The purpose of me writing this paper is to shed some light on work, life balance. This topic is so true of where my life is today. I ask myself sometimes if my success or lack thereof hang on these three things Work-life Balance. This is an important topic to me because as a wife, a mom, a college student and a professional I am constantly having to juggle work-life balance.
Since going back to school, I had to choose between what my priority was at home and being a wife and mother. What did I want? life at home with my family or was it school to further my career. These were decisions I had to ponder over. I know I needed to go back to school so we can become financially stable, huge choices. What I came up with was taking little pieces of all three, easier said than done.
How does one choose a piece of motherhood, well the journey I started had to include my husband and he had to commit to the same things I did because without both of us being committed it just wouldn't work so we sat down and divide it up what was possible for the both of us, me going back to school takes total commitment so I had to find small ways to make time for family and completely sacrificed financial stability that's where my husband stepped up. He put his pursuit of starting his own business on hold and invested more into working in his current job so that I could go back to school.
As time went on and I went moved further along in my education it took the sacrifices of my husband taking a backseat to his dreams. Once I started to go to school and continue work, I vowed to stay committed to school and study on certain days and have at least one day of the week to spend with my family.
I made sure to take off work on the days I had parent-teacher meetings and assemblies to make sure that my children saw me there. I took most Saturdays to have an occasional date night with my husband. I wholeheartedly believe that the experience of balancing how I manage my time with my family will have more of a lasting effect on my children. They will remember an event more than they would the mundane things, so I made sure to create lasting events and memories for them vacation trips to Florida, playing card games or just mall walking.
As I entered school or decided to start going back to college I slowed my work life to make up the distance between family and school I say this to say from the very beginning I knew I wanted to be more present when my children were younger and nowt that their older I am happy to say that now that I am almost finished with school I can be available to take to spend time with them in doing different things. My husband was able to start his own business now. I love that I'm able to strive to balance my work life and time with my family.
I'm able to handle work-life balance by checking work at the door. For me, this means that not letting work come home with me and to leave my work at the threshold this can be challenging at time so when it's rough and I have to talk I will call my husband or a close friend and do a five-minute vent on the way home from work so that once I reach home I've had some relief and release I also scheduled trips as often as I can have. Knowing you are pushing forward towards something fun helps you get through those tough times period.
The expression work life balance was first used in the United Kingdom in the late 1970s to describe the balance between an individual's work and personal life in the United States this phrase was first used in 1986.
The issues relating to work-life and balance and how it affects the organization today is vital to that organization’s growth and success. The practice of' work-life balance in an organization should be designed to reduce or minimize conflicts which can cause an employee to be ineffective at work.
Here are some strategies that an employer can put in place to help their employees handle work-life balance. Some of these strategies can be providing great health benefits for their employees. Having health insurance and other benefits can be one of the main reasons people go to work. Another strategy would be to put in place flexible working hours to help that employee feel that they have some control over their time. And another strategy would be telecommuting.
I believe that sitting in traffic for long periods can affect someone’s mood and attitude when they arrive at the workplace. If an organization can create telecommuting where an employee can work from home that will alleviate some of the stress from sitting in traffic. When an employee feels that they don’t have to feel the daily stresses of work they can be more productive in balancing their work and their home life at the same time.
Achieving a great work-life balance can bring forth more success for both the employee and the employer and allow that employee to be more motivated which can lead to increase productivity and quality of work. The policies that an organization can put forward to help with work-life balance needs to be supported by the culture and leadership of that company. Even though the benefits of work-life balance for an employee is being able to effectively manage more than one responsibility at home and at work, it’s also being able to work in different flexible ways.
work-life balance also has its challenges and it has its barriers. Today we are asked to do so much more with so little. In my opinion, the challenges that come with trying to balance something that we are paid to do opposed to something that we're not paid to do can be a challenge. Some of the challenges are how much time do we give to each of these components, do we give one hundred percent to our work and fifty percent to our personal life and how do we balance the two.
I feel that the challenge would be to try and effectively balance those so that one will not tip the scale and it would just defeat the purpose of managing multiple things and ultimately having a balance with your work and life. With the increased pressure for an organization to hire and retain great employees, the whole idea of work-life balance is, even more, an important topic to discuss.
The effects of work-life balance on an employee’s behavior are as real as it gets. Work-life benefits to an organization behavior directly affect the social change and indirectly helps the perception of the organization and how they support their employee's work-life balance does affect the behavior with the employee because this can produce positive relationships between coworkers between managers there are also benefits.
Stress and work pressures are the main contributors to an imbalance. If we don't have or set, clear boundaries in our work life balance it can affect our behavior in our jobs such as on productivity depression lack of energy and a feeling of not liking your job or what you do. The behaviors that a minute hello how long was your favorite come from not having a total balance is the reason why we strive to have a balance
In the end the importance of work life balance is crucial to our wellbeing which can affect our overall health and how we perform in the workplace. We can run ourselves ragged and be consumed with work and not realize the effect it has on our performance. When we make choices to have a balance, we can feel more relaxed, organized and this can help us to increase our productivity and feel a sense of accomplishment. Organizations also benefit from instituting work life balance because when an organization can work with their employees to ease the stress and the burden of everyday life it benefits that employer when an employee can be more productive and feel happy about their place of employment.
I close with this quote from Michelle Obama We need to do a better job of putting ourselves higher on our own To Do List”.
References
Rao, Rableen Kaur and Sharma, Urvashi, Issues in Work-Life Balance and Its Impact on Employees: A Literature Review (June 18, 2018). IRJMST, Vol 9 Issue 4, 2018, ISSN 2250 – 1959. Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3374504
'We need to do a better job of putting ourselves higher on our own ‘to do’ list.” —Michelle Obama, former First Lady https://www.flexjobs.com/blog/post/quotes-about-work-life-balance/ via @FlexJob
Alan Shany - https://www.slideshare.net/Alan111gym/presentation-on-work-life-balance