SOC 402 Week 3 Assignment Outline on Balancing family and work life

130 ABLVol36No2 2010

Contributed Article

Balancing Work, Family and Life: Introduction to the Special Edition

•John Burgess and Jennifer Waterhouse*

The papers in this special edition of Australian Bulletin of Labour are about the issue of balancing paid work with other aspects of life. Work-life had its genesis in the concept of work-family balance in the 1980s, when the apparent tension between work and family life began to be recognised. Woolcott (1990) showed that concerns about issues outside of work, particularly family responsibilities, had the potential to affect both the wellbeing and productivity of workers. Failing to address problems of imbalance between work and other life aspects has also been identified as resulting in detrimental social and economic consequences (OECD, 2008). As a result of these consequences, initiatives that assist workers to balance their work and family lives have gained increasing support from policy makers, employee and employer groups.

Early conceptualisations of work-family balance tended to confine research, policy and organisational attention to the matter of conflict between work and the rearing of dependent children. Research has since covered significant terrain, becoming multi-disciplinary, with studies emerging from industrial relations, economics, psychology and human resource management and including topics such as long working hours (for example. Bunting 2005), gender (for example, Gregory and Milner 2009) and power (for example, Mescher, Benschop and Doorewaard 2009).

*University of Newcastle

Burgess and Waterhouse 131

This special edition draws primarily from an industrial relations and policy perspective; but the eclectic nature of the topics covered reflects the diverse nature of the concept. Authors have used both the terms 'work-family balance' as well as the broader 'work-life balance'. This is in keeping with a general trend towards the inclusion of non-family aspects as an important consideration for policy makers, employers and employee groups. The trend is contentious in that the term 'work-life' can be considered a catch-all phrase arguably disguising critical social issues and over-simplifying the complexity and inequity of life inside and outside of paid work such as the gendered imbalance related to child rearing and domestic duties. For the purposes of this special edition, work-life balance is, however, a useful term to capture the full gamut of the topic. The papers provide insights into a wide range of issues, including consideration of the approaches and interventions of various entities at various levels, discussion on the resultant or potential outcomes of such approaches and observations about current work- life experience.

The study by Skinner and Pocock provides findings from a large Australian survey and highlights the varied experiences of work-life balance for different categories of workers. It provides a useful starting point for themes developed in other articles in this issue. One such theme that also appears in the paper on call centres by Hannif, McDonnell, Connell and Burgess and the study by Brown, Bradley, Lingard, Townsend and Ling is unsociable working hours. The latter study sheds new light on old ground when the benefits of a two-day break are discussed. In this, the study departs from the more common focus on long working hours to a consideration of a need for a long break. All three studies demonstrate the detrimental effects of unsociable hours and the need to deal with this important element in the work-life balance equation.

Another common theme is the extension of working hours through the use of informal or unofficial working time arrangements such as that found in call centres, discussed by Hannif, McDonnell, Connell and Burgess. Organisational practice as to working hours and access to work-life policy provisions also forms a major theme of Colley's study of a public sector agency. Of interest in the Colley paper is the broadening of organisational policy to encompass a work-life framework; but staff access to entitlements is limited by organisational norms and managerial preference and discretion. Both papers, therefore, highlight the importance of informal practices at workplace level for the extent of workers' access to work- life flexibility arrangements. The main question which these observations on working time and flexibility arrangements raise is the extent to which legislation

132 Australian Bulletin of Labour

is able to identify and deal effectively with the informal aspects of organisational practice that adversely affect employees' ability to balance their work and other life activities. The paper by Waterhouse and Colley suggests that the process provisions of the Fair Work Act limit the scrutiny and the enforcement of flexible work arrangements that are necessary to meet the work-life balance needs of employees.

It can be argued that the economic and social effects of a failure to address work-life balance (OECD 2008) should extend the topic beyond the interests of traditional stakeholders in industrial relations. Community groups, such as those representing the interests of families, emergency and social services, have also sought to contribute to the debate on work-life balance through their contributions to govemment enquiries. The finding by Waterhouse and Colley, that the interests of these non-traditional stakeholders were largely overlooked in favour of traditional actors, suggests the continued view of work-life balance as being more about the needs of industry and the workplace than the needs of society.

Much remains to be done in terms of research and practice. The direction for future research is two-fold. First, there is a need for high-level, multi-disciplinary approaches to encompass the intersection of work-life balance in different disciplines. Secondly, and at the other end of the spectrum, is a continued need for investigation of individual cases and experiences. This special edition contributes to this future direction through research that extends from national-level studies, through to industry level and individual organisational cases.

References

Bunting, M. (2005), How the Overwork Culture is Ruling our Lives, Harper Perennial, London.

Gregory, A. and Milner, S. (2009), 'Editorial: Work-life Balance: A Matter of Choice?', Gender Work and Organization, vol. 16, pp. 1-13.

Mescher, S., Benschop, Y. and Doorewaard, H. (2009), 'Representations of Work Life Balance Support', Human Relations, vol. 63, pp. 21-39.

OECD (2008), Babies and Bosses: Baiancing Work and Family Life, Policy Brief, July.

Woolcott, I. (1990), 'The Structure of Work and the Work of Families', Family Matters, vol. 26, April, pp. 32-38.

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