CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTION

Work life balance is the interaction between the work and the other activities that includes
family, community, leisure and personal development. It is about the right or the balanced
combination of the individual’s participation in the work and other aspects of their life and
this combination doesn’t remain the same it can be changed over the time.

Work life balance is where the tensions between the work life and personal life is minimised
by having a proper policies, systems, supportive management and provisions at work place
and a good relations in personal life. Performance and the job satisfaction of the employees
are said to be affected by the work life balance. Work life balance of the employees helps in
reducing the stress level at work and increases the job satisfaction.

Companies have realised the importance of the work life balance with respect to the
productivity and the creativity of the employees. Employers offer a different programs such
as flexible hours, shifts, team outing, day care centres, health care centres, etc. to motivate the
employees to work efficiently. Employees feel motivated and become loyal and committed
towards the organisation as it puts an extra effort to provide a healthy balance between work
and life.

Organisations face many challenges in implementing the policies on Work life balance as
employees today are not just look out for a job but they also want the organisation to take of
their well being.

Therefore organisations are adopting for new policies where employees can give time to
enjoy and spend time with their family. The present research paper aims to study the work
life balance of managerial level employees of Rane TRW , Trichy.

Work-life balance is a combination of interactions among different areas of one’s life, the
advantages and disadvantages associated with that balance/imbalance can affect multiple
levels of society. The issue of work-life balance has permeated the business community for
decades (Carruthers, 2005; Spinks, 2004; Parsons, 2002), and companies have responded
with work-life programs to address the issues raised by their employees (Roberts, 2005).
According to a study by the Families and Work Institute (1991), the strongest predictor of
corporate family friendliness is change, such as downsizing, because the company sees
worklife balance initiatives as a way to retain workers.Another explanation, however, might
be that during times of organizational change, corporate culture becomes more malleable.
According to the study of Spherion (2003), there were 96 percent said that an employer is
more attractive when it helps employees meet family obligations through options such as
flextime, job sharing, or telecommuting. Perhaps more important, the survey found that
workers who take advantage of the work-life balance options their employers offer are 20
percent more likely to stay with their employer for the next five years. Work-life balance is a
concern not just for women, but also for men who are tired of missing out on the rest of life.
The challenge of work/life balance in our society is unlikely to disappear. Identified and
discussed as follows are four work/life balance trends. Awareness of these trends will place
the human resource professional in a position to better educate management and work closely
with employees.

ROLE OF HR DEPARTMENT IN WORK LIFE BALANCE

Human Resource Development (HRD) Department can play a very crucial role in
implementing policies that aid in reducing work stress and work-life imbalance. Few
initiatives that HR can bring forth are listed below.

• Reduce unnecessary burden of fixed timings at work. If some of the work can be done even
at home during office hours, enables the professionals to do so.

• Job share – where you dovetail your work role with a partner of colleague • Short-term or
interim roles – working full time but a month here and a month there depending on the
individual contract

• Reduce bureaucracy – unnecessary time spent on procedural issues like approvals should
be reduced.

• Allow women employees to work from home especially during pregnancy and immediately
after child birth.

• Providing child care facilities can help retain employees.

• Facilitating fun and relaxation – parties and fun at workplace can provide some relief to the
professionals. Also leave options for travelling with family and compulsory offs after fixed
time of continuous work should be implemented.
In the present scenario of life, where the life style, competitions and other external and
internal demands on an individual becomes important to fit into any social set up, a healthy
and positive mind is very necessary. Psychology at work today is an important department, to
keep employees motivated and satisfied to work and perform well. This is not only for the
organisational benefits but also for personal growth and development such as self-confidence,
crisis management and problem solving etc. Employees spend half of their day at work and
then return to their personal life in the evening. Balancing between their personal and
professional commitments plays a vital role in their life in maintaining a good and positive
physiological, psychological, social and emotional health.

Work-Life-Balance is how one prioritises career and lifestyle. In Psychology, Work-Life-

Balance looks at both positive and negative aspects of balancing between professional and
personal life. There have been many studies that throw light on work-life conflict. The
current study throws a light on various aspects of Work-Life-Balance and the coping
strategies utilised by the employees to maintain the balance.

All of us play Multiple Roles in our lives and trying to manage and fulfil responsibilities
expected in each of these roles without letting down any of the roles might be difficult and
might lead to some issues.

Employees spend almost half their day at work and get back to their family lives in the
evening. Managing and switching their priorities and roles from one domain (work) to
another (life/family). Meeting all the demands of both the domains becomes really crucial
and strenuous for them as their energy levels are not constant. Not being able to give equal
time for all the domains might lead to some kind of dissatisfaction and guilt about the roles
they play. If these conflict experiences continue it will play a negative impact on general life
satisfaction, physical, psychological and social health and well- being. It can also affect
performance at work. Conflicts and problems faced in one domain can affect one’s
involvement in the other domain.

Some studies explain the concepts of Enrichment and Facilitation to explain the positive
impact played by the conflicts on the employees. When an individual has good experience in
one domain of life, it facilitates the employees to have a better experience in the other
domains as well, which brings a sense of overall satisfaction in professional and personal in
the employees. It is also studied that learning multitasking helps managing both work and
personal activities more efficiently and smoothly.
 It is really difficult to give a standardised definition for “worklife-balance”, however,
Kalliath & Brough, (2008) have defined work-life-balance as “Work-life balance is the
individual perception that work and non-work activities are compatible and promote growth
in accordance with an individual’s current life priorities”

There are several Theories explaining the concept of work-life- balance in which some
theories that are prominent in Worklife-Balance that will for a base to the current study are
Segmentation, compensation, spillover and border theory.

Segmentation Theory

Initially it was believed that work and life were two separate segments and did not affect
each other. Blood and Wolfe (1960), who contributed to this perspective of work-life-
balance, applied the concept on blue collared workers. They explained that for workers who
are unsatisfied or give an unsatisfactory performance or un-involving jobs, and separation
and segmentation of work and home is a natural process. This leads to disconnection of one
domain when in another which automatically brings in the balance between work and life.
This theory holds good for the current study as one of the ways that an employee can feel
satisfied with maintaining the balance between their personal and professional life is to
disconnect from one domain while in another.

Compensation theory

This theory proposes that employees try to compensate for the lack of satisfaction in one
domain (work or home) by trying to find more satisfaction in the other domain. According to
the theory there are two types of compensations. First would be when a person may decrease
involvement in the domain where they are dissatisfied and increase involvement in a domain
that they feel more satisfied in (Lambert, 1990). Second would be when the
individuals/employees respond to the dissatisfaction experienced in one domain by earning
and working towards extra rewards in the other domain where they already experience more
satisfaction compared to the other domain.

Spill-over Theory

Spillover theory talks about one of the most important relationship between the personal and
professional between the personal and professional commitments of the employees. Current
studies and research suggest that every individual comes with their own set of skills,
emotions, attitudes and behaviour that make each person different in maintaining the balance
between work and life. The spillover can be both negative and positive. Negative spillover
refers to the fact that if the employee is undergoing stress in one domain, they may feel a
sense of dissatisfaction even in the other domain. Positive spillover refers to when an
employee is happy and successful in one domain they feel a sense of satisfaction and
contented in the other domain as well. The current study mainly being the psychology of
work-life- balance, takes a lot of support from this theory considering that stressful events
and issues in one domain has an effect in how employees perceive their satisfaction in the
other domain.

Work-family border theory

This is a new theory of work life balance that throws a light on how the roles of the
individual lies within one of the domains. These roles are separated and divided by the
boundaries which could be psychical, psychological and emotional. When roles,
responsibilities and commitments from one of the domains crosses these borders there is an
overlap in the personal and professional roles played by the individual which leads to
conflicts in maintaining the balance. The flexibility in the boundaries affects the level of
conflicts and transactions between the domains. When the roles overlap a lot of conflict is
more likely and when they are divided and segmented it is less likely to any major issues and
conflicts being observed in the employee’s maintaining of the work-life-balance.

Key elements of Work Life Balance

Promote human dignity and growth.

Work along collaboratively.

Participative verify work changes.

Assume compare of individuals and structure goal.

Humanized work quality of labor life.

One choice is to re-design jobs to possess the attributes desired by individuals, and re-design
organizations to possess the surroundings desired by the individuals. This approach seeks to
boost QWL. There’s a desire to offer staff a lot of a challenge, a lot of an entire task, a lot of
chance to use their ideas. Shut attention to QWL provides a lot of humanized work
surroundings. It makes an attempt to serve the higher-order desires of staff additionally as
their lot of basic desires. It seeks to use the upper skills of staff associated to produce a
surroundings that encourages them to boost their skills. the concept is that human resources
ought to be developed and not merely used. Further, the work mustn't have too negative
conditions. It mustn't place staff below undue stress. It mustn't harm or degrade their
manhood. It mustn't be threatening or unduly dangerous. Finally, it ought to contribute to, or
a minimum of leave intact, workers’ skills to perform in alternative life roles, like national,
significant other and parent. That is, work ought to contribute to general social advancement.

Job Enlargement vs. Job Enrichment

The modern interest in quality of labor life was stirred up through efforts to alter the scope of
people’s jobs in making an attempt to inspire them. Job scope has 2 dimensions – breadth and
depth. Job breadth is that the variety of various tasks a personal is directly answerable for. It
ranges from terribly slender (one task performed repetitively) to wide (several tasks). Staff
with slender job breadth was generally given a wider kind of duties so as to scale back their
monotony; this method is named job enlargement. So as to perform these extra duties, staff
pay less time on every duty. Another approach to ever-changing job breadth is job rotation,
which involves periodic assignment of associate worker to fully completely different sets of
job activities. Job rotation is an efficient thanks to develop multiple skills in staff, that edges
the organization whereas making bigger job interest and career choices for the worker.

APPLICATIONS

Viewed in terms of Herzberg’s psychological feature factors, job enrichment happens once
the work itself is more difficult, once accomplishment is inspired, once there's chance for
growth and once responsibility, feedback and recognition square measure provided.
However, staff square measure the ultimate judges of what enriches their jobs. All that
management will do is gather data concerning what tend to counterpoint jobs, strive those
changes within the job system and so verify whether or not staff feel that enrichment has
occurred. In attempting to make psychological feature factors, management additionally
offers attention to maintenance factors. It makes an attempt to stay maintenance factors
constant or higher because the psychological feature factors square measure exaggerated. If
maintenance factors square measure allowed saying no throughout associate enrichment
program, then staff could also be less conscious of the enrichment program as a result of their
distracted by inadequate maintenance. The requirement for a systems approach in job
enrichment is glad by the apply of gain sharing. Since job enrichment should occur from
every employee’s personal viewpoint, not all staff can select enriched jobs if they need
associate choice. A contingency relationship exists in terms of various job desires, and a few
staff like the simplicity and security of a lot of routine jobs.

The Human Resource Department’s Role The role of human resource department in QWL
efforts varies wide. In some organizations, prime management appoints associate govt to
confirm that QWL and productivity efforts occur throughout the organization. In most cases,
these executives have little employees and should have faith in the human resource
department for facilitate with worker coaching, communications, angle survey feedback, and
similar help. In alternative organizations, the department is answerable for initiating and
leading the firm’s QWL and productivity efforts. Maybe the foremost crucial role of the
department is winning the support of key managers. Management support – notably prime
management support seems to be associate nearly universal requirement for prosperous QWL
programs.

By verifying worker satisfaction and bottom-line edges, which vary from lower absence and
turnover to higher productivity and fewer accidents, the department will facilitate convert
questioning managers. Generally documentation of QWL may result from studies of
performance before and when a QWL effort. While not documentation of those results, prime
management won't have continued its sturdy support. The department additionally has each
an instantaneous and indirect influence on worker motivation and satisfaction. The policies
and practices of the department additionally influence motivation and satisfaction indirectly.
Rigorous enforced safety and health programs, as an example, will offer staff and
supervisors a bigger sense of safety from accidents and industrial health hazards.

Likewise, compensation policies might inspire and satisfy staff through incentive plans, or
they will damage motivation and satisfaction through depleted raises or outright pay freezes.
The motivation and satisfaction of staff act as feedback on the organisation’s QWL and on
the department’s day-after-day activities. Motivation Motivation may be a complicated
subject. It involves the distinctive feelings, thoughts and past experiences of every people as
we have a tendency to share a range of relationships at intervals and out of doors
organisations. To expect one psychological feature approach add each state of affairs is
perhaps unrealistic .
In fact, even theorists and researches take completely different points of read concerning
motivation. however, motivation are often outlined as a person’s drive to require associate
action as a result of that person needs to try to to therefore. individuals act as a result of they
feel that they need to. However, if they're motivated they create the positive option to act for
a purpose – as a result of, as an example, it's going to satisfy a number of their desires. Job
Satisfaction Job satisfaction is that the vantage or unfavorableness with that staff read their
work. like motivation, it's plagued by the surroundings. Job satisfaction is compact by job
style. Jobs that square measure made in positive activity parts – like autonomy, variety, task
identity, task significance and feedback contribute to employee’s satisfaction. Likewise,
orientation is vital as a result of the employee’s acceptance by the work cluster contributes to
satisfaction. If higher performance results in higher rewards and if these rewards square
measure seen as truthful and just, then ends up in improved satisfaction. On the opposite
hand, inadequate rewards will result in discontentedness. In either case, satisfaction becomes
feedback that affects one’s self-image and motivation to perform. the whole performance-
satisfaction relationship may be a continuous system, creating it tough to assess the impact of
satisfaction on motivation or on performance, and vice-versa. Objectives of Quality of labor
Life: to extend in individual productivity, answerableness and commitment.

For higher cooperation and communication.

For rising the morale of staff.

To scale back structure stress.

To improve the security operating conditions.

To offer adequate Human Resource Development Programs.

To improve worker satisfaction.

To strengthen work learning.

Importance of Quality of labor Life:

Improved Quality of labor Life wasn't thought of as vital think about Bharat till recently as
there have been vital close factors like resource deficiency, environmental threats and a few
services of monetary issues. Quality of labor Life program has become vital in work place for
the subsequent reasons:
1. Increase demands at work

2. Loss of long run worker guarantees

3. The requirement for increased work place skills

4. Bigger competition for talent

5. Exaggerated girls in hands

Sensible quality of labor Life results in an environment of excellent impersonal relations and
extremely motivated staff UN agency try for his or her development. although financial edges
still occupy the primary place within the price of parts like physical operating conditions, job
restructuring and job re-designing, career development, promotional opportunities etc. square
measure gaining importance chop-chop. As such, staff expects the management to boost of
these facilities that thereby improve Quality of labor life. If given sensible Quality of labor
Life, staff concentrates a lot of on each individual additionally as cluster development that
successively results in overall development.

According to Walton (1975) planned eight abstract classes.

They are as follows:

Adequate and truthful compensation

Safe and healthy operating conditions

Immediate chance to use and develop human capacities

Opportunity for continued growth and security

Social integration within the work organization

Constitutionalization within the work organization

Work and also the total generation

The social connexion of labor life prosperous organization is popping through the
introduction of

Quality of labor Life strategy to the people that add them to keep up competitive advantage.
The benefits to each management and staff include:

1. Improved organization performance through the event of individuals.

2. Exaggerated co-operation and team work at intervals and across all the amount of the
organization as well as movement towards management or organization partnership.

3. Exaggerated surroundings in doing a decent job .

4. Improved quality performance.

5. exaggerated commitment to the values and goals of the organization.

6. The anchoring of the event of a top quality organization

In today’s world each prosperous worker needs to undergo the perplexity of labor life
balance in personal and career. a serious portion of employees’ productive time is spent at the
work.