7001HSL Leisure Industries Work-life Balance

Work-Life Balance
Course Number: 7001HSL

Course Name: Leisure Industries

Course Convenor: Ms Cheryl Malone,

Prof Kristine Toohey,

Associate Professor Simone Fullagar

Student Name: XU Wenji (Emily)

Student Number: S2739800

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7001HSL Leisure Industries Work-life Balance

Abstract: As the increasing demand of solving the conflict between family and work,
the concept of work/life balance has been widely accepted and used. This paper gives
the explanation of the term – work/life balance and indicates the relevance between it
and workplace. Moreover, the relationship between leisure and work/life balance has
been analyzed in this article. It finds that employees with high level of overload,
interference between family and work, caregiver strain are more likely to lack ‘me’
time and have negative performance in workplace. Active work/life balance has good
effect on employees’ absenteeism, turnover rate, job satisfaction, work stress and
work performance and so on. In contrast, if the workplace holds poor work/life
balance or lack of it, the work-related stress and the family-work conflict might not be
able to be solved resulting in the negative effect on organizational performance in
workplace. Moreover, because of the changes in society, gender and workplace
culture both hold the implication for work/life balance. With the aim of clearly
representing the benefits of work/life balance practice, ANZ has been set as an
example with the excellent work/life polices. Furthermore, the article also provides
suggestions about leisure initiatives to X firm who is facing the frequent turnover
problem and poor work/life balance environment. At last, some comments on how to
make a good work/life balance policy have been listed as recommendations.

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Table of content
1.Introduction .....................................................................................................................................1
Work/life balance ...............................................................................................................................1
2.1Definition ......................................................................................................................1
2.2Associated issues ...........................................................................................................2
2.3Relevance to workplace ................................................................................................2
The role of leisure in work/life balance .............................................................................................2
3.1Relevant research...........................................................................................................2
3.2Importance and benefits of work/life balance...............................................................3
3.3Issues associated with work/life balance.......................................................................4
3.4Ways of implementing WLB in the workplace.............................................................5
3.5Potential outcomes of WLB programs in the workplace...............................................6
3.6Potential ‘costs’ of poor WLB in the workplace............................................................6
3.7Gender and cultural implication for WLB.....................................................................7
Best practice in work/life balance in the workplace ..........................................................................8
4.1Case study......................................................................................................................8
4.2Accomodating gender and cultural implications in workplace WLB programs...........8
4.3Evaluating WLB initiatives in the workplace................................................................9
5 Leisure initiatives likely to improve work/life balance at X company ........................................9
6 Conclusion ...................................................................................................................................10
Recommendations ............................................................................................................................10
References:........................................................................................................................................11

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7001HSL Leisure Industries Work-life Balance

1. Introduction

‘Give my time back!’ This might be all employees’ desire in recent society. With
the fast development and changes of society, more and more people are immersed
in the stress of the work and the struggle of work-life. Under this situation,
work/life has received increasingly attention from every part of the society. Based
on the demand of balance between family and work, this article is going to
analyze the work/life balance in aspects of its concept, associated issues, the
importance and role of leisure and the implications of gender and culture for it. A
sample of ANZ has been put forward as a best practice to work/life balance
practice. Moreover, the paper also introduces some leisure initiatives to X firm in
order to help the manager to improve the work/life balance of its staff. At last,
several recommendations have been collected for managers to achieve the
workplace work/life balance.

Work/life balance

2.1Definition

For the sake of managing individuals’ work/life balance (WLB) well in the
workplace, the first and most important step is to understand what it is. As
WLB is rated as a concern of the quality working, home and community
combined life (Guest, 2010, p. 256), it attaches importance from The Work
Foundation (Definition) with a clear definition:

Work-life balance is about people having a measure of control over

when, where and how they work. It is achieved when an individual's
right to a fulfilled life inside and outside paid work is accepted and
respected as the norm, to the mutual benefit of the individual, business
and society.

In brief, work/life balance to individuals means that they can layout and
balance all aspects of their life consisting of family, friends, work, health,

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relaxation, socialization and community activities. (Glossary, 2008, p. 41) In

other words, WLB is a concept of managing people’s paid and unpaid life
better with the improvement of life quality.

2.2Associated issues

Making mention of relevant issues, aspects of WLB are worthy to be

discussed. With the definition above, WLB are related to people’s work and
non-work life. In detail, Byrne (2010, p. 54) suggests that there are five basic
aspects: work, friends, family, health and personal spirit and growth. In
Byrne (2010, p.54)’s words, work can be recognized as a rubber ball, the
consequences of losing or gaining which are acceptable for people, while,
others are named as glass balls, because of their damage-irreversible
characteristic. With this situation, the WLB are necessarily required, which
might have a tremendous effect on harmonizing the five balls of an
individual’s life.

2.3Relevance to workplace

The increasing stress in workplace is deemed as one of the significant Health

and safety issues (Work-related stress) which promotes the requirement of
WLB. There are a huge number of causes to the increasing work-related
stress; one of them is long working hours' culture. ( Work-related stress)
Moreover, The Work Foundation (Definition) points out that a time squeeze
occurs workplaces and the group which is most impacted is women and this
phenomena might be long-drawn with the research and demographic trends
analysis. Thus, WLB is so significant that can bring the redressal of working
hours that is, building a flexible work arrangement.

The role of leisure in work/life balance

3.1Relevant research

Referring to leisure in WLB, several key issues in the Bruce Petty’s film
‘leisure’ are associated with WLB including the relationship between leisure

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and work, leisure and consumption, leisure and quality life and planning and
management. From petty’s perspective, the work and leisure cannot be
separated as the leisure, recently, is ranked as an outcome of
industrialization. Additionally, leisure has an effect on stimulating the
consumption and achieving the quality life people want. Furthermore, petty
notices that leisure lacks planning while work not and supports to have a plan
in leisure activities to rationally arrange time. Meanwhile, petty also
emphasizes that the human achievement should be measured by satisfaction
rate instead of economic rate. (Petty, 1976; Brown, 2004, p. 9-10)

3.2Importance and benefits of work/life balance

Is WLB important? Obviously, the answer is ‘Yes’. ‘Work life balance is an

ongoing balancing act, as the dynamics of life and work are forever
changing’ (Hutchinson, 2003). The changes in society today including
demographic change, organizational change, and life uncertainty and so on
result in the increasing family responsibility of parenting and caring. (Shaw
& Cooke, 2007, p. 22; Byrne, 2010. p. 55) More and more people find that
they are stranded in the work and lack time to take part in family activities.
They feel tired between work and family. In this case, family-work conflict
has become increasingly serious to individuals and organizations as well,
which might lead to negative consequences, such as low work performance
and productivity, and so forth. Moreover, researches indicate that work-life
balance is proved as the top 1 retention factor. (Pleffer 2007, p.8) Thus,
reaching a WLB turns to be an emergent and significant in recent society

Evidently, WLB is helpful. In the individual level, achieving a balance

between family and work can bring a lot of benefits. For example,
individuals can work more flexible so that there is more free time for them to
attend in family and social activities. Also, well balancing work and family is
beneficial to reduce individual’s work-related stress. (Work-related stress) From
employers’ aspect, implementing WLB policies enables them to create a
work environment with high productivity, less stress and more enthusiasm
(Byrne, 2010, p. 56).

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3.3Issues associated with work/life balance

The key and special leisure-related parameters are clearly listed in the
following WLB model (Figure 1). It is obvious that the seeking of WLB has
been influenced by work overload, work-family interference – where work
issues affect the individual’s participation in family activities, family-work
interference – where work has been blocked by family demands, and
caregiver strain. (Brown, 2004, p. 10-11) In addition, there is another factor –
no ‘me’ time, which is put forward in particular by Brown (2004, p.11). No
‘me’ time refers to an individual’s lack of own time because of the
responsibility of work and family. (Brown, 2004, p. 10-11, Broderick, 2008,
p.3) If a person has a poor WLB, there is no doubt that he/she will lack ‘me’
time which means that he/she might not have enough free time for leisure
activities. Furthermore, Broderick (2008, p.4) indicates that workers with
high role overload, work-family interference, family-work interference or
high levels of caregiver strain are all lack time to take part in leisure
activities. They might have high possibility in reducing family size, delaying
marry time, absenting because of illness and fatigue in body, spirit or
emotion and have low probability in high job satisfaction and organizational
commitment.

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Organizational moderators
Reduced workloads
Flexible work arrangements
Supportive management Organizational
Etiquette around use of IT etc. outcomes

Demographic Time use mix Family

Characteristic Contracted outcomes
Work/Life Balance
Gender Work overload
Age Necessary Work/family interference
Life-stage Family/work interference
SES Free Caregiver strain
Household type No ‘me’ time Individual
Location Committed outcomes

Societal
Individual moderators outcomes
Vary work patterns
Outsource domestic work &
childcare
Negotiate time
Find ‘me’ time
Organize work around lifestyle etc.

Figure 1: Work/life balance model

Source: adapted from Higgins and Duxbury cited in Brown, 2004

3.4Ways of implementing WLB in the workplace

In the interest of carrying out WLB in organizations, governments and

managers should take actions in legislation and policy making. Individuals
need a legal right to call for the flexible work arrangement so, that is,
employees require for a formal law. (Shaw & Cooke, 2007) Thus,
governments should consider about the request. In the aspect of managers,
family-friendly policy is a good choice for managers to carry out WLB in
workplaces considering staff welfare which shows essential values in

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keeping good employees. (Why family-friendly policies are good for

business) Moreover, Kersley et al. (2006) suggest that managers also can
provide employees flexible arrangements of working time and make policies
to support individuals’ caring responsibility, such as, childcare facilities and
financial support, provide employees maternity leave and paternity leave, and
allow staff to time off which means that staff can deal with emergent family
problems leaving work with short notice, and so on.

3.5Potential outcomes of WLB programs in the workplace

In the workplace, both employees and employers can gain benefits from
WLB programs. For employees, WLB is recognized to be helpful in reducing
the work-family interference and individual stress levels, managing time
arrangement in work-life commitments, gaining the autonomy in WLB
decision making, increasing the job satisfaction, motivation, focus and job
security. As WLB is benefiting employees, employers are also receiving
outcomes from providing them. For example, the staff turnover rates, costs of
recruitment and training, absenteeism, sick leave rate, staff’s stress level all
might go down; instead, the morale and staff’s job satisfaction, loyalty and
commitments and staff retention might go up. Significantly, the
organization’s productivity might be highly increased with WLB programs.
(Pleffer, 2008, p. 9) Furthermore, the management might become better if
there is a better WLB policy or practice. (Pleffer, 2008, p. 9) Evidently,
Bloom and Reenen (2006, p. 470) find in their researches that ‘more often
than not, better management and better WLB are to be found in the same
firms’. However, although there are so many benefits of performing the WLB
policies, worries about losing work commitments and fearing of low work
fulfillment still encumber the some enterprises especially small ones to take
part in WLB activities.

3.6Potential ‘costs’ of poor WLB in the workplace

What might happen if staff in a workplace does not reach a good balance of
work and life? In other words, problems of work and family conflict, the high
level of workload and work-related stress have not been solved properly. The

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‘cost’ of poor WLB might be huge in this case. The turnover and absent rate
of employees might rise or stay at a high level due to the overload and high
stress in the working environment. At the same time, the loyalty and
commitment of staff to the organization might be reduced because of family
consideration. The reducing job satisfaction and job performance might
follow with other ‘costs’ above. (Malik, 2010; Broderick, 2008, p.4) Finally,
it is assured that there will be a dramatic effect on organizational
performance and productivity due to the passive staff.

3.7Gender and cultural implication for WLB

In the aspect of gender, the issues of WLB for females and males are similar
but also different. As the great participation of women in the workplace, the
domestic duties within a family have been shared by both women and men. It
means that they both take responsibility of housework, children and elder
care. However, researches show that majority of working mothers are
responsible for most household chores and child care. (Working mothers-
common issues) Meanwhile, Bitterman et al (cited in Redman & Wilkinson,
2009, p. 368) point out that men prefer to give priority to work rather than
family. Moreover, in some workplaces, there is a sexual discrimination that,
once the female is pregnant, she might be fired. Although there are
differences between in male and female, WLB is still an issue for both of
them.

Workplace culture is the ‘way employees have been socialized by their work
organization’ (Hofstede as cited in Redmond et al. 2006, p. 6). It is a complex
theme admitted by past literature. But it is an excellent way to find whether
an organization adopts WLB and maternity/childcare policies or not.
(Redmond et al. 2006, p. 51) The most important culture related to WLB
which has been highly focused is the long-hours culture which affects
negatively on job satisfaction. In the workplace, men tend to work much
longer than women, while more women take part in part-time job. With this
situation, a desire has been found for shorter working hours. (Redmond et al.
2006, p. 6) Additionally, long-hours culture has to be challenged by WLB in
order to help employees better manage their work and life. (What are some

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practical things employers can do to help employees gain control over

work?)

Best practice in work/life balance in the workplace

4.1Case study

ANZ, which is rated as one of the most flexible and best workplaces in
Australia, holds excellent WLB programs believing that their staff
performance will be improved with job sharing, flexible working hours and
telecommuting polices. ANZ provides staff flexible leave and work options
in order to build a more family-friendly workplace. For example, one of their
policies is to guarantee the part-time job opportunity for 55-year old and over
so that the mature and skilled employees are retained. They also have
policies of 12-week paid and 24 month unpaid parental leave. Moreover, if
employees who have already worked more two years in ANZ, they also have
a welfare to have four weeks additional unpaid leave besides their paid leave.
With these policies above, it is not surprised to uncover that employees of
ANZ show high satisfaction on their job. (Wearring, 2007, p. 13)

4.2Accomodating gender and cultural implications in workplace WLB programs

In order to accommodate implications of gender and culture in organizational

WLB polices, the first step is to create an equal workplace environment for
staff. In other works, managers provide the equal opportunities to both male
and female employees without discrimination. (Kersley et al., 2006) Second,
family-friendly policies for employers to support staff deal with family-based
problems can help employees reduce the stress from work and the work-life
conflict. (Why family-friendly policies are good for business) For example,
ANZ provides both paid and unpaid leave like parental leave. Furthermore,
flexible work arrangement is also important to deal with the long-hours
working culture. (Why family-friendly policies are good for business) For
example, managers can offer staff opportunities to have either part-time or
full-time job, even after long holiday.

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4.3Evaluating WLB initiatives in the workplace

As job security and satisfaction, absenteeism, sick leave, workers’ stress,

turnover rate, costs in training and recruitment and the individual and
organizational productivity and performance are the most considered
outcome of good WLB (Pleffer, 2007, p. 9), WLB initiatives can be
evaluated via these factor-based surveys. For example, if the outcome of
work stresses investigation shows that employees feel much more relaxed
than before, and the free time of them has been increased. In some extent, the
WLB initiatives are successful in reducing work-associated stress. If the
result of all the surveys, especially the workplace productivity is good, these
initiatives can be recognized to be successful, otherwise, there must be some
problems with it or its practices.

5 Leisure initiatives likely to improve work/life balance at X

company

In the case of X company, the poor work/life balance and long working hours
which occupy staff’s spire time for leisure activities result in the frequent
turnover of staff. Brown (cited in Lynch & Veal, 2006, p.370) presents that
time pressure will raise health problem. However, leisure activity is able to
reduce this pressure. Thus, in order to solve the stress problem and improve
the WLB in X firm, there is several leisure initiatives suggested to manager.
First are providing family-friendly policies with paid/unpaid leave including
holidays, educations, and so on. Second is to improve and reinforce
entertainment facilities, such as club, swimming pools, basketball playground
and so on, in order to create a relaxing environment for employees. Third, the
manager can organize annual or half-year tours or parties for staff. Forth,
health care and child care services are beneficial to extend staff’s time to stay
with children and reduce their worries about health problem and children.
There is no doubt that there is closed relevance between leisure activities and
health. (Lynch & Veal, 2006, p.369) The more leisure activities people have,
the higher the quality of life they will attain.

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6 Conclusion

Overall, Work/life balance is essential to individuals, organizations and the

society. It refers to the balance of work and all domains of life including family,
friends, community and social activities. There is a closed relationship between
WLB and leisure, which can be considered as all non-work time. Leisure is
related to the workload, work-family interference, family-work interference,
caregiver strain and no ‘me’ time of work/life balance. Also, this paper
emphasizes the significance of WLB in the workplace because it is relevant to
employees’ absenteeism, work-related stress, turnover rate, job satisfaction, job
performance and the organization’s performance and so on. The analysis of
sexual and cultural implications shows that gender differences and long-hours
workplace culture influence the WLB programs. Moreover, the company – ANZ
in Australia gives a best example of practicing family-friendly policies in the
workplace. And the way of evaluating the WLB initiatives, the leisure activities
for X company to improve WLB and some policy making comments are also
discussed above.

Recommendations

These are some comments on making WLB policies for managers:

•
Strengthening equal opportunities will help to increase the rate of female
employees.( Pillinger as cited in Redmond, 2010)

•
Introducing flexible work arrangement are necessary and beneficial to both
employers and employees (Redmond, 2010, p. 26)

•
Organization’s supports with family-friendly policies including
maternity/parental leave, time off for emergencies are evidently essential in
solving family-work conflict and improving productivity.

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Bloom, N & Reenen, JV 2006, ‘Management practices, work-life balance, and

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Brown, P 2004, Promoting work/life balance in a ‘hurry culture’: issues and

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Byrne, U 2005, ‘Work-life balance: Why are we talking about it at all?’, Business
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Frenchs Forest.

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Balance, vol. 280, The Spinney Press, Thirroul, p.28.

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