Is this a reality?

It is important to realize that balance is not about having more free time; living a fuller, richer life that is more enjoyable and significant. It is about putting work in perspective as one of the many things that you do but not the one thing that defines you.

If you are one of the many whose narrowed worldview consists primarily of work and sleep, the process of recalibrating your system to define yourself beyond your job is difficult. The key to gaining balance is making external commitments that appear on your calendar and treating them with the same level of dedication you give to your work.

Many companies have the opinion, “work-life balance is your problem to solve” and that Managers who publicly struggle with it, get pigeonholed ambivalent, entitled, uncommitted and incompetent.

Demographic and social changes throughout have led to a changing social situation requiring new policies. The increasing labour force participation of women, particularly those in the childbearing years, has been accompanied by increasing needs for childcare, flexible working arrangements and greater demands for equality in the workplace.

The challenge which still faces even the most advanced of the EU member states is how to facilitate more egalitarian sharing of roles, that is to say, how to relieve women of the double burden of employment and domestic duties, while encouraging men to take an active part in family and domestic life.

Denmark is an example of a Scandinavian country with advanced policies in the childcare area, yet it is still struggling with the question of how to involve men in greater sharing of roles.

France is also advanced in terms of provision of childcare, yet it has experimented with more different forms of childcare policy than has Denmark.

Italy has traditionally had lower rates of female participation, yet this has been changing, particularly in N. Italy. Ireland has also had a relatively traditional pattern, however, in the last 30 years the labour force participation of married women has increased geometrically from 7.5% in 1971 to 46.4% in 2001, with even higher percentage in childbearing age group 25-34 (64.7%). The economy has recently experienced a boom and there has been an even greater demand for female labour. Yet the childcare issue is only recently being grappled with at a policy level, in spite of numerous reports in this area over the last 17 years, and the extent of leave available to women at childbirth is only beginning to catch up with what"e;s available in many other European countries.

A recent study on reconciliation of work and family roles concluded in 2004, by the Centre for Gender and Women"e;s Studies in Trinity, which was co-funded by the European Commission utilising funds from the European Social Fund and Funds from the Department of Justice, Equality and Law Reform in Ireland.

Their findings were as follows;

THE WORKPLACE

Commuting and Working hours

Ireland stood out from the other countries as having the longest commuting time as having the highest number of people working typical hours and having highly sex differentiated working hours. The great reliance on the car in relative to the other countries may be partly responsible for the longer commuting times due to traffic congestion. Those countries that relied more on trains and cycling and less on cars had shorter commuting times. As commuting time was a key predictor in successfully combining work and family, changes in transport modes may assist in this area.

ATTITUDES IN THE WORKPLACE

Due to the fact that parents spend so much time at work, the workplace environment, both in terms of policies and attitudes is a critical factor in coping with issues of work-life balance. The study included several sets of questions to measure the degree of perceived acceptance of workers"e; family responsibilities. It was found that:

 · Other factors associated with not being easily able to be in contact with one"e;s children were being male, working in the private sector and being in a lower SES occupation.

 · Irish parents had the most access to the total number of family friendly policies (barring certain key paid policies such as paid paternity leave and paid parental leave) and French parents had the least access.

 · Parents in the public sector had greater availability of family friendly policies in the workplace than did people wording in the private sector.

 · Many parents did not know whether many workplace policies were available to them or not.

 · The Danish workplace culture appears – all in all – to be more relaxed with respect to the daily work-family flexibility routines and more permissive (together with Italy) on questions of leave and career demands. This may help to explain other aspects of the study in which the Danish parents expressed somewhat different views to those of parents in the other participating countries on combining job and family life and in relation to satisfaction in various life domains.

 · More Irish males reported that they would have taken parental leave had it been paid than in any other country.

 · In , mothers have only recently been given a longer period of paid leave and also more unpaid leave and would appear to be grateful for it, since they didn"e;t have it before. All of the Irish mothers in the sample expressed support for paid parental leave, as did 94% of the Irish fathers. Over 80% of fathers and mothers were strongly favourable. This policy is currently being discussed at policy level and clearly would find favour among Irish working parents.

RELATIONSHIPS BETWEEN FLEXIBILITY AND WELL-BEING

Potential and actual flexibility in the workplace were examined in relationship to working parents"e; well being.

Several significant relationships were found:

 · Potential flexibility in the workplace was significantly related to satisfaction with health.

 · The level of family friendliness of the workplace, as measured in terms of number of family friendly policies available in the workplace, was significantly correlated with work satisfaction of fathers and mothers, but more strongly for fathers.

 · While potential flexibility was significantly related to a measure of well being, actual flexibility was not. This suggests that the freedom to have flexibility has a salutary effect on health, even though one may not need to use that freedom.

WORKPLACE CULTURE

 · Perceived attitudes about women taking leave were more permissive than were those toward men taking leave.

 · The least resentment towards women taking extended leave was in , followed by This may be due to the pro family attitudes in and the tradition of egalitarian attitudes and family friendly policies in

 · French and Danish parents, particularly the fathers, thought there was a difference in how fathers and mothers are perceived – fathers were thought more likely to be resented and taken less seriously if they utilise work-life balance policies in the workplace.

Conclusion:

One of the ways in which men and women can combine work and family is to work part-time or to job share. French and Irish men who participate in family friendly programmes e.g. job-sharing, part-time work) are viewed as less serious about their careers than those who do not, whereas both the Italians and Danes disagree with this opinion.

One of the problems in combining work and family life is the problem of work demands. In some jobs employees feel pressure to work over and above the normal hours and to bring work home. Thus, not only can employees not contemplate working fewer hours to facilitate work-life balance, in many cases they may be expected to work more hours.

The good news for Managers is that there have been numerous studies on the subject of Work Life Balance and all indicate to the same thing….happy employees are more productive, are ill less often, and demonstrate a higher level of company loyalty which translates into higher, more efficient levels of performance.