Work-life balance programs as personnel social and psychological support in organizations

Abstract

Introduction. Today work environment becomes stressful, with many tasks and problems to solve. It is overloaded, imbalanced, complicated and often full of conflicts. In this climate, managing the boundary and balance between home and work is becoming more challenging. There is a need for organizations and personnel alike to find flexible and innovative solutions that maximize productivity without damaging personnel’ well-being, their personal life, family relationships. Aim. To analyse the main categories, resources and limitations of work-life balance, results of empirical study, main organizational and individual strategies for creating balance. Results. Work-life balance is a category defined by researchers as a person’s subjective general assessment of the interrelation between work and other life areas, family, as well as the ability to combine these spheres in a proper way. The empirical study has shown, that the work-life balance has been generally assessed as average. It should be noted that they have scored the load balance lower than other components: professional tasks complexity, work and content planning, and social intercourse. According to the results of the empirical study and to the theoretical approaches, the basic strategies in professional productivity increase programs in organizations may be the following: focus strategies, “resource/refusal” strategies, adaptive strategies, every of which is manifested in a certain kind of an individual strategy. The use of the adaptive individual strategies with the resource increase strategy perfectly contributes to the work-life balance achievement. Conclusion. Based on the results of theoretical and empirical research, we have identified organizational conditions and individual strategies for achieving the work-life balance, and also the main personal skills and traits contributing to the work-life balance achievement include the following ones: personal flexibility, a high level of self-discipline; trust-based relations; dynamic and independent work. These skills should be mature, and the work-life balance achievement psychological teaching programs for personnel can increase their level.