Does Work from Home really Encourage Work Life Balance

Does Work from Home Really Encourage Work Life Balance

Work life balance (WLB) is commonly defined as work-family balance but According to Kirchmeyer, (2020) other factors like community, social, religious and leisure are added resources. In Modern circumstance WLB is accelerate challenging, the Organization and human Resource department has to cross the borders and implementing many policies and strategies to soothe the conflict between the domains of work and life.

Organizations therefore came up with strategies to overcome to encourage work life balance by arrangements of flexible working hours or flexible schedules, flexi place option given to employee to autonomy to work from non-work premises, sharing work between two or more people having similar job profile dividing their time and responsibilities among themselves, employees are provided with different types of leave including paternity, maternity, leave of absence, study leave, annual leave, sick leave to balance their personal and work life.     

In this article it is expected to discuss the culture of work from home which comes under flexi-place option given by organizations. Work from home concept was developed in early 70’s. However, the work from home became popular in 2020 with the Covid-19 global pandemic as the employees were encouraged to work in isolated location to ensure social distancing to prevent the spread of Covid-19. According to Kelly (2021) subsequent to Covid-19 pandemic work from home concept start to continue as it was more cost effective for both employer & employee. According to Lazar et al., (2010) the impact to employee behavior & productivity by working from home is yet to be further investigated. Todays, organizations are practicing work from home concept as a work life balance strategy. However, there are multiple challenges in work from home which doesn’t make it a perfect work life balance practice. For instances employees who work from home could feel isolated from their usual office environment, further the social connection that is built through the physical work location gathering also could badly affect the employees, not all types of jobs suit home working System. Moreover, the challenges such as distractions at home & also over working of employees which goes beyond traditional working hours could be the reasons for not making work from is an ideal work life balance practice. (Jones, 2021)

 

References

 

Jones, J. (2021) Home isn't where the office is, University of New Hampshire. Available at: https://carsey.unh.edu/publication/black-professionals-discuss-challenges-of-working-remotely (Accessed: November 15, 2022).

 

Kelly, J. (2021) Here are the companies leading the work-from-home revolution, Forbes. Forbes Magazine. Available at: https://www.forbes.com/sites/jackkelly/2020/05/24/the-work-from-home-revolution-is-quickly-gaining-momentum/?sh=3fae59231848 (Accessed: November 15, 2022).

 

Kirchmeyer, C. (2000). Work-life initiatives: Greed or benevolence regarding workers’ time? In Trends in organizational behavior, Vol. 7: Time in organizational behavior (pp. 79–93). New York, John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

 

Lazar, I., Osoian, C. and Ratiu, P. (2010) “The role of work-life balance practices in order to improve organizational performance,” European Research Studies Journal, 8(1), pp. 201–214. Available at: https://doi.org/10.35808/ersj/267.