Work life balance – Old and new thinking

Early theory’s of work life balance preached about identifying priorities and then spending equal amount of time on them or spending majority of time with the highest priority. Time management was looked at as the primary tool to help balance life and achieving peaceful and stress-free existance. Organizations also looked at work life balance as a gender thing and something that only women with children needed.

The term “work life balance” was coined in 1986, but there is some evidence that suggests that work life balance programs existed as early as 1930’s before world war II, where W.K. Kellogg Company created four six hour shifts to replace the traditional eight hour shifts and these new shifts resulted in increased employee morale and efficiency.

Times have changed since then and today there is a very thin line between where work ends and personal time begins due to the constantly present mobiles, emails and blackberry’s as well as changing roles of both genders in the home front. Work life balance theories have changed with times and new thinking has emerged which talks about work life balance as ever changing (Sometimes daily), no one size fits all and more importantly that work life balance does not mean equal balance.

The new thinking in the area of work life balance has forced organizations to re-look at their work life balance practices as many had one size fits all approach. New practices in the area of work life balance today veer towards offering a rich array of options for employees to choose, which include, job-share, telecommuting, part-time working etc. Increasingly organizations are looking at work life balance as an requirement of not just married women and men with children but also single and childless employees with extended responsibilities elder care. Importantly organizations have recognized that male employees also might need work life balance.

The starting point of getting work life balance practices right would be to figure out what employees need whey they ask for work life balance. What an unmarried employee might want would be very different from another unmarried employee and so would be the case of a women employee who married with kids and what her friend who is in the same boat.

Of importance is also to understand if the organization culture, management philosophy agrees and supports work life balance practices. It’s critical that managers and supervisors understand the need for work life balance as other wise employees who opt for work life balance benefit might end up feeling that they are an odd person out and organization looks at them as someone who is taking it easy.

The best of work life balance practices have failed due to lack of supporting culture and enablers like supervisor sensitivity and prejudice. Communication and context setting would be the key to ride over such issues.