Work Life Balance And The Economics Of Workplace Flexibility

Although today's family has changed, the workplace has not—and the resulting one-size-fits-all workplace has become profoundly mismatched to the needs of an increasingly diverse and varied workforce. As changes in the composition of the workforce exert new demands on employers, considerable attention is being paid to how workplaces can be structured more flexibly to achieve the goals of employers and employees. Workplace Flexibility brings together sixteen essays authored by leading experts in economics, demography, political science, law, sociology, anthropology, and management. Collectively, they make the case for workplace flexibility, as well as examine existing business practices and public policy regarding flexibility in the United States, Europe, Australia, and Japan. Workplace Flexibility underscores the need to realign the structure of work in time and place with the needs of the changing workforce. Considering the positive and negative consequences for employer and employee alike, the authors argue that, although there is not an easy solution to creating and implementing flexibility practices—in the United States or abroad—redesigning the workplace is essential if today's workers are effectively to meet the demands of life and work and if employers are successfully able to attract and retain top talent and improve performance.

Employers demand more of employees’ time while leaving the important things in life—health, family—for workers to take care of on their own time and dime. How can workers get ahead while making sure their families don’t fall behind? Heather Boushey shows in detail that economic efficiency and equity do not have to be enemies.

The term ‘work-life balance’ refers to the relationship between paid work in all of its various forms and personal life, which includes family but is not limited to it. In addition, gender permeates every aspect of this relationship. This volume brings together a wide range of perspectives from a number of different disciplines, presenting research ndings and their implications for policy at all levels (national, sectoral, enterprise, workplace). Collectively, the contributors seek to close the gap between research and policy with the intent of building a better work-life balance regime for workers across a variety of personal circumstances, needs, and preferences. Among the issues and topics covered are the following: – differences and similarities between men and women and particularly between mothers and fathers in their work choices; – ‘third shift’ work (work at home at night or during weekends); – effect of the extent to which employers perceive management of this process to be a ‘burden’; – employers’ exploitation of the psychological interconnection between masculinity and breadwinning; – organisational culture that is more available for supervisors than for rank and le workers; – weak enforcement mechanisms and token penalties for non-compliance by employers; – trade unions as the best hope for precarious workers to improve work-life balance; – crowd-work (on-demand performance of tasks by persons selected remotely through online platforms from a large pool of potential and generic workers); – an example of how to use work-life balance insights to evaluate the law; – collective self-scheduling; – employers’ duty to accommodate; and – nancial hardship as a serious threat to work-life balance. As it has been shown clearly that work-life con ict is associated with negative health outcomes, exacerbates gender inequalities, and many other concerns, this unusually rich collection of essays will resonate particularly with concerned lawyers and legal academics who ask what work-life balance literature has to offer and how law should respond.

Essay from the year 2004 in the subject Business economics - Personnel and Organisation, grade: Good, University of East London, 14 entries in the bibliography, language: English, abstract: The role of work and the workplace have changed throughout the world due to economic conditions and social demands. Global competition, renewed interest in personal lives and family values and an ageing workforce are factors which contribute to the serious consideration of equilibrium between work and life (Lockwood, 2003). The challenge of work-life balance is rising to the top of many employees' and employers' consciousness. Employees are placing more value on quality of working life and seeking for greater flexibility so that they can manage work commitments along personal life. Employers, on the contrary, need in today's economic climate a workforce that is stable and committed but also more adaptable and flexible to meet business challenges. Finding the right balance between work responsibilities and the demands on personal lives is conclusively becoming a significant issue (Loghran, 2002). Therefore, at the core of human resource strategy lays the need to consider work-life balance for employees. One of the vehicles to help provide attainment of personal and professional goals are work-life programmes. But why should organisations follow this work-life trend? Is it a critical business issue or simply the "right thing to do"? Which potential business improvement does work-life programmes offer to organisations? The aim of this report is to analyse the benefits for employers when implementing work-life balance programmes. Therefore, the concept of work-life balance will be defined and the potential business benefits will be analysed. Based on this analysis, this report will show that organisations can gain a competitive advantage when offering work-life initiatives.

Presents the findings of a survey of over 1,500 employees and managers conducted in 1999-2000. Reveals that the most promising form of flexibility is daily flexitime, defined as the ability to vary work hours on a daily basis.

This volume contains a collection of articles that examines workplace flexibility, work-family conflict, and workers' increasing lack of leisure time and how it pertains to long-term U.S. national stability. The contributors argue that current workplaces are not meeting the needs of today's workers, and the lack of workplace flexibility is having huge human capital costs that are affecting every sector of society. They explore how flexibility, despite having fixed costs, can be an effective tool for attracting and retaining employees and increasing productivity -- the key being to make the workplace flexible in ways that are profitable for employers and also engage workers to feel more satisfied and committed to their jobs.