Introduction
Work-life balance is one of the contemporary issues that are geared at creating a healthy workplace to overcome stress and burnout and increase employee productivity. Maintaining a good work-life balance in employed women helps ensure that they feel recognized and effectively accomplish other non-work-related activities while maintaining outstanding performance in the workplace. Various researches have been done to help in understanding work-life balance in employed women. Some literature demonstrates how work-life balance emerged from the changes that have occurred with family and workplace set up to meet anticipated needs. This has generated the need to focus on overcoming the increased conflicting demands from spending too much time within organizations.
However, maintaining a work-life balance for employed women has remained challenging following the demand to help them establish happy families while ensuring that companies maximize their profits. The paper summarizes five articles showing how organizations can maintain an excellent work-life balance in employed women and demonstrates how the articles can help in future research.
Summaries
The first article reveals how the workplaces and American families have altered over the last decades to align with the trending needs. The number of employed women in the workplace has risen, leading to increased family instability due to changes in family roles. However, workplace inequality has increased due to education-related factors, yielding disparities in income and working hours. Low-income employees, especially less-skilled workers, tend to be unwilling to marry (Bianchi, 2011, p. 15-26). Most jobs have become stable, forcing employees to work full-time to maximize their incomes.
The article’s research method focuses on using previous studies to determine the impacts of family and workplace changes on employees. The findings disclose that the workplace and family alterations have compelled workers to focus on working more hours to boost their incomes. However, work-life balance faces more challenges as some workers need extra cash and more work hours (Bianchi, 2011, p. 22-29). Additionally, female employees who are single parents find it hard to balance their work and family issues. The next article elaborates on the first article’s information to demonstrate how work-life balance has evolved.
The second article advances from the first article to reveal work-life balance’s emergence. The concept has emerged from the need to control conflicting demands that employees witness in their life. Work-life balance remains highly challenging to female employees following the responsibilities they accomplish at home and the workplace. Women perform most household chores; hence spending more time at the workplace prevents them from attending to the home tasks. To overcome the challenges, organizations should be prepared to adopt flexible work schedules that match the needs of the employees.
The article’s research method utilizes previous studies to comprehend work-life balance among employed women (Kumari & Devi, 2013, p. 33-37). The findings hold that the challenges in maintaining work-life balance in female employees can be handled by sharing, reducing, and eliminating roles. The next article contains a different type of information from the last to understand work-life balance better.
The third article contains different information from the last publication on the importance of work-life balance. The article discloses how a good work-life balance generates positive impacts on the family and health of the employees. The work-life balance increases job satisfaction and performance, allowing female employees to be committed to accomplishing their tasks and attending to family issues. The outstanding balance also assists in overcoming depression, anxiety, and stress, thus improving employees’ health. The research method focused on 318 employees, both female and male, to determine the impact of work-life balance on their health and family through questionnaires (Gragnano, Simbula & Miglioretti, 2020, p. 1-16).
The findings hold that health and family are crucial aspects of an employee’s life hence the need for organizations to maintain a good work-life balance to keep all employees, particularly women, highly satisfied. The next article contains a different type of information from the last to reveal the factors affecting work-life balance in female employees.
The fourth article takes a different approach to determine how occupational stress affects employed women. Female employees undergo numerous challenges as they try to handle family and workplace issues. Occupational stress arises from the workplace’s physical properties and generates substantial adverse impacts on women with high parental demands. Increased stress yields low motivation and performance, thus leading to declined profits. Most women undergo sex discrimination in their areas of work and problems integrating family and job. The research method focused on obtaining a sample of 150 female specialists from various professions to determine the effect of occupational stress on work-life balance through the use of questionnaires (Sirajunisa & Panchanatham, 2010, p. 44-51).
The authors found that occupational stress makes it difficult to attain a healthy work-life balance hence the need to adopt stress-reduction strategies to create a positive and supportive workplace. This will help female employees to manage stress and make happy families effectively. The next article contains a different type of information from the last to show how organizations can create an inclusive workplace through work-life balance.
The fifth article takes a different approach from the last publication to reveal how organizations should implement work-life policy. Adopting work-life policies has helped organizations create better workplaces to retain and attract competent and diverse employees. This ensures that women are comfortably included in the workplace and allows them to attend other non-work-related issues. However, successful implementation of the policy requires outstanding supervisor support, the adoption of universal and negotiable policies, and quality communication. The research methods revolved around using the previous studies to determine how work-life policies should be implemented to attain a conducive workplace (Ryan & Kossek, 2008, p. 295-307). The findings disclose that successful implementation of work-life policies helps break down organizational barriers that prevent inclusiveness, particularly to female employees.
A Critique of Previous Research on the Topic
The five literature pieces are highly connected as they help reveal the critical issues related to work-life balance in employed women. This creates room to identify the areas that need to be improved to encourage more women to enter the workplace and overcome the existing income gap within the population. The articles demonstrate the need to understand organizations’ objectives and the female employees’ personal goals to overcome the prevailing conflict.
The new knowledge obtained from the pieces of literature can effectively guide me in carrying out well-organized and informative research to enhance a smooth work-life balance in employed women. The gap left by scholarly discussions revolves around maintaining a conducive environment that supports work-life balance for women while ensuring that companies increase their competitive advantage. The gap can be filled by interviewing a sample of female employees from various companies and professions to determine their family and workplace needs and how they can effectively manage their time.
Conclusion
Work-life balance acts as a contemporary strategy aimed at encouraging better management of time within organizations to allow employees to attend to their personal activities. This helps improve employees’ quality of life and advance their job satisfaction and performance levels to increase organizational profitability. However, organizations should focus on implementing good work-life policies to create a culture that supports a healthy work environment for female employees.
References
Bianchi, S. M. (2011). Changing families, changing workplaces. The Future of Children, 21(2), 15-36. Web.
Gragnano, A., Simbula, S., & Miglioretti, M. (2020). Work–life balance: Weighing the importance of work–family and work–health balance. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 17(3), 1-20. Web.
Kumari, K. T., & Devi, V. R. (2013). Work-life balance of women employees -a challenge for the employee and the employer in 21st century. Pacific Business Review International, 6(6), 33-40.
Ryan, A. M., & Kossek, E. E. (2008). Work-life policy implementation: Breaking down or creating barriers to inclusiveness? Human Resource Management, 47(2), 295-310. Web.
Sirajunisa, K., & Panchanatham, N. (2010). Influence of occupational stress on work life balance among women professions. The Journal of Commerce, 2(1), 44-57.