Workers Work–life Balance Should Be a Human Resource Priority

Abstract

Work and personal life are essentially two different scales of a spring balance and any adverse movement either at the workplace or in personal life would disturb the balance. Workers wouldn’t like to sacrifice their personal life because of their job imperatives. Opportunity to have good functioning at workplace and a wholesome life at home provides a basic framework for work-life balance. However, work-life balance has always been fraught with challenges which have, of late, assumed significant proportions, and is considered to be the most pressing concern for the workers today. It has been observed that the population of working couples has been on the increase, and this has led to greater scope for work-life conflict for them. Organizations are realizing that the personal life of workers directly affects their productivity and quality of work. Therefore, organizations feel maintaining work-life balance of workers makes a strong business case. This underscores the need for the organizations to promote work-life balance measures to safeguard their business interests. The organizations are introducing flexi-time work schedules, compressed work weeks and telecommuting for maintaining work-life balance of the workers. Research has shown that if work-life balance dwindles, there could be negative consequences for individual workers and also for the organizations. On the other hand, work-life balance has many positives for the workers at the individual level and for the organization as a whole. HR in the organization has a central role in formulation of a customized work-life balance policy for the organization. In this paper, we have made an attempt to highlight why work-life balance policies should be promoted and form a core part of an organization’s Human Resource policy in order to optimize their business interests. We have also touched upon certain recommendations and future direction of research on this subject.