Organizational Consequences of Work-Life Balance

This study delves deep into organizational consequences as a result of work as well as family life imbalances. In this context this study also focuses on several aspect of the issue and provides some recommendations.

RUNNING HEAD: ORGANIZATIONAL CONSEQUENCES OF WORK-LIFE BALANCE
ORGANIZATIONAL CONSEQUENCES OF WORK-LIFE BALANCE
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1ORGANIZATIONAL CONSEQUENCES OF WORK-LIFE BALANCE
In this fast-paced life often people become confused between the distinct roles that he or
she needs to play in order to maintain harmony in both the professional as well as personal lives.
This does not only lead a person to a bewildering situation, but also influence his or her
performance at the workplace negatively (du Preland Peter2015). This in turn casts upon a
spillover effect on the satisfaction an individual gains from his or her work. This study delves
deep into organizational consequences as a result of work as well as family life imbalances. In
this context this study also focuses on several aspect of the issue and provides some
recommendations.
In order to conceptualize the problem, first the root causes should be identified. Firstly,
the inability to distribute their energies uniformly to the distinct responsibilities of professional
as well as personal lives can be mentioned as the primary cause behind the issues related to
work- family life imbalance (Dugguh and Dennis 2014). For example, when a person comes to
office in the morning, after performing several duties at home, like making breakfasts, preparing
children for school, dropping them to school a substantial part of his or her energy drains out and
they cannot dedicate themselves completely to their organizational duties (Wisensale 2015) and
end up exhibiting drowsiness. Secondly, their incapability to keep their work and family life
separate also influences their performance at the workplace negatively (Armstrong Atkin-Plunk
and Wells 2015). For example, after having a fight with partner when a person comes to office
his or her frustration as well as annoyance reflects in his attitude. In such cases, misbehaving
with colleagues, exhibiting lack of concentration, lack of self motivation due to depression,
headache, heartburn, gastroenteritis are the consequences affecting the organizational
performance of an employee. In United States, nearly 83% of the total workforce is trapped into
a circular flow of anxiety (Wisensale 2015). They exhibit a decline in their workplace
performance due to anxieties in their personal lives; again, their poor performance becomes the
cause of their dissatisfaction at workplace. This gave birth to job related tension and anxiety
(Ekienabor 2016). Bloom (2016), has found out several aspects to analyze the issues regarding
work-life imbalances. According to him, one of the aspects is the lack of prudency and inability
to prepare a priority list, which results into lack of sleep, dilution of energies in less important
household works, health issues, lack of focus on the duties towards office, workplace and
dissatisfaction. According to Cahillet et al. (2015), another aspect, is the lack of time
management skills. For example, working parents needs to be aware of the fact that, both

2ORGANIZATIONAL CONSEQUENCES OF WORK-LIFE BALANCE
cooking breakfast and preparing children for school needs to be prioritized; but they need to
allocate less time into cooking breakfast and more into packing bags of the children, making
children take bath properly, guiding them to wear uniform and driving them to school, failing to
do so, may result into a delay in completing workplace responsibilities and poor performance.
This is one of the reasons which can make a working mother feel inferior and inefficient and
devoid of job satisfaction. According to du Prel and Peter (2015), another aspect is the lack of
knowledge on stress relieves tricks, like-listening to soothing music while working, taking deep
breath and playing mind games or brain games during work intervals, snatch out a ‘me time’
from the busy schedule (Warren 2015).
As the organizational consequence of the issues related to establishment of harmony in
the work as well as family lives; dissatisfaction in job life, decline in employee productivity as
well as organizational revenue, employee attrition as well as employee leaves issues can be
mentioned. Due to the false assessment o the capabilities of the newly joined employees often
organizations burden them with the heap of work they are unable to complete within the
stipulated time of office hours. This affects working men and women in two ways (Ruspini and
Crespi, 2016). Firstly, they have to work overtime without any overtime pay, and reach home
late, and cannot perform their responsibilities towards home properly. Secondly, as they feel
disappointed for not being able to exhibit good performance at the workplace. Both the
responsibilities towards household and office are not fulfilled appropriately (Kluczyk 2013). This
mismanagement swallows job satisfaction. When working men and women feel less satisfied
with their job, this affects their concentration. They lose interest in their jobs and their
performance starts to decline. In this case often employees tend to take ample of leaves, or resign
from their jobs. As a result organizations do not only face a low level of productivity, but also
the expense of the organization to train the employees goes in vein. Recently many of the MNCs
of United Kingdom, United Sates, along with Germany, Japan, and Canada are facing the same
issue. Nearly 60% to 80% employees are not able to manage a uniform balance in their work as
well a family lives, due to excessive workload (Riaz et al. 2016). In this context, Shanafelt et al.
(2015), has suggested organizations to eliminate same of the policies which are exploitative. For
example, often employees are made to work even after their shift hours without any attractive
amount of bonus, often employees are not allowed to take leaves, even during Christmas, due to
work pressure. This results into the inability of the working men and women to spend quality

3ORGANIZATIONAL CONSEQUENCES OF WORK-LIFE BALANCE
time with their families. They have to work with a heap of dissatisfaction in their minds and the
organization they are attached with has to face consequences, in terms of low productivity,
inferior quality services to the customer, decline in customer satisfaction rates as well as revenue.
Hence arranging ‘work-from-home’ in case of emergency situations, paid leave during festivals,
bonus for overtime, allowing paid medical as well as childcare leaves for working men and
women.
Hence, the question that rises from an in depth analysis of the above findings, is how will
working man and women come out of the vicious circle of dissatisfaction arising from work-life
imbalances, which affects their performance at workplace and job satisfaction. This question can
be answered, both from the point of view of the employees and the organization. A working man
or woman should conduct a self-assessment and prepare a timetable as well as priority list to
manage household and office work simultaneously. On the other hand an organization should be
more empathetic to the employees and reduce the workload to some extent, so that working men
and women become capable of balancing their work as well as family lives organization should
emphasize on formulating flexible policies like assigning tasks only after the assessment of the
capabilities of employees, making provision for overtime bonus, allowing paid maternity as well
as paternity leaves, allowing childcare leaves to the working parents, making provision for
‘work-from-home’ in case of emergencies.
In the conclusion, it can be stated that, for preventing the emotional conflicts in personal life
to impact professional life, a person needs to be able to separate work and family lives keeping in
mind that the mixing of personal and professional lives may influence the workplace
performance of an individual negatively, leading to the vicious circle of depression and
dissatisfaction regarding occupation. Again a decline in productivity as well as revenue, dearth in
employee engagement and retention can be mentioned as the organizational consequences of the
issues regarding work-family life imbalance.
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5ORGANIZATIONAL CONSEQUENCES OF WORK-LIFE BALANCE
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