Do you need this or any other assignment done for you from scratch?
We have qualified writers to help you.
We assure you a quality paper that is 100% free from plagiarism and AI.
You can choose either format of your choice ( Apa, Mla, Havard, Chicago, or any other)
NB: We do not resell your papers. Upon ordering, we do an original paper exclusively for you.
NB: All your data is kept safe from the public.
Topic of Research
One of the current topics of research and public interest is attempting to define the concept of work/life balance for the employee (WLB). The increased popularity of this issue is due in large part to the increasing competition in the market, with the result that job seekers and current employees are expected to make more significant efforts with respect to the work they do (Mahajan & Guleria, 2022; Kashyap & Kaur, 2021). Often such effort competes with or even conflicts with the values of personal life, leisure, and free time. A stressed and pressured employee finds themselves in a position where they need to put in more effort and sacrifice personal life to stand out qualitatively in terms of KPIs among other employees in order to keep their job and possible career advancement.
On the other hand, it is becoming increasingly popular on the public agenda to recognize an employee’s rights to a personal life that cannot be suppressed by corporate forces. Shorter work hours and longer workweeks, the ability to work from home rather than from the office, extended vacation days, and family-friendly corporate events are examples of trends that demonstrate the employee’s personal life as an independent and important priority (Pfenning, 2023). This does not seem surprising, as multiple studies demonstrate the fact of professional burnout, emotional crisis, and even psychosocial and physical disorders associated with WLB shifting toward work side (Kotera et al., 2021; Dahri et al., 2019). Thus, understanding the fundamental contradiction between current corporate practices and theoretical expectations determines the need for in-depth research into the WLB phenomenon.
Meanwhile, there still needs to be an unequivocal understanding of what such a balance is in academic discourse. On the one hand, “work-life balance is broadly defined as an equally satisfied level of involvement or ‘fit’ among the multiple roles in a person’s life” (Alqahtani, 2020, p. 37). This meets the condition that individuals can control when, where, and how to perform their work so as not to harm their personal lives. On the other hand, “work-life balance is achieved when the equilibrium between work and other life domains is viable and sustainable” (Marques & Berry, 2021, p. 263). However, what exactly such an equilibrium is and how its sustainability can be ensured are not reported by these authors. Kotera et al. (2021) relate such balance to the psychological state of an individual, which means that WLB management turns out to depend on the abilities of an individual and influences the probability of professional burnout of an employee. It follows from this that there is no consensus in the academic field regarding the WLB construction. In other words, the authors tend to give unique and different interpretations of this term, but at the same time, the plurality of works on the problem allows to consider such balance as a particular, specific and individual level of balance between personal and corporate spheres of a person’s life, the efficiency of managing which determines the ability to perform daily tasks qualitatively and functionally and have a feeling of satisfaction and sense of well-being in both.
The purpose of this research paper is to comprehensively review the current state of academic research on WLB, identifying key trends and directions for future research. To meet these objectives, the paper uses a wide range of academic sources, namely peer-reviewed articles published no earlier than 2019. Several official Web sites containing statistical metrics and indicators not found in scholarly articles are used as related material. The focus on recent work provides insight into the most relevant knowledge and conclusions, fair to academic discourse, given recent global developments, including COVID-19 and the impact of the pandemic on corporate practice. As it is known, COVID-19 has created a severe threat to all spheres of life, and corporate practices are no exception (Palumbo, 2020). Thus, the forced need to work from home, the lack of social contacts, and the development of telecommunications technology have become critical trends of the pandemic.
Organizationally, the paper presents itself in two key sections, namely an examination of the major themes that are supported by academic research, which also includes an examination of the major perspectives that have informed the balance research, and an identification of the potential for future research. The second section will attempt to categorize, on the basis of scholarly work, horizons for further directions for a broader and deeper study of WLB for both academic and public discourse. It is anticipated that this work will make a meaningful contribution to a comprehensive understanding of the balance problem and provide a valuable foundation for forming recommendations for stakeholders, including managers, concerned employees, researchers, and decision-makers who are interested in developing sustainable WLB in a rapidly changing labor market.
Defining Key Themes
In today’s market, managing WLB becomes a critical issue, especially given the growing need for effective competition among employees and a sense of personal satisfaction. This chapter, built on a synthesis of recent scholarly research, presents insights into the key themes and issues that the authors discuss in relation to the balancing phenomenon. In particular, this includes such issues as remote work and the need for reconceptualization. However, it is fair to recognize that the list of relevant topics is not limited to these two and also includes job satisfaction and the impact of technology. The section will allow to summarize and shape the key findings of the synthesis of academic sources and provide an in-depth understanding of the complexities of balance.
Remote Work
One of the main topics that has been studied in conjunction with the WLB provision is remote work. Remote work should be understood as a format of solving work tasks in which an employee does not have to be in an office and can work at home or from anywhere else, even in another geographical location. It is noteworthy that until recently, remote work was not a common practice and instead raised questions as to why an employer should pay an employee who does not go to the office. However, the intensification of globalization processes, in synthesis with the social constraints caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, has made remote working a critically prevalent format (Palumbo, 2020). This can be proven by statistical findings: about 56 percent of global companies allow this work format, and 16 percent overall have only remote employees (Kurtuy, 2022). It is additionally reported that about 2/3 of employees from all countries between the ages of 22 and 65 work remotely at least occasionally. Even in the post-pandemic period, remote work retains relevance because it has tangible benefits for stakeholders, namely flexible work schedules, no costs associated with paying for an employee to be in the office physically, and reduced transportation costs (Palumbo, 2020). In addition, if a company has 24-hour operations, such as customer service, the decision to hire remote employees from other time zones can be an effective solution to ensure uninterrupted service at nighttime. Thus, remote working is one of the main trends in modern corporate practice, and increased employees are switching to this mode.
Obviously, with the expansion of such practices, it has become a reasonable question for researchers to determine the impact of remote work on balance. On the one hand, it seems evident that as a result of this format, the employee has to be at home more often, so has more opportunities to perform household tasks and have more flexibility in managing their time. On the other hand, Palumbo (2020) showed that working remotely has a negative effect on WLB by blurring the designated boundaries between work and personal life. The result of this blurring is the emergence of more domestic conflicts that distract the worker. On the other hand, an employee immersed in working from home may cause inconvenience to family members, which obscures the problem of disappearing boundaries in the WLB. This is also confirmed by Bellmann and Hubler (2021), who indicated that “the impact on work-life balance is generally negative” in the context of remote work (p. 424). In other words, it is confirmed that in the absence of proper supervision, the remote worker is forced to face WLB violations due to the very nature of performing work tasks in the home environment.
It is fair to acknowledge that there are alternative findings found when examining the scientific literature. Specifically, Bellmann and Hübler (2020) and Borgia et al. (2022) have shown that telecommuting can have a positive impact on WLB because it is associated with greater flexibility and the ability to self-monitor work schedules. Remote workers are often more flexible with their shift schedule so that they can devote more time to family or themselves. Including the saved time can be used for personal life, which also confirms the thesis about the positive effect of remote work on WLB.
From results, it can be concluded that remote work does not have a universal and unambiguous effect on balance, and the specific outcome varies greatly. It depends on the individual and contextual abilities of the individual: for some, remote work has a detrimental effect on WLB, while for others, it is the only solution to be able to spend time on personal life. The multifaceted nature of this relationship is a reason to take a deeper look at remote work as a predictor of WLB.
Job Satisfaction
Another issue widely discussed in the context of balance is job satisfaction. In general, this term should be understood as “the pleasurable emotional state resulting from the appraisal of one’s job as achieving or facilitating the achievement of one’s job values” (Dahri et al., 2019, p. 161). It is clear that job satisfaction is influenced by many factors, including the size and regularity of pay, motivation from the leader, a friendly corporate environment, and a deep commitment to the tasks at hand (Singh et al., 2021). At the same time, WLB has also been shown to be a predictor of job satisfaction, as the ability to manage this balance and the perception that the two areas of life are evenly distributed has a positive effect on feelings of personal satisfaction (Arief et al., 2021). The inverse is similar: Rashmi and Kataria (2021) and Sari and Seniati (2020) proved that balance is one of the critical predictors of job satisfaction. From that, it follows that those employees who were able to provide an effective work-life balance are most likely to feel satisfied with their work.
Meanwhile, job satisfaction, catalyzed by the ability to provide effective balance, can also have a positive impact on individual well-being. Specifically, Sari and Seniati (2020) reported that “by practicing work-life balance, employees will benefit from better physical and mental health conditions and a greater sense of security at work” (p. 109). It is also true that increased job satisfaction is negatively related to the perception of occupational stress, which has a positive impact on the respondent’s health and prevents them from emotional burnout (Aruldoss et al., 2022). To put it another way, the relationship between job satisfaction and balance shows a positive trend, which, in a broader perspective, has benefits for the well-being of the individual.
The Impact of Technology
A less common yet significant topic for academic discourse is technological advancement. Technology is no longer an atypical attribute of today’s labor market, with companies everywhere using multiple technologies ranging from manufacturing equipment to artificial intelligence and machine learning to optimize operational processes (Schmitz et al., 2019). Employees thus face interactions with technological advances on an almost daily basis. The previously discussed remote work format is just one consequence of this development, in which an individual can use the Internet and any mobile device to stay in touch with their employer and perform professional tasks. At the same time, with cloud storage technology, the employee can access corporate files from virtually anywhere, which also increases real work engagement. Naturally, this expansion creates doubts about whether technological advances can be positively related to balance, especially given the seeming difficulty in taking time away from work on their own time.
On the one hand, the development of technology has given managers the feeling that an employee can be available at any time. To solve urgent issues that require a narrow expert opinion, employers can call employees even when they are on vacation: “they [employee] do not necessarily consider vacation sacrosanct, and one of them said vacation means there is no limit between work and leisure” (Nagy, 2020, p. 77). In turn, this perception of employees and their inability to solve problems autonomously creates conditions for professional burnout and the incapacity to set boundaries effectively. At the same time, many companies offer clients their own corporate environments for communication, which include e-mail or specially designed platforms on the Intranet (Schaefer, 2022). If not properly monitored, this can lead to constant work notifications and distracting messages that create barriers to spending free time in one’s personal life. Understandably, the long-term consequence of such ties can be a decline in the mental health and overall well-being of the employee.
On the other hand, some sources tend to believe that technology should be viewed only as a tool. In this context, work-life balance is part of an employee’s individual responsibility (Nagy, 2020). On the quality of their competencies, including digital literacy, depends the ability to set boundaries and prioritize tasks at a particular moment, whether it is work or personal life (Bucea-Manea-Țoniş et al., 2020). Thus, existing technological options, including disabling notifications and creating a multi-user system to focus only on personal life or work, allow the individual to decide to what extent to set this balance. In other words, technology, like remote work, does not have an unambiguous impact on WLB, so further research is needed.
The Need for Revision
Historically, the concept of WLB was created to distinguish between personal life and work, presenting these areas of life as autonomous and even opposed to one another. However, a shifting societal agenda, combined with the contradictory and ambiguous results outlined in the previous sections, has led to the need for a profound rethinking of what balance is to the modern worker. In this environment, the “New Normal” phenomenon was born, responding to the rapid transformation of WLB in an increasingly digitized workplace (Vyas, 2022). One of the main issues of WLB in recent years has been the format of remote work and the technologization of corporate practices, which has led to a permanent imbalance. An employee can no longer exist purely in the personal sphere or only in the professional sphere but instead is constantly in two at once, giving instant preference to one (Bellmann & Hübler, 2021). At the same time, it is also true that employees’ personal lives are stereotypically associated only with family responsibilities. For example, a female employee’s personal life seems to be all about being a mother and wife, giving full attention to caring for relatives (Nagy, 2020). However, this superficial view is rapidly being erased, and in a progressive society, any employee is entitled to personal time, which they can spend at will (Kelliher et al., 2019). Additionally, within classical WLB, a severe issue is identifying the key individuals responsible for ensuring proper WLB. On the one hand, responsibility is individual, which means that employees fully determine for themselves the acceptable level of work-life balance (Kelliher et al., 2019; Nagy, 2020). On the other hand, employees have no control over the number and complexity of the tasks they must perform, as this is the responsibility of managers: hence, the critical responsibility of ensuring balance is the job of the organization (Palumbo, 2020; Wood et al., 2020). It is the organization that implements the implementation of adequate corporate solutions, flexible work schedules, and a supportive environment to promote WLB.
The concept of “New Normal” defines the possibility of a broader consideration of the WLB problem, giving such a balance a hybrid character. Deshpande et al. (2020) wrote the same idea, namely “it is time that the expression work-life balance is laid to rest, and, in its place, we use the term work-life integration” (p. 229). In contrast to balance, such integration focuses on a compromise, mixed solution instead of an isolated balance approach. Practically, it can be implemented as a combination of the two spheres of life, such as doing chores at home during a conference or bringing the children to the office if there is no way to leave them at home. It is expected that the greater freedom of action catalyzed by the WLB revision can have a positive impact on employee well-being, which is the goal of such a balance in general (Yadav et al., 2022). The idea of revision is also supported by a historical perspective, as several decades ago, the average workday was about 1.5-2 times longer than the standard eight-hour day of a modern worker (Giattino et al., 2020). It may follow from this that society is gradually perceiving the value of personal life and trying to identify trade-offs that allow for a practical reconciliation of the two spheres. This is why in recent years, academic and public sources have begun to frequently examine the practice of moving to a four-day workweek, shortening the workday, and the possibility of combining office and telecommuting work (Veal, 2022). Thus, the revision of the standard approach to WLB is defined by academic sources as a forced practice, and it is not unlikely that in a few years, the balance (or integration) of work and personal life will look different.
Directions for Future Research
A detailed and critical study of academic sources has undoubtedly been able to synthesize knowledge about WLB and demonstrate key trends popular among papers. Nevertheless, many of the results could have been more consistent and complete, which means that further research is needed. Additionally, the need for future studies is also motivated by the desire to have relevant knowledge for the rapidly changing labor market environment, as the gap between practice and theory proves unacceptable.
In general, it was typical for many authors to conclude that the available knowledge about WLB needed to be revised to identify its nature clearly. As such, they have suggested that a more formalized, perhaps even standardized, understanding of balance be found (Vyas, 2022; Wood et al., 2020). In addition, the authors raised questions, which remained unspecified, about who should be the key decision maker of balance support, personal employees or organizations (Kelliher et al., 2019; Palumbo, 2020; Nagy, 2020). The relationships between WLB, satisfaction, workplace technologization and remote work formats have been studied in detail. However, most of these studies have relied on correlational analyses, so part of future work may be to identify causal relationships between WLB attributes (Kotera et al., 2021; Mahajan & Guleria, 2022). Moreover, particular attention is also suggested to examine demographic differences among employees in establishing WLB: identifying those individuals who do better at managing this balance can help shape data-driven decisions and recommendations (Nagy, 2020; Bellmann & Hübler, 2021; Aruldoss et al., 2022). Nagy (2020) separately reported that it would be helpful to move away from a focus on the neoliberal democratic agenda of Western academic discourse and instead examine corporate practices in Asian and postsocialist countries.
To summarize, the main questions for future research, based on a synthesis of the academic literature, should aim to deepen knowledge regarding WLB. It was noted that current evidence may need to be more sufficient to form a complete picture of relationships and differences. That is why additional future research is needed if balance studies are to be of practical value. Such directions for future work include both specializations of the study, for example, by adding new variables and addressing fundamental issues, which includes revisiting the concept of WLB and attempting to standardize the phenomenon of balance.
References
Alqahtani, T. H. (2020). Work-life balance of women employees. Granite Journal, 4(1), 37-42.
Arief, N. R., Purwana, D., & Saptono, A. (2021). Effect of quality work of life (QWL) and work-life balance on job satisfaction through employee engagement as intervening variables. The International Journal of Social Sciences World, 3(1), 259-269. Web.
Aruldoss, A., Berube Kowalski, K., Travis, M. L., & Parayitam, S. (2022). The relationship between work–life balance and job satisfaction: Moderating role of training and development and work environment. Journal of Advances in Management Research, 19(2), 240-271. Web.
Bellmann, L., & Hübler, O. (2020). Job satisfaction and work-life balance: Differences between homework and work at the workplace of the company [PDF document]. Web.
Bellmann, L., & Hübler, O. (2021). Working from home, job satisfaction, and work–life balance– robust or heterogeneous links?International Journal of Manpower, 42(3), 424-441. Web.
Borgia, M. S., Di Virgilio, F., La Torre, M., & Khan, M. A. (2022). Relationship between work-life balance and job performance moderated by knowledge risks: Are bank employees ready?Sustainability, 14(9), 1-20. Web.
Bucea-Manea-Țoniş, R., Bucea-Manea-Țoniş, R., Simion, V. E., Ilic, D., Braicu, C., & Manea, N. (2020). Sustainability in higher education: The relationship between work-life balance and XR e-learning facilities. Sustainability, 12(14), 1-19. Web.
Dahri, A. S., Hameed, W. U., Nawaz, M., Sami, A., & Bux Shah, S. K. (2019). Nurses’ job satisfaction is burned out by their leaders and stress. Journal of Managerial Sciences, 13(2), 158-171.
Deshpande, A., Salunke, P., & Joshi, T. (2020). Work life balance in phase of pandemic. Bilingual International Research Journal, 10(38), 229-240.
Giattino, C., Ortiz-Ospina, E., & Roser, M. (2020). Working hours. Our World in Data. Web.
Kashyap, E., & Kaur, S. (2021). Importance of work life balance: A review. Elementary Education Online, 20(5), 5068-5068. Web.
Kelliher, C., Richardson, J., & Boiarintseva, G. (2019). All of the work? All of life? Reconceptualizing work‐life balance for the 21st century. Human Resource Management Journal, 29(2), 97-112. Web.
Kotera, Y., Maxwell-Jones, R., Edwards, A. M., & Knutton, N. (2021). Burnout in professional psychotherapists: Relationships with self-compassion, work–life balance, and telepressure. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 18(10), 1-12. Web.
Kurtuy, A. (2022). 65 remote work statistics in 2023. Novoresume. Web.
Mahajan, S., & Guleria, N. (2022). Tech-life balance is a new work-life balance of current digital society [PDF document]. Web.
Marques, V. C., & Berry, G. R. (2021). Enhancing work‐life balance using a resilience framework. Business and Society Review, 126(3), 263-281. Web.
Nagy, B. (2020). “Mummy is in a call”: Digital technology and executive women’s work–life balance. Social Inclusion, 8(4), 72-80. Web.
Palumbo, R. (2020). Let me go to the office! An investigation into the side effects of working from home on work-life balance. International Journal of Public Sector Management, 33(6/7), 771-790. Web.
Pfenning, J. (2023). The reduction of working hours as an innovation for global labor governance: A quantitative analysis on working hours and gender equality [PDF document]. Web.
Rashmi, K., & Kataria, A. (2021). The mediating role of work-life balance on the relationship between job resources and job satisfaction: Perspectives from Indian nursing professionals. International Journal of Organizational Analysis, 1-28.
Sari, R. L., & Seniati, A. N. L. (2020). The role of job satisfaction as mediator between work-life balance and organizational commitment among lecturers. Psychology and Education, 57(2), 106-110.
Schaefer, S. M. (2022). The corporate social media creep. Culture and Organization, 1-15. Web.
Schmitz, M., Stummer, C., & Gerke, M. (2019). Smart automation as enabler of digitalization? A review of RPA/AI potential and barriers to its realization. Future Telco: Successful Positioning of Network Operators in the Digital Age, 349-358. Web.
Singh, A., Jha, A., & Purbey, S. (2021). Identification of measures affecting job satisfaction and levels of perceived stress and burnout among home health nurses of a developing Asian country. Hospital Topics, 99(2), 64-74. Web.
Veal, A. J. (2022). The 4-day work-week: The new leisure society?Leisure Studies, 1-16. Web.
Vyas, L. (2022). “New normal” at work in a post-COVID world: Work–life balance and labor markets. Policy and Society, 41(1), 155-167. Web.
Wood, J., Oh, J., Park, J., & Kim, W. (2020). The relationship between work engagement and work– life balance in organizations: A review of the empirical research. Human Resource Development Review, 19(3), 240-262. Web.
Yadav, A., Pandita, D., & Singh, S. (2022). Work-life integration, job contentment, employee engagement and its impact on organizational effectiveness: A systematic literature review. Industrial and Commercial Training, 54(3), 509-527. Web.
Do you need this or any other assignment done for you from scratch?
We have qualified writers to help you.
We assure you a quality paper that is 100% free from plagiarism and AI.
You can choose either format of your choice ( Apa, Mla, Havard, Chicago, or any other)
NB: We do not resell your papers. Upon ordering, we do an original paper exclusively for you.
NB: All your data is kept safe from the public.