Research Report: Work-Life Balance in the Modern World Analysis

This report delves into the crucial topic of work-life balance (WLB) in the contemporary landscape, addressing the challenges individuals face in balancing personal and professional lives. It highlights the adverse effects of WLB imbalances, such as mental and physical health issues, and diminished personal relationships, supported by statistics on excessive work hours. The report emphasizes the importance of maintaining WLB for employee health, productivity, and engagement, citing relevant research. It explores various approaches to improve WLB, including flexible work arrangements, time off, and stress-reducing strategies, while identifying gaps in existing research and focusing on practical solutions for maintaining a healthy balance. The methodology involves a mixed-methods approach, combining surveys and interviews to gather both quantitative and qualitative data from employees and managers, ensuring a comprehensive analysis of the current state of WLB and actionable recommendations for employers and individuals.

WORK LIFE BALANCE IN THE MODERN WORLD
INTRODUCTION
Maintaining work-life balance (WLB) is difficult, but it can help to achieve
both life and workplace goals. In the modern-day, people fail to maintain
balance between their personal and professional lives due to huge work
pressure. Maintaining work-life balance means spending equal time at work
and for personal life.
People face issues including mental illness, physical illness and disturbed
personal life due to their failure of maintaining the WLB. Approximately
11% of the total employees of OECD countries are bound to work more than
50 hours a week. According to Raju (2018), these people are getting less
time for personal care and spending time with their beloved friends and
families.
This research will shed light on the current status of WLB and the
importance of maintaining WLB. On the other hand, it will discuss different
approaches that can help to maintain a work-life balance.
LITERATURE REVIEW
Maintaining WLB is essential for health and relationships of employees and
productivity of the workforce increases (Schwingshackl and Anand, 2017).
In this research, it was also found that maintaining WLB helps employees to
make fewer mistakes. Raju (2018) contradicted that in this competitive
business world it is necessary to gain engagement of employees to gain
competitive advantage. Helping employees in maintaining a proper balance
between their professional and personal life can help to engage them
properly in business operations. As stated by Munjal (2017), the modern
business world comprises a huge workload and stress, which is unavoidable.
This can often lead to burnout of employees that impacts their performance
and overall productivity of the organization. Thus, it is necessary to provide
them ample chances to interact with their family and friends to overcome
stress. Moreover, Sommer (2017) argued that maintaining WLB helps to
increase focus of employees.
In a modern workplace, work-life balance can be improved by encouraging
time off that helps to reduce stress (Borah and Bagla, 2016). Vacations and
holidays help to recharge energy levels of employees, which impacts on
overall productivity. On the other hand, De Groo (2017) argued that
providing short breaks during normal working hours also helps to reduce
stress of employees and a balance can be maintained.
The current study totally fits with the literature as it will focus on analyzing
the current status of work-life balance among employees. Moreover, it will
discuss different strategies to ensure WLB among employees. Importance of
this approach will also be evaluated by adopting proper methods.
In previous studies, in-depth discussion about strategies for maintaining
WLB is missing, which is a gap. This research sheds light on this gap and
detailed discussion will be done regarding the strategies of maintaining
work-life balance.
RESEARCH AIM
Aim of this research is to evaluate the current situation regarding WLB
in the modern world and discuss approaches to help individuals to
maintain work-life balance
RESEARCH OBJECTIVES
1. To critically evaluate the issues due to imbalance between work
and life in the modern world
2. To critically analyze the importance of maintaining WLB and
reasons behind current issues
3. To discuss approaches that can help to maintain WLB
RESEARCH QUESTION
Why is it important to maintain WLB and how can work-life balance be
maintained?
METHODOLOGY
The design of this research will be able to help in meeting research
objectives and getting the answer to research questions. Mixed
research methodology will be used in this case to obtain and
analyze both quantitative and qualitative data.
Inductive approach will be appropriate for this study. According to
Saunders et al. (2018), this research approach helps to analyze data
to generate a trustworthy outcome. Both qualitative and
quantitative research strategies will be used to gather and analyze
practical data based on real-life experience of respondents.
A Survey of 100 employees and interviews of 3 managers will be
conducted to collect data. For the survey, a questionnaire will be
developed and a face-to-face semi-structured interview will be
taken. All the ethical guidelines will be followed during the data
collection.
CONCLUSION
The research will provide useful insights into the usefulness of
WLB in the modern competitive world. This study will also analyze
the impact of imbalance caused due to poor WLB. This research
intends to focus on different strategies that can be used by
employers to reduce stress of the workforce and increase their
engagement.
REFERENCE LIST
Borah, N. and Bagla, N., 2016. Work-life balance: Assessing
perceptions. SCMS Journal of Indian Management, 13(3), pp.112-
119.
De Groo, S., 2017. Work-life Balance in the Modern Workplace.
Kluwer Law International BV.
Munjal, S., 2017. Work-Life-Integration Through Flexible Work
Arrangements: A Holistic Approach to Work Life Balance. Journal
of Maharaja Agrasen College of Higher Education, 4(1).
Raju, V.V., 2018. Work life balance in banking sector-A
comparative study of public and private sector banks. Management,
3(3), pp.12-7.
Saunders, B., Sim, J., Kingstone, T., Baker, S., Waterfield, J.,
Bartlam, B., Burroughs, H. and Jinks, C., 2018. Saturation in
qualitative research: exploring its conceptualization and
operationalization. Quality & Quantity, 52(4), pp.1893-1907.
Schwingshackl, A. and Anand, K.J., 2017. Work-Life Balance:
Essential or Ephemeral?. Frontiers in pediatrics, 5, p.108.
Sommer, A., 2017. Work-Life Balance, Flexibility Benefits, and
Caregiving. STRUCTURE, 51.