It has always been difficult for women to balance a thriving career and a happy family life. This is because being a full-time working woman comes with sessions of stress and guilt for not being able to give sufficient time to family and work.
Work life balance is a term used to portray the balance between an individual's personal life and professional life. A healthy work-life balance holds great importance for working women particularly in the current environment in which both, the family and the workplace have posed several challenges for women. The dynamics of the work environment have put excessive pressure on working women as they need to cope with two full time jobs – one at the office and the other at home.
Review of literature related to this has revealed that women experience conflict as there is job spill over into the home more frequently than home spill over into work. Besides trying to succeed in one environment, working women are often called upon to make sacrifices in another as both the environments make different demands and have distinct norms to adhere to.
When women try to succeed, they are often reminded that the price of working late comes at the expense of their spouses, children and even at their own expense sometimes. The bottom line is that in most societies around the world, men are given slack that women are not afforded when it comes to defining the roles they should play in life. And when 'he' has it all, it is a noble thing, when 'she' has it all the woman may be questioned about her values and priorities in life. And there's also the motherhood penalty to consider.
Today’s career oriented women are challenged continuously by the demands of full-time work and when they are done with the office, they carry more responsibilities and commitments at home. Women these days are often heard saying that their lives are a balancing act which includes multiple responsibilities at work, exhausting meeting schedules, business trips and on managing daily routine of life and home. It is very important especially for women to successfully achieve work life balance because that is really important to create a satisfied workforce that can contribute to higher productivity at the organizations.
With the increase in responsibilities added in the role of women, it has given rise to various challenges that women are facing in their daily life. Performing various tasks and carrying different roles like mother, wife and employee simultaneously are becoming very difficult for women to fulfill. A balance between all the responsibilities is directly linked with the career performance as well as physical and mental wellbeing of women, which results into the need of a proper work life balance.
Female workers have to face lot of social pressures which do not allow them to have late sittings at the work place for official matters or to visit places related to. These restrictions are mostly raised by the members of the family which includes husband, in-laws, brother and parents which creates hurdles in their career progression.
As per the Economic Survey of India 2017-18, the female labour force participation rate has fallen from 36 to 24 percentage from 2005-06 to 2015-16 respectively. This is due to females facing low work life balance issues.
According to the report presented by NSS (National Sample Survey), close to 2 crore women quit work between a period of 2004-05 to 2011-12.
Glass ceiling is also one of the obstacles which hinders women while climbing ladders of hierarchy in organizations because business environment for women is more stressful and not at all easy as compared to men.
As women are in minority and mostly perceived by men as blend of doubt, attraction, respect, confusion, competitiveness, pride and animosity; therefore this mixed perception creates glass ceiling at the time of promotions, which leads to weaker mental health of women resulting in less work life balance.
Senior positions require long hour’s commitment, work related seminars, conferences, workshop and tours which makes it difficult for women to reach due to family responsibilities. Also the fact that creates hurdles in women’s progression is pregnancy and childbirth; because they have to take maternity leaves which results in missing out opportunities for promotion. So, when return to work after their maternity leaves, they actually lack behind in certain manner, which results in demotivation.
Although there are many women who want to achieve career advancement with fulfilling other house hold tasks, but organizations fail to realize that talented and motivated women can be committed to family as well as career and can do best for the middle management, if they are helped by the organizations to achieve work life balance. The organizations however are reluctant to reduce pressure and provide flexibility this leads to recruit other employees rather than providing training to women employees.
CASE BACKGROUND
Women in India face a more problematic work-life balancing act when compared to men. Studies show that there are two factors troubling working women, especially ones with kids and aging family members. They are Family-Work (FWC) and Work-Family (WFC) conflicts. FWC is a measure of how work negatively impacts one’s family and WFC is a measure of how badly home affects ones’ work
According to a study (Indian Journal of Psychological Medicine, 2010) done on 90 urban women employees with a mean age of 38.7 years, with none to two children, it was found out that both the factors are highly affected by their status.
Both the factors depict means reflecting an afflicting pattern of a negative spill over. Women with children have a bad influence coming from their sphere of life. Family expectations, household demands, uncompromising company policies, unsupportive supervisors and the inflexible work schedules add to the grief of working women.
Mrs. Keshmira works in a Private Limited company as a Marketing Director since last 5 years (2014-2019). She got married after serving the company for initial two years i.e. after 2016. As a single woman, she could concentrate on her work and manage her routine life in an efficient manner. She had no issues in balancing her family and work life as a bachelorette. She used to live with her parents and was growing beautifully in her career. Her supervisors and the company was extremely happy with her work techniques and her dedication for the same.
She was even awarded as the “Best Employee” of the company for the year 2015. This was because, when she was a Spinster, she could be very responsive to what her team or employees were going through or expecting from her. If her team had any kind of issues pursuing the projects that were going on, she immediately found out solutions to it after deep analysis as she had more time to concentrate on her work place and performance. She had flexibility to work whenever she wanted to. Being responsive to the projects that she is pursuing is anyway very important being a Marketing Director.
Her this responsive attitude towards projects, raised issues while projects were in process, her team and her work overall made her gain the organization’s as well as coworkers trust. Her team was happy working with her as things were sorted on time and with ease.
All the projects given to her by the company were being completed within the deadlines. This showed her performance to be excellent when company’s view was considered.
Also one major benefit that she had being a spinster was she could work at home, if in any case she could not complete certain things at her workplace. Work load that she had could be divided into doing it at the workplace as well at house, if necessary. She had the flexibility to work where she wants and as she feels as she had the liberty to be a little free at her house considering she had to do household chores less.
Her work life and family life, both were going great, where she could focus completely on her work and go back home to her parents where the house was completely clean, food ready on the table.
She did not have much responsibilities to fulfil at her house which helped her focus and improve at her workplace. She was in the pink of her health and mentally happy, content and satisfied.
Mrs. Keshmira got married in the end of the year 2016. She now has a different house to look after, all the responsibilities to take care of related to the house and her husband. Mrs. Keshmira gradually realized that she is not able to manage her time. She knew that she had to cook, clean, spend time with her husband and family, take care of the house as well. She started facing problems in allocating time for each of these activities. This lead to constant thoughts striking in her mind about how she can manage all these activities without letting her work getting affected and her progress getting slowed down.
Mrs. Keshmira, due to this constant dilemma started facing health issues. Stress levels increased and her performance at work also got hindered. Her family also started complaining about how Mrs. Keshmira was not giving sufficient time to her family gatherings and functions.
Due to all this, Mrs. Keshmira became an average performer at her workplace from being a top performer. She had to face pressure from her work supervisors also as deadlines were not being met at various points of time.
She was trying to balance her both professional and personal life but was not actually able to ace both. Severe pressure and stress piled up on Mrs. Keshmira which led to her facing poor work life balance.
To throw light on her imbalanced work life, below are the details,
Instance 1:
Once Mrs. Keshmira was working on a very important project within a tight deadline schedule. She was finding ways to concentrate on it to the maximum but urgently mid project, a family function got scheduled. The function was equally important for her to visit.
Mrs. Keshmira was then in a dilemma whether to continue with her work, skip the function and meet the scheduled deadlines or ask her superior to extend the project completion time.
Obviously due to prior given commitments of completing the project on time, she could not ask the superior to just extend the project deadline.
However, the function was an important one to attend as well, the family was pressurizing her to visit it. This caused her mental stress about how to manage both the things.
She knew she could not ask for extension in the project completion dates, so she decided to skip the function and work on it.
While she was trying with all her efforts to manage the project and her team to complete the project, she still could not finish it due to the mental pressure and stress she was facing.
This was a “lose-lose situation” or a “no-win situation” for her wherein she could not give time to her family and attend her function and also she could not perform well for the project.
This clearly happened due to less work life balance.
Instance 2:
Mrs. Keshmira was engrossed in an important work at her office. The project she was working on required her to be sitting late in the evening, even after her working hours in order to be completed on time.
This continued for a week or two. This led to her reaching home late by an hour or two every day. Her schedule got messed. Generally, Mrs. Keshmira after reaching home used to cook, clean, do household chores and do her own work.
Due to getting home late for more than a week, she was not able to give time to the things that she used to do after coming home i.e. her routine. As a result of this, to manage her routine, she slept late in the night and woke up early next morning being tired.
This delay in her routine schedule resulted in issues with her health as well as contributed to less productivity at her work place.
This is again a clear situation of low work life balance.
Mrs. Keshmira then decided to have a conversation about the difficulties that she was facing in managing work to her supervisors. She approached her manager to talk about the difficulty she was having working and simultaneously caring for her family. Her manager listened to the whole work life balance issue that she was facing very carefully and decided to help her by finding a way to help her achieve work life balance.
ALTERNATIVES AVAILABLE TO BALANCE WORKLIFE AND PERSONAL LIFE:
Flexible working hours: Manager can give her the freedom to choose her own alarm clock. That way women, and men, can choose to divide their work hours to not have them be in conflict with their personal lives. As long as the prescribed number of hours are clocked in, you can choose your own start and finish lines.
Time Management: This is a management’s responsibility as well as it is of the employee. Manager can suggest her to try to prioritize her tasks and get a little bit more organized. That way she can have her leisure time actually in its real means.
Compressed Work Weeks: Manager can help her in a way that instead of 10 hour schedules for 5 days, the work week can be allowed as 12 hours daily, for 4 days. It comes to roughly the same number of hours a week, but you are left with a three day weekend instead. And then, employees generally work more than 10 hours, even in a 10 hour working day.
Job Sharing: Manager can suggest her a format where she can train multiple people working under her and share the work in a manner that she gets their support. However, that doesn’t mean that she has to pressurize her team mates. It is just a more harmonious way to work.
Work from home: Manager can allow her to opt for work from home for certain projects that she can manage from home, if she likes and work does not suffer.
Know that there is no 'perfect' balance: That is something her manager can make her understand that not every day can she wake up easily at 5 a.m., head off to work, just to come home early, cook dinner, do some chores, and finish the day with a nice book in bed by 9 p.m. He can suggest her to not strive for the perfect schedule but strive for a realistic one. Some days she might have to focus more on work, while others she can have more time and energy to pursue her hobbies. Balance can be achieved over time, not each day.
The manager can suggest her to use her entire annual leaves every year and take that time off. Manager can advise her to take short breaks in between the work to relax a little, get on call with her family and increase her productivity by keeping her mind stress free.
The manager can try and implement various health and mental care facilities at the office or the workplace itself like yoga sessions or exercise rooms.
There are certain things that Mrs. Keshmira can do for herself. She can take few steps on her own to actually have a healthy work life balance. They are:
1) Stick to the core strengths:
Mrs. Keshmira should focus on her strengths and outsource things and work that she cannot do on her own. This can be done by taking help of internal team members as well as superiors.
2) Prioritizing the time available:
Mrs. Keshmira should learn to prioritize her tasks into four categories.
They are:
Urgent and important
Important but not urgent
Urgent but not important
Neither urgent nor important.
She can then work accordingly.
3) Knowing the peaks and troughs
This simply means that Mrs. Keshmira can think that if she is a morning person and is tend to be more active in the morning then she can set her work tasks accordingly. Keeping the exhausting and mentally consuming tasks in the morning can work better.
4) Plot some personal time
Mrs. Keshmira should take her “me” time, including her family and health. She should know when to sort work for the day and return home.
5) Have set work hours – and stick to them
Mrs. Keshmira should set work hours for herself and do everything in her power to stick to them. Otherwise it becomes very obvious that she might have to work even at the midnight.
6) Manage your time, long term
Mrs. Keshmira should manage time and include family commitments – such as holidays, birthday parties, etc. from the beginning so that the work also doesn’t suffer.
7) Make exercise a must-do, not a should-do
Mrs. Keshmira should try not to cancel the gym, the evening run or the yoga class because a client wants something done the next day.
Instead, she should ensure exercise is given as much priority as her clients and making money. A healthy body means a fresh mind, which means she will function better and complete tasks in less time.
8) Doing something that she would love
Mrs. Keshmira should make time for something that she might love – other than work – and give it the time it deserves. It can energize and refresh her.
9) Managing the mental health
When fear or self-doubt or anxiety creeps in, Mrs. Keshmira can do some work on work on her mental health such as meditation or reading a business book. She can spend time with someone who lifts her up or supports her.
SOLUTION
What I believe can be the solution to such a case is a mixture of various alternatives that I have mentioned above.
To achieve a balanced work life, what can help Mrs. Keshmira is manager’s efforts as well as her contribution to the same.
Manager can allow her flexible working hours. That way she can choose to divide her work hours to not be in conflict with her personal life. As long as Mrs. Keshmira is working in accordance to the prescribed number of hours, she should be allowed to choose your own start and finish work times of the day by the manager.
This will help her mental health to be in peace and contribute tremendously to her productivity at work. Also this will make her feel free to be at home according to the clock that she wants.
Also manager can help her by letting her work from home, if not every day then at least once or twice in the working week days. This can help her stay motivated, focused on her work as she would not feel the pressure of travelling to the office and working there. She can work at her convenience from her house in a better manner. She will feel the freedom of working at her own comfort and most importantly she’ll feel that her superiors trust her. This comfort will stabilize her mental state and would lead her to balancing her work life.
Also what I feel from the case that is prevailing is Mrs. Keshmira to have a better hold on her personal life can take some time out for herself regularly so that she can give time to the family and herself as well.
She can do this by plotting hours for her work. She can also do this by prioritizing her work. She can work for specific hours and then avoid working for that day beyond those hours unless something is urgent.
LESSONS LEARNED
What I learned after analyzing the whole case, providing alternatives and solutions to it is that work life balance is actually a necessary aspect of life. It may seem like a small concern when talked about in general discussions but when it actually comes to studying it in depth and analyzing the various problems surrounding it or the kind of situations a dis-balanced work life puts a woman into are major and cannot be ignored.
The reasons I analyzed about why work life balance is an important matter of study is:
It is necessary to maintain mental health. It’s unfortunate that not all employers place enough importance on mental health in the workplace. But the topic is really prevalent at the minute, as studies show the dangers and risks that could lead to a variety of issues, from stress-related illnesses to depression. A very common issue that is prevalent in women is. This occurs when immense pressure is put onto a person, culminating in “chronic stress.” That stress is caused due to outrageous workloads.
It is necessary to ensure physical health and wellbeing. Regular exercise and eating healthy is required. The stress of dis-balanced work life causes various physical issues in women like menstrual problems, pregnancy issues and many more in addition to problems like high blood pressure and heart disease.
A balanced work life can help in increased productivity. Studies over the years reveal that those who maintain a steady work-life balance are much more productive than those who do not. A positive way of life automatically leads to amazing results.
CONCLUSION
Times have changed. From the time the husband earned, and the wife stayed at home to now the time has come when the husband earns and the wife earns too. But the wife still cooks and washes and runs the house. So, how does she balance her work with life at home is a major problem and cannot be ignored in any case.
I can conclude this case study by drawing the attention towards what exactly work life balance is. It is definitely not about providing equal hours to personal and professional life. It is about how smoothly an individual can, particularly a woman in regard to this case can manage her life personally as well as professionally.
Work/life balance initiatives have the potential to significantly reduce absenteeism, improve employee morale and retain organizational knowledge and staff, especially when women feel like quitting their jobs in spite of them performing well mainly due to issues in family life. Be it any woman, who is married or is a single mothers who is trying to raise her children, balancing her life is extremely necessary and beneficial to her mental and physical well-being.
Management can play the most significant role when it comes to balancing work life for the female employees working at the organization. Moreover, there is a need to make various females aware about this issue, its causes and how they can be dealt with. This will help females themselves act in a manner where they can control their own life and try balancing it out.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
https://www.independent.co.uk/lfe-style/how-do-you-achieve-a-more-positive-work-life-balance.
a-working-womans-guide-to-maintain-work-life-balance.
https://medium.com/thrive-global/.
the-double-standard-of-work-life-balance-3516029.
https://www.thebalancecareers.com.
WORK-LIFE BALANCE-IMPLICATIONS FOR WORKING WOMAN.
www.researchgate.net.