The Historical Foundations, Current Impact, and Future State of Work Life Balance Programs in Organizations

Title : The Historical Foundations , Current Impact , and Future State of

Work Life Balance Programs in Organizations

Name : Gorkem

Course

Date : April 23 , 2008

I . Overview

Greater participation of women in the workforce has created the need for businesses to implement work /life balance programs . Emerging social changes of `age wave , `generation sandwich , `rise of free agents and virtual companies threats of terrorism and disease epidemic due to global integration increasing global competition for products , services and talent technological innovations which greatly increased mobility and autonomy of

workers and at the same time made information and work overload pervasive have all increased the current and future needs of business organizations and people to start learning , training , and implementing strategic work /life balance programs

II . Literature Review

Increased participation of women in the workforce created the business need to develop Work /Life Balance Programs

What brought about the implementation of work-life programs ? At the start of the industrial revolution , males typically were responsible for providing for their families while women stayed at home to take care of the family . In this set-up , it was simple to organize the business to accommodate family life (Stroh , 2005 ,

. xvii . It was easy to separate personal and work life as illustrated in Kanter 's (1997 ) treatise myth of separate worlds (cited in Kossek Lambert , 2005 ,

. 3 Traditional business organizations were designed as if workers did not have a personal life . Williams (1999 ) cited that historically , ideal workers are those who are never absent or late and committed workers are those who do not let family concerns interfere with the important running of the business (cited in Kossek Lambert , 2005 ,

. 3 However , there was an increase of participation of women in the workforce from about 33 in 1950 (Hunter , 2000 ) to 51 in 1980 to 56 in 1996 (Kossek Lambert , 2005 .Also , significant is the increase of participation of married women with children under the age of six from 45 in 1980 to 63 in 1996 , based on the 1998 statistics released by the U .S . Department of Commerce (cited in Kossek Lambert , 2005

Increase of Dual-earner families gave rise to Flexible or `Catering Style ' Benefits

The increase participation of women in the workforce also brought about the significant rise in number of dual-earner families . In 1996 , married couples who worked outside the home comprised more than fifty percent of the 53 million married couples . Dual-earner families also exceeded by 10 .1 million , the traditional family wherein only husbands worked according to the 1997 survey of the Bureau of Labor Statistics and Bureau of the Census . Barker (1995 ) also stated that only 16 of the fulltime workers go home to a non-employed spouse (cited in Meisenheimer Wiatrowski , 1989

This resulted in duplication of employee benefits for married couples such as health insurance . Flexibility in benefits plans or the catering plan was developed to allow employees to choose from a variety of options such as health care and life insurance . Based on the 1997...