International Journal of Education and Psychological Research (IJEPR) Volume 5, Issue 1, March 2016

Work life Balance & Employee Engagement- Concepts revisited

[1]
Toyaz Shekhar

Abstract:
The main goal of this paper is to understand the relationship between work life balance & Employee Engagement. Further this
paper highlights contextual factors affecting Employee Engagement and Work Life Balance.
This paper is built on relevant literature and recent studies on Work Life Balance & Employee Engagement.
Also, the results of the study show inverse relationship between pleasure & work. Further, it examines the effect of change in
work interference on personal life on Employee Engagement. It also aims to derive an ideal situation of equilibrium between
pleasure & work termed as Work life Balance (WLB).
Keywords: Work life balance, Employee Engagement, Work interference on personal life.

I. INTRODUCTION
Over the years there has been a growing interest in the Fields Love them or lose them. Today Engagement is HRMs
of Work life balance & Employee Engagement triggered new best friend since companies are competing for retaining
mainly due to prominent changes in the socio-economic talented work force.
setup over the period of time.
The social set up is also changing from the joint family setup II. WORK LIFE BALANCE & EMPLOYEE
to nuclear family, which demands equal attention to the ENGAGEMENT
family obligations & work. In order to handle the work
pressure & family pressure equilibrium is required & the The concept of work life balance & Employee engagement
same can be made available by efforts from both employer & has got tremendous attention while drafting various HR
employee. policies by the corporate world. The entire jargon of working
environment is changing in view of flexible working hours
In view of expansion in the opportunities for the talent work providing competitive edge for luring the best talent available
force it is required by the employers to go that extra mile for in the industry.
taking various initiatives enabling minimal work-family
conflict in the lives of employees. a) Work Life balance:
Both the concepts work life balance & employee engagement You will never feel truly satisfied by work until you are
have almost been for 1 decade now & results from various satisfied by life.? Heather Schuck
research have proved beyond reasonable doubt that Work WLB primarily connotes healthy balance between paid work
life balance factors are being considered by employees while and unpaid work. WLB is about creating a productive work
deciding to work for a particular company. culture minimizing potential conflicts & tensions between
Now we have awards for the best employer category in employer-employee, coworkers.
various Industry segments being conferred by various Kossek & Ozeki (1998) stated Work-life balance is about
consultants, news agency, industry associations, academic people having a measure of control over when, where and
body, govt which shows the implications of branding as a best how they work. It is achieved when an individuals right to a
employer. fulfilled life inside and outside paid work is accepted and
Business leaders of the world are aware of the fact that respected as the norm, to the mutual benefit of the individual,
keeping their teams engaged can mean difference between business and society. Ensuring appropriate WLB is about
business success and failure. Organisations are not build creating acceptable combination of participation in paid work
overnight it is the people working in these organisations who (defined by hours and working conditions), and other aspects
build them hence the foremost responsibility as an employer of their lives.
should be to keep its employees engaged. The concept of WLB seems to be tilting more towards the
HR professionals know that the way to get the most from an work sphere & may therefore be defined in terms of number
organization is to bring out the best in its people. And that of hours spent at work vis--vis family. However, optimum
path includes a flexible workplace where workers have a balance varies from person to person as the concept itself is
sense of pride, connection and passion. subjective & depends upon a lot many variables &
Employees have become the area of focus with the change in individuals perception to such variables. In this regard, Dex
dynamics of competitive global world so now the mantra is (2004) stated that WLB policies may be segmented into five
broad categories like flexi time work schedules, flexi place or
[1]
Research Scholar, Mohan Lal Sukhadia University, Udaipur

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International Journal of Education and Psychological Research (IJEPR) Volume 5, Issue 1, March 2016

telecommuting, job-sharing, part-time flexi place, Washington University started community engagement
sabbaticals or career breaks. program 2014, The Whole U program focused on six pillars
Study shows Emirate women working in private & public i.e staying healthy, being active, eating well, recognizing
sector had more difficulties in dealing with WLB due to family life events, volunteering and engaging personal
longer working hours, shorter holidays and work pressures interest. The program envisaged recreation as part of an
leading to a high attrition rate Forster, Ebrahim & Ibrahim overall healthy lifestyle, both on the job and in employees
(2013). In another such study majority of the women personal lives. They broke the record for the largest kettle bell
experienced job spill to their homes, such an imbalance has [workout] .
resulted into stress and anxiety, disharmony at home, job Global survey conducted by Ernst & Young from November
burnout and inability to realize full potential, so for 2014 to January 2015 about work-life balance with 9,700
overcoming this Sundaresan .S (2014) suggested two models full-time employees across eight countries, including the
for maintaining WLB (Role-analysis model and three factor United Kingdom, the United States, Brazil, Mexico,
model) for resolving the conflict caused due to imbalance. Germany, China, Japan and India revealed one-third of
professionals saying that work-life balance is harder to find.
b) Employee Engagement: Long working hours, increased work responsibility,
Building a visionary company requires 1% Vision & 99 % excessive overtime hours, non-encouraging work
alignment - Collins & Porras environment and limited work flexibility are some of the
Engagement at work was conceptualized by Kahn (1990) commonly cited reasons.
The harnessing of organization members themselves to their Recently, Facebook and Apple announced that they would
work roles; in engagement, people employ and express pick up the tab if female employees opted to get their eggs
themselves physically, cognitively, and emotionally during frozen for future use. The move, though, has received mixed
role performances responses was focused to facilitate work life balance.
Study shows that for maintaining pool of engaged workforce,
organizations need to implement innovative strategies for III. WORK INTERFERENCE ON
building a positive and healthy work environment, PERSONAL LIFE
augmenting appropriate resources and keeping ambiguity at
bay so as to enable a productive workforce for building Quantum of work which affects the personal lives of
sustainable organization Bhuvanaiah .T & Raya .R.P (2014). employee differs from individual to individual &
Study also shows that degree of engagement determines organization to organization. Analysis of contextual factors
peoples productivity and their willingness to stay with leading to interference would help us evolve timely
organization Myilswamy & Gayatri (2014), therefore, interventions.
employee engagement drives effectiveness in an Study shows that the Work-life balance practices are
organization by improving retention, customer loyalty, correlated to subscales of engagement (Schilling. K (2014).
productivity, safety and ultimately, profitability. Also, study shows that there is a positive correlation between
the individual factors, organisational factors and group
c) Recent developments: factors Anand & Vijayabanu (2014). Further, Chandhok &
Today corporate world is focusing on optimum WLB for Bhavet (2014) evolved an equation Employee engagement =
ensuring employee commitment, engagement, Retention, Job satisfaction + Job contribution i.e Employee engagement
Mental health & productivity. It is pertinent to mention that is a function of Attrition, productivity & profitability.
study on WLB has grown leaps & bounds in recent years due
to higher employee expectations, attritions, innovations, IV. GRAPHICAL REPRESENTATION OF
industrialization yet presently there is no conceptual scale for
the measurement of WLB directly.
CONCEPTUAL ANALYSIS
Equilibrium is an ideal situation, any shift in the equilibrium
In todays era another important dimension of WLB is gender
will tend to impact the willingness of individuals regarding
equality. This was highlighted by Anne-Marie Slaughter, the
their intentions to remain or quit with their employer.
head of think tank New America Foundation & the author of
the viral Atlantic story Why Women Still Cant Have It All, Following is an attempt to reconstruct the relationship
stated womens movement must be a mens movement as between pleasure & work.
You cant have half of a gender revolution.
Y
Pleasure
NZICAs Remuneration and Employment survey 2012,
showed that non-financial motivators are often extremely W2
effective in building long-term employee satisfaction and WORK
engagement. The survey found that chartered accountants INTERFERENCE W1
ON PERSONAL WLB
placed very high importance on having work/life balance and LIFE W0
that this was a key consideration when thinking about
changing jobs. When asked what work/life balance meant to Work
them, those surveyed highlighted flexible working hours
and not letting stress affect home life as the most important X
factors. E2 E0 E1
EMPLOYEE ENGAGEMENT

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International Journal of Education and Psychological Research (IJEPR) Volume 5, Issue 1, March 2016

The above diagram shows an inverse relationship between 11. New Zealand institute of chartered accountants (2012).
pleasure & work. It also explains the effect of work http://www.nzica.com/Resources-and-benefits/Career-
interference on personal life on Employee engagement. The support-and-advice/Career-resources/What-do-your-
point of equilibrium called WLB is where you can draw employees-really-want.aspx
maximum Engagement at given work interference on
personal life.

V. CONCLUSION
It is no more just cash benefits rather an umbrella of non-cash
benefits comprising elder care, child care, sabbaticals,
compressed work week, flexible scheduling, job sharing,
Work from home is required in various combinations for
effectively managing the talented work force. The concept of
CTC has also come up due to such needs of employees where
they look for the overall package & benefits offered by the
corporate world. It is more like cost benefit analysis for the
employer to keep their work force engaged.

VI. REFERENCES
1. Forster, Ebrahim & Ibrahim. (2013). An Exploratory
Study of work life balance & work family conflicts in
United Arab Emirates. Skyline Business Journal, 9(1).
2. Sundaresan.S. (2014). Work-Life Balance Implications
for working women. OIDA International Journal of
Sustainable Development, 7(7).
3. Kahn, W. A. (1990). Psychological Conditions of
Personal Engagement & Disengagement at Work.
Academy of Management Journal, 43, 692-724.
4. Bhuvanaiah & Raya. (2014). Employee Engagement:
Key to Organizational Success. SCMS Journal of indian
Management.
5. Myilswamy & Gayatri.R. (2014). A Study on Employee
Engagement: Role of Employee Engagement in
Organizational Effectiveness. International Journal of
Innovative Science, Engineering & Technology, 1(6).
6. Schilling, K. (2014). The relationship between job
engagement, work interference with personal life, &
turnover intentions. http://jewlscholar.mtsu.edu/handle/
mtsu/4258
7. Chandhok & Bhavet. (2014). Employee Engagement &
Commitment: A Study Conducted In Delhi & NCR with
Special Reference to Telecom Industry. International
Journal of Research in Commerce IT & Management,
4(7), 5-10.
8. Forbes India (2015).http://forbesindia.com/blog/
business-strategy/forget-work-life-balance-strive-for-
work-life-harmony/
9. P r a t i b h a j o y & Ta n i y a Ta l u k d a r ( 2 0 1 5 ) .
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/life-style/
relationships/work/Is-your-work-life-balance-in-the-
doldrums/articleshow/44876951
10. Anne-Marie Slaughter (2012). http://www.theatlantic
.com/magazine/archive/2012/07/why-women-still-
cant-have-it-all/309020

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