19-10-2016, 11:32 AM
1459795619-Employeeshavetraditionallyfacedthechallengeofmeetingthecompetingdemandsofworkandfamilylifewiththeassumptionth (Size: 14.4 KB / Downloads: 4)
Employees have traditionally faced the challenge of meeting the competingdemands of work and family life with the assumption that they were solelyresponsible for managing their own balancing acts and could not expect significant assistance from their employers in this regard.2 Both employers and employees often treated work and family domains as separate spheres of existence.
Employees tend to experience work-family conflict when demands from workand family are both high and difficult to satisfy. Work-family conflict is a formof inter-role conflict in which incompatible demands emanating from work andfamily domains make it difficult or impossible to satisfy both sets. Employeesfrom IT sector are particularly likely toexperience conflict between work and family as they work with tight project deadlines.
The relationship between work-life integration and other dimensions of workdesign is more ambiguous. For example, firms have increasingly adopted more collaborative or team-based forms of work organization to improve workplace quality, efficiency, and coordination. Although there is considerable support for ~e idea that team collaboration and coordination improve organizational performance, there is little research on how these forms of work organization affect employees' ability to manage work and family. On the one hand, the ability to collaborate or coordinate work with other colleagues may increase flexibility if coworkers are able to substitute for one another or establish norms of reciprocity in which they agree to help one another meet work and non-work demands. On the other hand, the demands of collaboration and group coordination may increase work hours or the rigidity of work if they lead to time-consuming meetings or heightened peer-group pressure. The use of information technology is another area of work design that is rapidly changing, and the nature of its impact on work-life integration is also unclear. Portable computers, faxes, voice mail and email allow workers to bring work into the home more easily, but may have effects that are similar to those of telecommuting. Researchers have found very mixed outcomes for telecommuting because, although it increases flexibility, it also allows work to invade or spill over into home life more.
This will attempt to examine the effectiveness of various HR initiatives towards work-life integration. Acomprehensive model for work life integration has been developed. The model has two sets of mediating variables which ultimately affect work life integration titled as work domain variables (distal predictors ) and family domain variables (proximal indicators). The moderating variable is seen to be HR Initiatives which ultimately influence the outcome.