Work life balance is increasingly used as a strategy to attract and Essay - 1

Work life balance is increasingly used as a strategy to attract and retain employees. Argue the business case for and against implementing Work Life Balance initiatives - Essay Example The family ­ friendly workplace develops systems for organising how work is arranged in order to support workers in achieving a greater integration across their work and personal responsibilities. More formally, a family-friendly workplace "recognises the non ­-workplace family responsibilities of its employees and develops and implements policies that allow employees to simultaneously fulfill work and family responsibilities" (Strachan & Burgess, 1998, p. 251). These policies are considered to be a major recruitment and retention tool. Ezzedeen (2003) defined work-life balance from a holistic, individual domain perspective, as the degree to which individuals are satisfied with their involvement in domains of life they value. Work-life balance is understood as a satisfactory temporal, cognitive, and physical participation in the domain (s) in which one finds meaning, fulfillment and enjoyment (Ezzedeen, 2003). Work-life balance acknowledges that all employees have lives outside of work. Work-life balance illuminates traditional cultural assumptions about gender roles that shape mens and womens experiences in and out ofthe workplace (Redman and Wilkinson, 2006). It challenges the public/private dichotomy of roles and responsibilities by acknowledging that the sex and gender system operates differently in mens and womens lives; such that a man may be stigmatised for taking leave to care for a newborn in much the same way that a woman will be stigmatised for choosing to work after a baby is born. Rapoport, Bailyn, Fletcher, and Pruitt (2002) explain: "Accepting that individual priorities differ, our goal is that men and women should be able to experience these two parts of their lives as not in conflict, or separate, or in need of balance, but integrated. By this we mean that they should be able to function and find satisfaction in both work and personal life, independent of