From the recent work pressures encountered across different professions, maintaining a proper balance job and personal or family life has become rather challenging to employees. Such a consideration has resulted in various family-related problems due to the limited time of impact created for interaction or finding adequate time to resolving disputes within the family. However, employers have registered reduced productivity amongst individuals who have personal or family related issues. Besides, it is not simple balancing home and work, but on active management, one can realize a significant difference in his/her relationship with family and fellow colleagues. In such a regard, there are several advantages and disadvantages associated with work-life balances since on one side (Schultz and Schultz, 2015). For example, persons who are employed partly or fully realize better living standards, little money-related problems, feel to be part of a bigger entity, increased self-esteem and may build on friendship outside their family, which is of benefit.
On the other hand, the employer could be overwhelmed with the workload, occasionally missing their family life, have no time for their partners or kids and siblings, and often too engaged that they cannot enjoy their social life, which adversely affects them. Therefore, concerning the cost and benefits of work and personal life, people struggle to achieve a balance to avoid undermining a given side that is equally useful (Schieman and Young, 2013). Thus, employees should develop mechanisms for creating an enabling environment at home to establish their individual lives, which will give them ample time of concentrating on their respective jobs and work assignments.
Similarly, while trying to create a balance between work and life, there is no provision for wrong or right choices that a person could depend on to enhance changes at different stages their lives. However, for couples, it is a better option for one avail him/herself at the comfort of home to take care of the children and any other thing that could attract the attention of the other (Li et a., 2015). As well, one could resort to full-time employment as the other picks on part-time to balance for the family time and fill the gaps created by the significant other. Nevertheless, in a situation where both partners are full-time employees, it becomes rather challenging for one to develop proper work-life balance. Further, the coordination between job and personal time can be difficult for separated parents in creating time to meet with the children due to the shared parenting with the ex-partner who could always be in the company of the kid. The kids might feel the void created by one of the parents who is always busy at work imposing less support from him/her, which could not be true or otherwise limited to choices. Such a move indicates that the attempt to balancing work demands and human life requirements is a compelling task for an individual, especially for distant and separated families (Gao et al., 2015). In such a regard, despite how much a person could feel to be in control of his/her life there are obstacles on the way that one cannot avoid. Alternatively, one can opt for various decisions and get reading for the consequences of their actions and thoughts in the process of managing their time at work and home interchangeably.
We can do it today.
As most parents and other single employs crave for work-life balance, several difficulties have been experienced due to the high demands from both sides and the limitation of time as a resource. For instance, single employees have little time to get their partners outside the work environment since their no adequate time for socializing or getting to know someone better. As well, previous surveys on work-life balances indicate that people are eager to make transformations in their lives to be more flexible at work. Such an approach could affect their compensation and benefits in the organization but indeed the spending time at home is essential compared to the little decrease in payment. Even though, the reality about balancing time at work and home is trickier considering the number of hours spent at work and for personal life engagements. The truth about working class individuals is that they tend to create much more time for their jobs that give themselves a break to increase their remunerations and benefits. Consequently, the workers often reach their respective homes when they are already deprived of the positive energy to interact with other family members. In such a position, the parents should arrange with their employers or manager to create some time outside the routine for the sake of the personal life (Boswel and Olson, 2014). As a result, the little change would translate to big differences in the family situation that will lead to an effective balance between work and life. Therefore, the employee will enhance peace within him/herself that will help in improving the working conditions and outcomes.
However, in achieving a balanced work-life, parents will realize various positive changes in their lives that will build in their relationships with other as well as career development. For example, parents are likely to come from work relaxed, interact with children, and prepare meals as opposed to complaining, missing meals, late sleep encountered in unbalanced work-life situations (Uzoigwe and Noor, 2016). Besides, the involvement of family during meals is a positive sign of commitment and sacrifice and helps the parents to know their children or mates better since each every person can tell about their day experiences. Such a move makes a person’s life to be more appealing despite the hectic times encountered during work. Furthermore, for a balanced work-life, people are likely to engage in collective responsibilities with their families after work building on integration and improve on one’s social skills. Such shared moments become special moments because it will help in identification and resolve disputes that exist among the family members, which could develop into bigger problems if not given attention. As well, the creation of personal time at home helps one to prepare adequately for the next day and work routines. Meanwhile, it is not easy to achieve the work-life balance as it sounds, though one can always involve him/herself in little changes that would contribute to significant differences while strengthening relationships at work and home.
- Boswel, W. and Olson, J. (2014). I cannot afford to have a life: employee adaptation to feelings of job insecurity.
- Gao, Y. Shi, J. Niu, Q. and Wang, L. (2015). Work-family conflict and job satisfaction: Emotional intelligence as a moderator. Research article.
- Li, A and Shaffer, J. (2015). The psychological well-being of disability caregivers: Examining the roles of family strain, family-to-work conflict, and perceived supervisor support.
- Schieman, S. and Young, M. (2013). Work and stress. Vol 27 No. 3. Routledge.
- Schultz, P, and Schultz, E. (2015). Psychology and work today: Introduction to industrial and organizational psychology.
- Uzoigwe, A and Noor, N. (2016). Predictors of work-family role conflict and its impact on professional women in medicine, engineering, and information technology in Nigeria.