Work–life balance

About: Work–life balance is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 2252 publications have been published within this topic receiving 36240 citations. The topic is also known as: Work Life balance & work-life balance.

The generation game

Abstract: Purpose – Explores the limited value of concepts such as Baby-Boomer, Generation X (Gen X) and Generation Y (Gen Y) and advances the view that life course is more valuable. Design/methodology/approach – Examines how young adults in Britain, born between 1975 and 1982, conceptualized the notion of work-life balance as they were about to leave university and enter full-time paid employment. Findings – Reveals that the notion of individual choice strongly underpins young adults’ conceptualization of work-life balance and expectations of work-life balance support; while young British and Asian adults largely considered it to be a matter of individual choice, there were variations in their preferences for how to prioritize their impending employment and personal lives; and four emerging patterns of work-life balance orientation preferences were found – balancer, careerist, career-sacrificer and integrator. Practical implications – Provides support for the argument that the work-life balance perceptions of young adults who would belong to the so-called Gen Y cannot be generalized and simplified as being either work-centric or life-centric. The picture is a lot more complex given the diversity within this group of young adults. Social implications – Highlights how, instead of looking for generational differences (or age-related differences) which can be divisive, it is more useful to look at the issue of multi-generations in a broader way. Originality/value – By using a life-course approach instead of a generational approach, is able to take into account how past transitions have shaped the way work-life balance was discussed by the young adults and how anticipated future transitions were expected by the young adults to change their needs and therefore expectations of employer and government support.

An Investigation into the Practicalities of a flexible working policy in the Intellectual Disability Sector: A Case Study

Abstract: The research paper focuses on assessing the impact of a pilot flexible working/reduced hour’s policy provided for employees in a service driven client focussed environment While the findings will be of interest to primarily to organisations within the health care setting, the issues identified within it may have relevance for other non-health organisations The research concentrated on one organisation where the Pilot Part time/Flexible working (reduced hours) policy is currently under review In order to ascertain the impact of a flexible working/reduced hour’s policy on this organisation, the research adopted a qualitative approach to collate the necessary data This included the analysis of a management questionnaire and employee interviews The findings were unequivocal regarding the benefits of the policy derived by employees who availed of the policy The policy benefited these employees immensely by giving them more family time and contributing to a greater work life balance However, it had a less than positive impact on employees that were not availing of the policy by increasing their workload In addition it led to difficulties in finding replacements and had a negative impact on service provision in some cases Management thought that the policy was meeting employees needs but in some cases it was impacting on staffing arrangements negatively, ie relief cover being used which wasn’t the original intention of the policy and sometimes positions were left unfilled All three groups had suggestions on how the policy could be improved and developed to make it work better It also presents an opportunity for further research to be conducted into the possibilities of other types of flexible working within the organisation Given the sensitive environment in which this organisation operates, the author has chosen not to disclose the name of the organisation in the content of this dissertation