There appears to be a conflict between what people want and what most business leaders want. All of us actually are in pursuit of a higher quality of experience, that comes from an appreciation of our natural endowments. This goal has very little to do with acquisition of money or position. However,corporate culture and rewards system are deeply rooted in letting money and position influence everything else.
How do the HR thought leaders view this conflict of interest?

Build a culture of High performance while striking the work-life balance;

I think the topic is very broad and can be touched upon from various aspects and as Krishn mentioned Work-Life balance is Achievement and Enjoyment for each one of us.

I personally feel Achievement and Enjoyment though two sides of same coin, both are strongly inter-related and inter-linked such that if there is achievement there is enjoyment and there is enjoyment when there is achievement of work. If this is too boogling in simple terms if we are happy with our work and our job team, we tend to be more satisfied and inturn more productive.

We have personally used following few methods to create high performance culture in our organization by introducing timely and accurate goal setting, performance review, development plan and career progression.

Hmm…interesting argument….I feel only when people perceive meaningfulness in their work, will they think of transcending individual goals…

And meaningfulness would be perceived not by individual tasks but by the unified outcome of all…if that ‘all’ can be virtually painted in front of each employee…good performance would only follow…

As for work-life balance, this is something, we HR folks should be sensitive about….but in a culture as mentioned above, I dont think employees would mind exhibiting organizational citizenship behavior.

Speaking specifically from the IT industry point of view, I think work-life balance is something that is routinely touted as an employee engagement driver, but in practice is never followed. Work-life balance should ideally leave an employee with sufficient time to pursue his/her non-work interests and responsibilities (Social, Family, Physical, Intellectual, Spiritual etc.).
However, in practice late work hours and weekends in office leave hardly any time to an employee. If at all, employers want to create an artificial ecosystem within an organization where his other needs are also met. They start hobby clubs, chat-forums, gyms etc. so that an employee remains within the ‘confines’ of an organization. The ultimate goal is to make him as productive as possible. Organizations do not see an employee as a human being, but as a means of production.

There is life beyond work. Work is only a means of sustenance for more than 90% people. And I think western countries are much ahead of us in this aspect. They are debating reducing work hours from 48 hours per week to 40, and in India focus on how to retain an employee in office for more and more time. Time for our HR to go beyonf paying just lip service to ‘work-life’ balance.

All this in the land where YOGA originated !!!

Yoga is the simple answer to WORK-LIFE balance.

It helps de-stress, improve health and increase ones efficiency.

GYAN YOGA helps in gaining clarity of mind . . . the list can go on.

Question is whether the Organizations (HR folks) are willing to try it out honestly. To see any meaningful result a good percentage of employee need to undergo proper training under an experienced GURU.

Tokenism or lip service will not do.

Now it is no more a matter of debate as to whether Organisations should support initiatives of work life balance, rather it is just a fait accompli. Numerous researches have shown that those employees who are favorably disposed towards organizational efforts for work-life balance, do also exhibit much lesser intent to leave the organization, greater pride in their organization and a willingness to recommend it as a place to work.

If Work Life Balance is ‘Achievement and Enjoyment’ in the entire gamut of working and non-working areas, as HR practitioners what we need to enrich is not merely the work space, but what Kurt Lewin calls the ‘life space’ for an employee- or the totality of the psychological field which dialectically affects an individual behaviour.

How do we do it is a big challenge. For if we only conceive and execute measures like ‘telecommuting’ or ‘flexible work schedules’, or even measures like compulsory leave, strict maximum hours, job rotation, or flexibility in role making, we are only looking at one side of the whole coin. To address the entire ‘life space’ we must initiate measures geared towards the other force vectors. What about measures at facilitating spouse’s appreciation of employees’ roles, special workshops for employees’ spouses & children, providing more conveniences for personal services, Family Day celebrations and the like?

In my view and based on my experience the equilibrium between work and home life is not in the measure of time spent at both places , but the quality of time invested at both the places .If one takes stock of the current status we are un-professional at both ends

The debate of the hours of work (aping the west) whether it should be 48 > 45 > 40 etc makes this issue a nonstarter.

Culturally we tend to mix and mess both.

The challenge for HR is in making both the centers “professionally productive – emotionally engaging”.

We need to bring about a change in the work culture where we make no provisions for unproductive time spent at office.
Instances of such practices are a plenty and just to highlight a few;
• Agenda less meeting
• No sanctity to timing at meetings
• No training on how to engage oneself in ‘focused conversation”
• Frequent review session which is time consuming and a drag delivering nothing substantial etc

I think there is a crying need to set a balance between working and non-working life at work.

Culturally we lose lot of time in peripheral onversation,grapevine “Khya ho raha hai” (what’s happening??) syndromes etc that we are mentally exhausted and physically drained by the time we reach home for quality time with family.

As HR Community having the onus of bringing about a cultural change at work (to the end of bringing and building a high performance culture) we must strive to strike this internal equilibrium ( between productive and non productive work life ), may be the other balance between home and office life will automatically find its equity in the equation.

I have experience of working with lot of expats and their biggest complaint is this and like one of them commented ‘you bring lot of home work to office and (no surprise here) carry equal amount of office work home”.

Perhaps there lies the answer, a possible solution in building a high performance culture and striking the balance between work and home life; a REAL WIN-WIN COMBINATION

In my understanding this phenomena of worklife balance especially in Indian context is something of post Y2K phenomena clubbed with BPO boom. I would attribute it to following reasons:

1. Unheard compensations levels clubbed with opportunities for spend led to phenomena that sheer apetite to earn more money entailed sacrifing other aspects of life at the cost of earning money which eventually resulted in higher burn out rates and thus impacting work life balance.

2. Change in work perspection i.e., false sense of beliefs among employees and probably bosses contributed it to some extent wherein staying late/working on holidays from office getting branded as “engaged employee”

3. The phenomena of late marriage especially among professionals and this clubbed with double income family concept. This has resulted in bachelor/spinter who didn’t have family life for fairly longer duration suddenly having family responsibility and thus the difficulty in adjusting to this new reality. As they get older and more embedded the habit become and thus resistance to change is higher.

4. BPO phenomena of 24X7 resulting odd working hours and thus not only impacting the natural biological cycles but impacting the larger work-life balance.

I felt these are some of the factors which have contributed to the disequilibrium. Any solution for this phenomena(I wont call it a problem as we need to manage this as part of our larger ambition to become a developed economy especially wherein export based on services are going to play a pivotal role) has to be holistic such as at micro levels could be individuals changing their habits/values and at macro levels through industry bodies agreeing to come out with norms on working, I wouldnt recommend any legislation. As far as the BPO working on the client countries hours, I personally feel we should have more acculturization programs and probably the leading bodies such as NASSCOM should take lead role in the same so that across the companies there is a standard format and it is followed religiously.

May sound weird but probably we should also consider for such BPO’s creation of special zones in part of the countries from which these services are provided and these zones have different times zones which are closer aligned to client countries clubbed with entire societal activities in these zones aligned to work life time such clubs, restaurants, outing places, theatre, schools operating time etc.,. When a person from that particular zone comes into normal time zone of the country, he or she may have the jet lag effect for a day or two. But this would be better than current phenomena wherein he faces this disequilibrium every day!!

Taking on the (Kurt Lewin) idea of organizations favorably influencing ‘life space’ of the employee one of the areas of the ‘how to’ could be breaking roles into sub-roles for those who wish to work part-time or say three days in a week or alternatively on a regular project by project with regular short sabbaticals being an option - Role-designing flexibility combined with accurate employee role-fitment (right man in right job as per areas of strength) could be the way forward. HR would have to gear up for handling this complexity while offering such options by increasing robustness of talent identification, observation, record and validation of competencies and role-design on a periodical basis.
As Krish says People managers have to make this their personal agenda to actuate the first steps in developing this as a facet of making their organizations ‘the place to work’. When success is shown by a few there will be many fathers later on.

Build a culture of High performance while striking the work-life balance;

As Krishna said life has equilibrium of working vrs. non-working or office vrs. home, these have two side of the same coin. In the organization or home we need to balance both of them to get the best result in culture conducive and it has different aspect that effects in proper manner to rectify the complexity and has work balance that leads to better performance in the organisation and home. Developing the organizations is only agenda to promote itself but also to recognise the fact which is going to define the other aspect of delivering the success itself.

Yoga and our culture help to connect and maintain equilibrium in this condition

A relevant topic!

A message that somehow cascades down to the People is that “real commitment means total availability” or “success always demands a price”. This kind of subtle communication impact affects the individual, the team and the organization. Work Life Balance trainings and Employee Assistance Programs are good options, but we need to remember a couple of facts:

1. Just having a work life policy or initiatives is not related to reduction in psychological stress from conflict between work and home (O’Driscoll 2003)

2. The efforts by managers to enhance the organizational commitment- help the people cope better with the competing demands of work and family (Berg, Kalleberg & Appelbaum, 2003

So how do we support the people and how do we encourage management to imbibe the right perspective? It really boils down to what is the value we place on the people and is the organization willing to walk the talk when it says Our People are Our Strength?

As expectation increases, work personal life balance has become the one of the most discussed topic. I personally feel that its all about prioritization and competence. Those employees who have been performing well, are competent & organized, they hardly complain of the imbalance and they can balance well. Its more to do with mindset, confusion prevailing in the mind & lack of skill.This needs to be corrected

Work life balance has become a major issue ,not only because there are new challenges at home (child’s education in the competitive world,distractions and opportunities to spend),it is also because people dont enjoy the work they do as they used to.What they did yesterday was good for yesterday’s dynamics but to day there are a net set of challenges that needs new competencies.And they dont keep adding the reqd competencies (where is the time? is the normal query)in pace with the new dynamics.And with compensation hitting the roof,there is a natural expectation of the corporates for higher level of performance.
Higher the compensation is a compromise of work life balance.