Work Life Balance as a Key Motivational Factor

Velnampy (2009) states that, although motivated employees benefit the organizations in various aspects, Motivating the employees is challenged by the factors such as work-life imbalance, incompetent supervisors, lower self-confidence issues such as fear to be failed on the tasks, job stress, or achievement anxiety which effects organizational performance. Therefore, work-life balancing is a current main consciousness of the HR professionals as well the employees (Gautam & Jain, 2018). It is defined as the capability of managing resources to meet family and work demands so that individuals can show effective participation in both domains of life (Voydanoff, 2005). The studies has proven that improving the balance between work and personal life can uplift the productivity and profitability of the organizations (Gautam & Jain, 2018).

Kanwar et al., (2014) states that the work-life balance and job satisfaction are positively related to each other. The competition arise with the globalization, renewed interest in family values and aging workforce has contributed to improve the interest in balancing the work and life (Gautam & Jain, 2018). Furthermore, time flexibility, role clarity, co-worker support, family culture, working hours and head support were identified as factors responsible for WLB (Madhusudhan et al., 2013). The employers are becoming increasingly aware of the cost implications associated with over-worked employees such as: operating and productivity costs, absenteeism, punctuality, commitment and performance (Dhas, 2015). Moreover, Dhas (2015) explains the reasons for the companies to participate in work life balance programs: High return on investment, recruitment and retention of employees, legislation, costs and union regulations.

Vedio 1: The Importance of Work Life Balance

Source: Study Store (2019)

Practical Application of WLB in Organizations as a Key Motivational Factor

The reactions to work and family demands differ among people across countries and continents at various levels of economic development. Compared to Asian context of managing work-life conflicts, the Western context shows a positive impact on balancing with the policies such as flexible working practices and hours, more generous parental leaves and family friendly government policies (Chandra, 2012). Cooke and Jing (2009) highlights that women are more likely to feel the pressure of WLB than men and higher earners are able to reduce their WLB by commercializing their household responsibilities and are more likely to complain to their company about working long hours and ask for compensation in one form or another. Dhas (2015) mentions that improving work/life balance for employees includes flexi-hours, compressed work weeks, holiday offerings, job-sharing, telecommuting and child-care support. As the actual application of the theory in the industry, the above mentioned options allow employees to have more control over their lives, enabling them to be more satisfied and productive. 

Arunika M.M.A (2015) mentions that Sri Lankan Banking Sector is very competitive and it has resulted the bank employees to gear with new measures in pursuit of attracting new customers and increase the loyalty of existing customers for long term benefits. In order to attain the goals, both public and private sector banks have increased their opening hours, introduced more value added products and services, opened up more branches and have adopted the latest Information Technology infrastructure. Simultaneously, the above adding have made the banking employees working longer hours, having a greater and more complex work load, therefore, experiencing a lot of work pressure and creating a culture of poor work life balance resulting to their employees becoming highly dissatisfied with their jobs.

With the experience I have gained through my career as a banker, it can be proved that there are number of strategical approaches that the human resource professionals in the banks have applied to avoid the work-life conflicts of the employees. Few of the identified strategical attempts are pointed below.

·        Assessment of work-loads scientifically

·        Allocating sufficient staff for business units

·        Introduction of automated systems to reduce manual work and save time

·        Allowing off days between long work assignment period 

·        Providing holiday offs

·        Providing annual (long) leaves, casual leaves and medical leaves

·        Medical allowances

·        Empowering employees’ children education/ assistance

·        Insurance of employee families

·        Involving employees’ families in get togethers, day outings, trips etc

·        Offering Counseling services when required

·        Employee grievance handling mechanism in place

As a conclusion, the concept of Motivation is built upon the factors which fulfill the competing needs of the employees whereas boosting the performance by increasing job satisfaction (Paul & Vincent, 2018). Zhao & Pan (2017), highlights that the modern employees’ job satisfaction depends on the mental health and work-life balancing. Thus the HR practitioners must address the actual requirements of the particular employee before they implement any motivational strategy (Lee & Raschke, 2016).  

 

Reference

Arunika, M.M.A. and Kottawatta, H., 2015. The effect of work life balance on employee job satisfaction among non-executives in the public banking sector in Colombo district.

Chandra, V., 2012. Work–life balance: eastern and western perspectives. The International Journal of Human Resource Management, 23(5), pp.1040-1056.

Cooke, F.L. and Jing, X., 2009. Work-life balance in China: sources of conflicts and coping strategies. NHRD Network Journal, 2(6), pp.18-28.

Dhas, B., 2015. A report on the importance of work-life balance. International Journal of Applied Engineering Research, 10(9), pp.21659-21665.

Gautam, I. and Jain, S., 2018. A STUDY OF WORK-LIFE BALANCE: CHALLENGES AND SOLUTIONS. International Journal of Research in Engineering, IT and Social Sciences.

Goud, V.M. and Nagaraju, K., 2013. Work life balance of teaching faculty with reference to Andhra Pradesh Engineering Colleges. Global Journal of Management and Business Studies, 3(8), pp.891-896.

Lee, M.T. and Raschke, R.L., 2016. Understanding employee motivation and organizational performance: Arguments for a set-theoretic approach. Journal of Innovation & Knowledge, 1(3), pp.162-169.

Paul, A.K. and Vincent, T.N., 2018. Employee motivation and retention: issues and challenges in startup companies. Int. J. Creat. Res. Thoughts, 6, pp.2050-2056.

Velnampy, T., 2009. Job Satisfaction and Employee Motivation: An Empirical Study of Sri Lankan Organizations. Research Gate.

Voydanoff, P., 2005. Toward a conceptualization of perceived work‐family fit and balance: A demands and resources approach. Journal of marriage and family, 67(4), pp.822-836.

Zhao, B. and Pan, Y. (2017) Cross-Cultural Employee Motivation in International Companies. Journal of Human Resource and Sustainability Studies, 5, 215-222.