To what extent will an unhealthy work-life balance affect employees within the work environment?
Introduction
A work-life balance varies in definition and over time it has been evolving; it involves looking at how working people manage time spent at and outside of work. Although the definition seems straightforward, professionals struggle to define it let alone achieve it. How people manage their work to life has a massive effect on their performance and how healthy a work environment is. Maintaining this helps reduce stress and helps prevent burnout in the work place. Research by Harvard business review (2017) shows that “the psychological and physical problems of burned-out employees” are just the most obvious impacts that cost an average of $125 billion to $190 billion a year and the effects on a business can be far greater. Low productivity and high turnover rates are effects that a poor work life balance can have on a business along with the loss of most capable talent. These issues have a long-term effect on the growth and progress of a business hence the need for executives to confront the problem at an organizational level.
It is important for employers to identify the difference in opinions between the generations. Being educated in what is expected of them as managers to lead their organization in a better manner whilst working on minimizing the issues that happen from an imbalance in their work life ratio will help businesses flourish.
Theoretical background and Research focus
When discussing the importance of work life balance in the modern business environment, it is important to note the following theories.
Segmentation Theory
This theory is argued to be one of the earliest theories on work-life balance, this theory looks at work life and family life are separate entities that do not depend on each other as they are inherently segmented. Due to this independence, neither family life or work life affect the other allowing people to set boundaries between the two categories and skillfully organize their life. Other studies argue against this theory and explain that work life and family life are more closely related.
Spill-Over Theory
The spill-over theory argues the opposite of the Segmentation theory. This theory is the most popular stance adopted by researchers examining the importance of work-life whilst also providing the most evidence; it explains that both environments will affect one another and that any positive or negative experiences will carry over into the other. Researches suggest that workers carry the emotions, attitudes, skills and behaviors that they establish at work into their family life and vice versa. To put a negative spillover in context, we can imagine an individual going through marital problems, this will affect the way that the individual will behave in the work place that may also lead to a decrease in the quality of work whereas a positive experience such as a promotion at work, will enhance family life experience. “There is no boundary between the workplace and the home. Therefore, what happens at work will also happen at home” (Young and Kleiner, 1992).
Spillover theory fails to acknowledge other behavioral connections between work and family and treats individuals as reactive only. It does not take into account the environment that these individuals are in or the fact that they have the ability to shape their environment.
Border Theory
Clark argues that work and family systems, though different, are interconnected. Where other theories address the work life balance in a more emotional way, Clark suggests that the primary connection between work and family systems is not emotional, but human. Though people shape their environments, they also in turn shape them and it is this contradiction that makes the work life balance extremely challenging to study (Clark, 2000). This theory is designed to remedy the criticisms and gaps of previous theories.
Integration Theory
Where work-life balance aims to achieve a balance between work and life in which both coexist and thrive to a healthy degree; integration is about bringing the two closer together. In essence, work-life integration sees every activity throughout the day as a whole. It focuses on when the best time to focus on either work or personal life is, for example checking and responding to personal emails during the work day or working later during the day to focus on a personal project during the morning. Overall, it emphasis the importance of timing.
Work-Life Balance Objectives for Executive Leaders
In modern day business environments, a healthy work-life balance should be encouraged. A unhealthy work-life balance will have many negative affects on an organization and more importance needs to be placed on this to avoid future complications within a business. Executive leaders need to tackle this issue and have measurements in place to aid their employees into having a better work-life balance.
Making Time
Former president and CEO of Coca-Cola Enterprises, Brian Dyson paints a picture in a former speech of why we strive for balance. He compares life to a game in which 5 balls are being juggled at the same time all representing work, family, health, friends and spirit. Work is a rubber ball that can bounce back whereas all the others are made of glass, dropping one of these means that they will never be the same. This must be understood and balanced in ones life accordingly. (Executives Unlimited, 2022)
Being realistic with the workload that executives hand over to their employees is crucial to the health of the people working within the organization. Not only is there an affect on ones physical health but also it causes a bigger strain on ones mental health when they do not get the break that they need. This may cause people to leave jobs that in turn will affect turnover rates leading to businesses having higher costs when recruiting.
The Four Burner Theory
Imagine a four-burner gas stove represents your life. Each burner represents one major part of your life: Work; Health; Family and Friends. This theory states “in order to be successful, you have to cut off one of your burners. And in order to be really successful, you have to cut off two.” (Mistry, 2020).
It is not as black and white as this may seem, people have different types of relationships with different things that this theory does not take into account. It is not entirely necessary to completely switch off any of your burners what is important is how you balance it and using this metaphor, the heat that it is placed at.
Hypothesis
Hypothesis 1: Work-life balance is positively related to work engagement
Although research to show that a high level of work-life balance results in a high level of work engagement is limited, we can apply the spill-over theory to this hypothesis. We can come to the assumption that positive emotions in ones life will directly affect ones work engagement and vice versa. This is due to the reason that there are lower levels of stress on employees that have a healthier balanced work-life.
Using Maslow’s hierarchy of needs in correspondence to the Spill-over Theory, without ones psychological needs of love and belonging that comes from ones life away from work, that person cannot meet their full potential in life. Work engagement is more significant when ones needs are met outside of work as well as at work.
Research Questions
- How important is a work-life balance in modern day businesses?
- To what extent will an unhealthy work-life balance affect employees within the work environment?
Importance of Work-Life Balance
As previously mentioned, it is important to differentiate between the needs of the different generations and the effect that it will have on businesses in the future. Millennials are predicted to comprise more than a third of adult Americans by 2020 and 75 percent of the workforce by 2025 (Miller, 2016) hence the need to adjust the meaning of a healthy work-life balance for a more suitable target audience.
Creating a work environment that places importance on a healthy work-life balance is especially important for Millenials (born between 1981 and 2000) as work ethic is thought to be a secondary compared to the generation born between 1945 and 1960. This generation (Baby Boomers) craved stability in the workplace and valued the opportunity for employment and because of this, work-life balance was not considered a main priority due to the hardships of the war. Millenials, on the other hand, are born into the harshest student loan burden in history, finding stable employment to pay for extreme housing costs and further education remains a priority for them. They require more from a job to compensate from the burdens that have been imposed on them.
With Millenials predicted to account for 75 percent of the workforce by 2025, understanding what attracts them to a company is amongst the biggest decisions that a company should make. 53 percent of hiring professionals report difficulty in finding and retaining Millennial talent and 82 percent believe that they bring a unique set of skills to the workplace. These are extremely large numbers for modern day businesses to ignore.
Millenials are viewed as more socially aware and purpose minded people. In order to retain these employees and not have a high turnover rate within an organization it is important to give them the satisfaction that they desire within the work environment. This gives them a sense of purpose for their life away from work that in turn will spillover into their work ethic at work. Culture and work life balance are extremely important to this generation as they are willing to be their most productive and best self at work as long as they have sufficient time to do the things that they enjoy and that matter to them. (Tolan, 2022)
The impact of having a high staff turnover on company culture is severe. This results in a number of things such as loss of valuable knowledge and experience, loss of morale and loss of belief in the competence of business leaders (Bishop, 2019). Disruption caused by the high turnover rates cause a loss of motivation within the workplace and does not allow for employees to reach their full potential. Constantly being in an unpredictable environment like this is explained by the Border theory to be extremely negative for ones experiences at work and at home that will both affect one another.
This research responds to the existing need of aiming to appeal to the current generation of workers and how to retain them. The work-life balance being one of the main things that Millennials are seeking in modern day business environments is a strong enough reason to continue to research further into this topic of discussion.
