Issues of Work Life Balance and Well Being in the Workplace

What is Work Life Balance?

Work-life balance is the ability to experience a sense of control and to stay productive and
competitive at work while maintaining a happy, healthy home life with sufficient leisure. Its
attaining focus and awareness, despite seemingly endless tasks and activities competing for
your time and attention.
Work-life Balance is a concept that supports the efforts of employees to split their time and
energy between work and the other important aspects of their lives. Work-life balance is a daily
effort to make time for family, friends, community participation, spirituality, personal growth,
self care, and other personal activities, in addition to the demands of the workplace.

Several disciplines support work-life balance, though individually, none are synonymous with work-life
balance. These disciplines include:

1. Self Management - Sufficiently managing ones self can be challenging, particularly in getting
proper sleep, exercise, and nutrition.
2. Time Management is enhanced by creating appropriate goals and discerning what is both
important and urgent versus what is important OR urgent.
3. Stress Management - independent of ones individual circumstances require each of us to
become more adept at maintaining tranquility and being able to work ourselves out of pressure-
filled situations.
4. Change Management - Effective change management involves offering periodic and
concentrated efforts, so that the volume and rate of change at work and at home does not
overwhelm or defeat you.
5. Technology Management - Effectively managing technology requires ensuring that technology
serves rather than abuses you.
6. Leisure Management - Its vital to acknowledge the importance of rest and relaxation you just
cant short-change leisure!
WHAT IS STRESS?

Stress is the unconscious preparation to fight or flee that a person experiences when faced with any
demand. Stress does not necessarily have to be destructive.
A stressor is the person or the event that triggers the stress response.
Distress refers to the adverse psychological, physical, behavioral, and organizational consequences that
may arise as a result of stressful events.

Stress is your bodys response to change. The body reacts to it by releasing adrenaline (a hormone) that
causes your breathing and heart rate to speed up, and your blood pressure to rise. These reactions help
you deal with the situation
Stress management
 It is the amelioration of stress and especially chronic stress often for the purpose of improving
everyday functioning.
Stress produces numerous symptoms which vary according to persons, situations, and severity.
These can include physical health decline as well as depression

Four Approaches to Stress

1. The Homeostatic/Medical Approach

2. The Cognitive Appraisal Approach
3. The Person Environment Fit Approach
4. The Psychoanalytic Approach

SOURCES OF STRESS AT WORK

Sources of stress for people at work include task demands, role demands, interpersonal demands, and
physical demands.
A. Task Demands
B. Role Demands
C. Interpersonal Demands
D. Physical Demands
E. Nonwork Demands

Types of stress
A)Acute Stress Acute stress is usually for short time and maybe due to work pressure, meeting
deadlines pressure or minor accident ,over exertion, increased physical activity, searching
something but you misplaced it, or similar things.
(B)Acute Episodic This type of stress can be a little more serious. It tends to present in people
who live in a state of disorganization. When people are constantly late, constantly worried and
have too many things that are going on at once.
C) Chronic Stress This type of stress is the most serious of all the 3 stress types. Chronic stress Is
a prolonged stress that exists for weeks, months, or even years.
Causes of stress
When ever our body feels something not favorable, then it tries to defend itself. If this
situation continues for a long time, then our body is working overtime.
There are several causes of stress. For example, you are under stress when you are worried
about something, worried about your children, worried about the illness of your father, worried
about your job security, or worried about your loans or similar things.
Causes of stress at home
Death of spouse, family, near relative or friend.
Injury or illness of any family member.
Marriage of self or son or daughter or brother or sister.
Separation or divorce from partner.
 Pregnancy or birth of a new baby.
Children's behavior or disobedience.
Children's educational performance.
Not sufficient money to raise your standard of living.
Loss of money in burglary, pick-pocketed or share market.

Causes of stress at work

To meet out the demands of the job.
Your relationship with colleagues.
To control staff under you.
To train your staff and take work from them.
Support you receive from your boss, colleagues and juniors.
Excessive work pressure.
To meet out deadlines.
To give new results.
To produce new publications if you are in research area.
Working overtime and on holidays

Other causes of stress

Fear, intermittent or continuous.
Threats: physical threats, social threats, financial threat, other threats.
Uncertainty.
Lack of sleep.
Somebody misunderstands you.
Set back to your position in society
Stressors within any Organization
Task Demands
Relate to an employees job. They include the design of the persons job (autonomy,
task variety, degree of automation), working condition and the physical work lay out.
Role Demands
Relates to pressures placed on an employee as a function of the particular role he or she
plays in the organization.
ROLE CONFLICT create expectations that may be hard to reconcile or satisfy
ROLE OVERLOAD is experienced when the employee is expected to do more that time
permits
ROLE AMBIGUITY- is created when role expectations are unclear and the employee is
unsure what to do.
Interpersonal demands
Pressures create by the other employees
Organizational structure
Excessive rules and an employees lack of opportunity to participate in decisions that
affect him or her.
 Organizational leadership
Represent the supervisory style of the organizations company officials.
Type A behavior
Characterized by a chronic sense of time urgency, excessive competitive drive and
difficulty accepting and enjoying leisure time.
Type B behavior
Characterized by lack of time urgency or impatience.
What is Stress Management and Techniques?
Stress Management is simply acknowledging that certain things in your life have become far too
overwhelming, recognizing the stressors that are causing this overwhelm, and finding creative,
realistic and sustainable ways of either eliminating the stressors completely, or managing the
stress that arises appropriately and effectively so that you are not sacrificed in the process.
A set of techniques and programs intended to help people deal more effectively with stress in
their lives by analyzing the specific stressors and taking positive actions to minimize their
effects. Most stress management programs deal with job stress and workplace issues. Taking
steps to manage stress will help you feel more in control of your life.

Here are some good ways to cope:

Try positive self-talk turning negative thoughts into positive ones. For example, rather than
thinking I cant do this, say Ill do the best I can.
Take 15 to 20 minutes a day to sit quietly, relax, breathe deeply and think of a peaceful
situation.
Engage in physical activity regularly. Do what you enjoy walk, swim, ride a bike or do yoga.
Letting go of the tension in your body will help you feel a lot better.
Try to do at least one thing every day that you enjoy, even if you only do it for 15 minutes.

Stress management in workplace

A work place that supports stress management through work place wellness programs not only
helps their employees to handle pressure better and stay healthier during times of stress
It also sends a message that their company cares about them. This provides emotional support
as well as physical support for fighting the effects of stress.
Today stress management is important in everyone's lives. It's necessary for long happy lives
with less trouble that will come about.
There are many ways to deal with stress ranging from the dealing with the causes of stress to
simply burning off its effects.
Advantages of stress management
Business advantages of stress management:
Less absenteeism due to stress-related disorders
Less worker's compensation loss due to stress-related illness or accidents
Improved job performance
Less stressful, more efficient workplace
 Improved employee attitude
Improved employee over all health

Health advantages of stress management:

Decreased stress-related symptoms
Improved sleep
Decreased anxiety
Decreased use of medications
Reduced pain, increased ability to manage pain
Increased ability to relax physiologically
Increased sense of control and improved self-esteem

The Stress Process

Stressors Strains Behaviors
PERSONAL PSYCHOLOGICAL HEALTH
Marital problems DEPRESSION Smoking
Family problems Anxiety Drinking
Health problems Anger Drug Abuse
Financial problems Sleep problems
Daily hassles
Residual stress
OCCUPATIONAL PHYSICAL WORK RELATED
Job Characteristics Illness Absenteeism
Role conflict Cardiovascular problems Turnover
Role ambiguity Headaches Lower productivity
Role overload Joint pain Workplace violence

Organizational
Characteristics
Person- organization fit
Work environment
Change
Relations with others
Lack of empowerment

PERSONALITY/HABITS
Type A
Pessimism
Tendency to forecast
Diet
Exercise
MANAGING STRESS
Changing your behavior to healthfully respond to stress, should occur before , during and after
stress.
Planning for Stress
Exercise
Laughter
Diet
Smoking reduction
Sleep
Support network
Self empowerment
Coping Skills

ORGANIZATIONAL APPROACHES TO STRESS MANAGEMENT

Negative stress is disruptive to both productivity and employee well-being. As a consequence,
organizations are actively involved in stress management.
1. Providing emotional support to employees
2. Sponsoring a wellness and fitness program
3. Giving on site massages
4. Providing opportunity to take nap breaks on the job
5. Creating high demand and high control job

INDIVIDUAL APPROACHES TO STRESS MANAGEMENT

Techniques individuals can use to manage stress can be divided into three categories:
1. Control
Methods of controlling and reducing stress include getting the right emotional
support
Receiving social support- encouragement, understanding, and friendship- from
other people is a key strategy for coping with work and personal stress
Practice good working habits and time management.
2. Symptom management
Getting appropriate physical exercise
Relaxation response
3. Removal of the Stressor
Actions and reappraisals of situations that provide the stressed individual some
escape from the stressor.
Eliminating the stressor is the most effective escape technique
Mentally blocking