A STUDY OF THE RELATION BETWEEN THE CHANGES OF WORKING STYLE WITH IT USE AND THE EMPLOYEE'S WORK-LIFE BALANCE

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to observe how the change of employee’s working style with using IT and other work environmental factors affect their work-life balance. In recent Japan, many companies have introduced some HRM (Human Resource Management) programs that support employee’s work-life balance since their working style has been diversified in these years. However, not few Japanese employees still think that those HRM programs (for example maternity leave, childcare leave, discretionary labor system etc.) are difficult to take or they feel awkward to take it as a right or they think those supportive HRM systems are useless since their workplace are still strongly based on very tight team work organization and too busy to leave their team for their private matter. They often feel as if they are guilty to leave the workplace for their personal circumstances. There are some reasons why it is difficult for Japanese employees to maintain their balance of work and private life. It is caused by Japanese unique situations, for example, a yet strong division of labor by gender role, very long working hours, relatively ambiguous job boundaries etc.) Some Japanese companies have been trying to redesign their jobs and their working styles with using IT systems. Other factors to be considered are their work environment circumstances such as the office atmosphere and relationships with colleagues. The paper focuses on the effects of changing Japanese employees working styles using IT, work environmental factors and employee’s comfortability to take HRM programs for their work-life balance. A survey research was used to confirm the correlations between the working style changes, work environmental factors and employee’s comfortability of taking HRM programs. The finding is that there are positive correlations between the changes of working style by using IT, relationship with colleagues, office atmosphere and employee’s comfortability to take HRM programs for their work-life balance.