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HRM Review Magazine:
Work-life Balance : Organizational Strategies for Sustainable Growth
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In today's business context, the pressures of work have been intensifying and there is a growing feeling among employees that the demands of work begin to dominate life and a sense of work-life imbalance is felt. The challenge of integrating work and family life is a part of everyday reality for the majority of employees. Organizations have to continually innovate and come up with programs that provide scope for employees to balance their responsibilities at workplace and interests they have outside work. Work-life balance initiatives fall under this category. This article offers various strategies to be adopted by the organizations to ensure work-life balance for their employees.

Business organizations face the problem of declining employee morale and exhaustion. This can be attributed to the syndrome of work-life imbalance. The prevailing corporate atmosphere poses several new challenges and problems for employees in the form of willful, constant change, wide variety of job responsibilities and uncertainties with increasing pressure from the top hierarchy to increase productivity. These changes in the internal and remote environments disturb the balance between the two halves of life of the employees, i.e., work and home, bringing in dichotomy and confusion.

In the Book Geeks and Geezers, Thomas and Bennis mentioned how attitudes towards work and life balance differ from generation to generation. Baby boomers are no longer ready to give their lives to the company they work for. Whereas the Generation X's and V's are more committed to meeting the demands of both work and family life; in turn, they seek a newly defined and restructured way of getting jobs assigned to them. Researchers have pointed out that a balance between work and life is maintained, when there is no conflict between work and family demands. According to 1998 America@ Work (SM) study conducted by Aon consulting worldwide Inc., an HR consulting firm based in Chicago revealed that the present day employees are committed to the organization they work for, only if the management recognizes the importance of their personal and family lives.

 
 
 

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