Challenges Faced By Working Couple

Ch every last(predicate)enges Faced By acidifying rivalThe overarching purpose of the involve was to know the impact of steeptail iting(a) hours on the charm- purport residuum challenges go about by running(a) equalize. WLB from an employee perspective is the just about important system of organisation. This article reports that the operative hours have a strong dealingship with the challenges face by bunking couple. Data was collected from divers(a) countries bid USA, India, Australia, and Canada. A total of 70-80 participants (working couples) indicated that coherent and odd working hours make their work-life im rest periodd. Due to which they atomic number 18 un sufficient to spend succession with family and negatively motioning their organisation commitment. excessively, these time constraints bring out to a greater extent tautnessful conditions to work and giving unproductive results to organisations. We therefore, recommend all the organisations to im plement work-life balance strategies which are family friendly policies and simultaneously, reaping benefits for the organisations too.Keywords working couples, work-Life equaliser, Flexible working hours, wormibility.IntroductionWhat is Work-life balance?For companies to remain competitive there is a necessity to attract and retain valued employees with regard to human resource policies and practices that parcel out work-life balance. Therefore Work- life Balance is an important area of concern for Employers. Work life balance is about indivithreefold choices that enable employers and employees to manage the fundamental interaction between work and the demands of life that affect health, families and communities. Work/Life Balance n. A state of equilibrium in which the demands of both a persons assembly line and in-person life are equal.According to Maryln Walton of Herman Millers Future Insight Group, The participants rated work-life balance as the most important of the pr opositions in the future. It also was rated lowest for the descend of attention being paid to it through the workplace. Therefore in todays organisational settings WLB strategies are being implemented equal policies of flexible work and sidetrack arrangements, child and dependant perplexity, compressed work week, tune sharing, etc. follow of LiteratureWorking Hours and Dynamics Interplay between Work and Family ChallengesA work/life balance survey conducted in 2002 by TrueCareers states that 70% of more than 1,500 respondents said they dont have a healthy balance between their ain and work lives. As organisations move towards more participative and flat structures where fewer employees are expected to manage increase workloads (Hall Ritcher, 1988), the demands of the environment increase, and maintaining the balance between the demands of a life history and life responsibilities become more unenviable. Hence an change magnitude direct of focus can rapidly lead to low emp loyee morale, poor productivity, and decrease job satisfaction. Some of the specific problems that relate directly to productivity in the work environment are abuse of sick time, cheating, chronic absenteeism, distrust, embezzlement, organisational sabotage, tardiness, task avoidance, and violence in the workplace. Other serious repercussions are depression, alcoholic drink and drug abuse, marital and financial problems, compulsive eating disorders, and employee burnout.With ever increasing work overload there is always negative spillover of stress from might to home and from home to office. Working late hours, bringing work to home, little time for lunch at office hours are the common problems faced by working couple. Moreover, if the working environment is not supportive it whitethorn lead to more turnover as before. Employees tend to experience work-family involution when demands from work and family are both high and difficult to satisfy. Work-family combat is a form of int errole conflict in which unsuitable demands emanating from work and family domains make it difficult or impossible to satisfy both sets.Employees from dual-earner families (the subjects of our study) are particularly possible to experience conflict between work and family. Whereas most research has focus on individuals and the work-family conflict they person-to-personly report, a emergence number of studies notify that work-life issues must be understood in the place setting of both spouses handicraft conditions. Employees tend to experience work-family conflict when demands from work and family are both high and difficult to satisfy. Work-family conflict is a form of interrole conflict in which incompatible demands arising from work and family domains make it difficult to satisfy both sets.Working couples are particularly believably to experience conflict between work and family. Whereas most research has focused on individuals and the work-family conflict they personally report, a growing number of studies suggest that work-life issues must be understood in the context of both spouses employment conditions. This study though examines the spousal support and his indulging in work, being at priority. A 1991 study finds relationships among employees job security, income, and hebdomadary work hours and their spouses job involvement and satisfaction.Longer working hours are considered as the bombasticgest work-family conflict reason giving more challenges to be faced by working couple. Late working hours, night shifts, work at home, no flexible scheduling and rigid corporate timings all these are demanding flex time work strategies.In the last decade ( Health Canada 2001, depicted object Work Life Conflict Study), declared that high job stress has doubled, high job satisfaction and employee loyalty has doubled, the dowry of Canadian working more than 50 hours a week has grown from 10% to 25% , most Canadian lives in dual-income families and have lo w-levels, whether children, aging parents or both. Also Canadian employers has reported that work life conflict has resulted in change magnitude absenteeism and employee turnover, reduced productivity increase disability costs and health cost, increased managerial stress, and impaired family/social relationships. Jacobs and Gerson (2001) proposed that total family work hours, or the combine work hours of both spouses, would be a stronger predictor of negative outcomes, especially among parents, than the work hours of the individual spouses.Total family work hours is a concept with great face boldness as Jacobs and Gerson (2001) note, married individuals have less time to spend at home, because they devote more joint time to work (p. 50). More recently, Voydanoff (2004b) argued that long work hours reduce the resources that couples have for managing home demands, with likely negative effects on marital tone of voice that vary with gender. For causa, long work hours have been as sociated with high work_family conflict (Grzywacz Marks, 2000) as intumesce as with good physical health (Bird Fremont, 1991). In contrast, there was no significant relationship between long work hours and intention to turnover or life satisfaction (Barnett Gareis, 2000a,b).Therefore todays company need various work-life strategies to be implemented that are admirerful for working couple. They will be able to maintain a balance between much needed personal and professional life. The workplace based strategy could be flexi-time and flexi hours, part time, job sharing, job redesign, compressed work schedule and flexi-place strategy could be telecommuting. forswear arrangements could be compassionate care leave, extended leave, maternity leave, parental leave, personal leave, self-funded leave, sick leave. A review of more than 30 surveys regarding work/life balance published from 1997 to 2003 reveals that the number of employers who offer family-friendly benefits has dramatically increased. According to the SHRM 2003 Benefits persuasion by the Society for Human Resource Management (www.shrm.org /surveys-available late June 2003), the percentage of employers offering family-friendly benefits continues to increase.21 The survey documents that the top five family-friendly benefits offered areDependent care flexible spending accounts (71% of respondents).Flextime (55% of respondents).Family leave above required leave of the federal Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) (39% of respondents).Telecommuting on a temporary basis (34% of respondents).Compressed workweeks (31% of respondents).Research MethodologyData CollectionA sample of 70-80 working couples was taken from various countries including USA, Canada, Australia and India to measure the effect of working hours on working couples and the challenges they face. Diverse type of corporate sector including receipts sector, medical sectors, NGOs, manufacturing sectors, educational sectors etc. were included A structured questionnaire was drafted containing various statement on Work-Life Balance and challenges. Giving a Chronback Aplha of .80 ( reliability and validity of questionnaire).MeasurementIndividual working hours effect was assessed on the lives of working couple. 12-items from the dual career couple challenge scale were used to assess the challenges undergo by them. Responses were gauged on a 5-point Likert-type scale ranging from 1 (never) to 5 (always). For example items including, Do you work late hours at office everyday? Do you miss out on quality time with your family and friends because of work stuff? A higher response rate of 85% was recorded.Therefore, for measuring the effect of working hours on the challenges faced by dual career couple a simple regression analysis technique was applied with the help of SPSS 18 (PASW). Taking challenges as independent factors and working hours as dependent factors.Simple regression analysis was used to test the hypothetical relation s between the challenges and working hours, in table 1. We can see the variables entered as independent.To address the challenge of analyzing data where its being proved by our results that as pConclusionThis study therefore suggests that dual-career couples whitethorn have divers(prenominal) needs from those of the more traditional single-career couple. There is, therefore, a need for organisations to cook policies and practices that provide support for the demands of both work and family. In the work environment, dual-career employee stead implies the need for greater employer sensitivity and awareness of the conflicting demands of simultaneous careers, so that employees may become more effective both at work and at home. What is needed is policies and programmes to help employees reduce the amount of conflict and the resulting stress they experience when they try to juggle the demands of work and home responsibilities (Thomas Ganster, 1995). Higgins, Duxbury and Irving (1992) for example, found that conflict between work and family roles reduce employees perceptions of quality of work life and the quality of family life which, in turn, can impact productivity, absenteeism and turnover. Supportive work practices like flexible work options (e.g. flexitime, compressed work weeks, home telecommuting) as well as assistance with child and dependent care, employee support programme (e.g. counselling) and career path alternatives (Bardoel, Tharenou and Moss, 1998) are therefore vital to minimise stress, maximize employees palpate of control over their lives, sustain manageable career progression, and at the homogeneous time balance career and family demands. (Elloy F David, 2004).Limitation of StudyThe study presented here is not without limitations. Lack of time was also a big constraint. Respondents situated out of India (home country) having problem while filling up the questionnaire were not able to discuss the doubts regarding the questionnaire because o f distance and lack of time. Wrong breeding like telling wrong age or wrong spouse information cannot be avoided. An additional limitation based on the characteristics of the sample may be bias associated with nonresponse.