Work - Life Balance, Step 1- PERSONAL

 

Work – Life Balance, Step – One Personal

Human Resource Management is gaining increasing traction in the recent past due to changing socio-economic perspective after Covid-19 pandemic. The changing economic dimensions of the developing and underdeveloped economies have added newer dimensions to the complex issue of workforce management. Various restrictions on travel and trade due to lock downs, loss of jobs and shrinking of economies in the first two years of pandemic have added complexity to the already complex issue of work life balance.

The work life balance has differing dimensions for organizations and employees, which are also dynamic in nature. Organizational complexities involve different layers of work force (top management to operating lower level employees), different work profiles (production, marketing, sales, personnel, finance and administration etc.), job requirement (full time, part time and contract etc.) geographical diversity, operational requirements (twenty four hour working cycles in factories, essential services, travel & hospitality etc.). Since organizations have defined missions and objectives therefore organizations have to have the all-encompassing human resource policy of generic nature with operational flexibilities for various functional set ups. The underlying presumption of this philosophy is that individual employees are well aware of the requirements of the organizations and have taken conscious call to join the organization therefore have to fall in line with organizational policies.

Now comes the issue of employees, where each and every employee has his own imagination of work-life balance and he is entitled to the same as it is the question of his own life. This leads us to STEP ONE of work life balance, which can be termed as PERSONAL.

Thus, the work – life balance is highly PERSONAL for each employee, as it depends on the socio-economic profile, family composition, gender, marital status, age bracket etc., which are very specific to each employee. Employees are feel the changing dynamics of work-life balance as they advance in their professional careers, which can be gauged from two basic observations:

I-               The career progression of employees from non-supervisory to supervisory or junior level executive migrating to middle on top level executive changes his perspective. This can further be refined and redefined with organic or inorganic growth of the organization or with switch over to other organization.

II-             The perception of unmarried young executive also changes with change in his personal and social life as married couple, new born child to school going child and aging parents.

In fine, the work-life balance is more a perceptional issue, which changes with the passage of time and progressions in personal and professional life. Therefore the Step One in work-life balance is to have self-control and fine tuning of your own circumstances as no size fits all is the guiding philosophy in the aspect of management and everyone has to chart his path, which is PERSONAL.