
This article was contributed by Kamal Kant – a Principal Consultant of Next Transition. Kamal is also a career coach with an interest in career management and career related issues including work-life balance issues.
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