Work-Life Balance In Modern Business Environment Assignment Sample

Introduction of Work-Life Balance In Modern Business Environment Assignment

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The current research report focuses on the importance of work-life balance from the point of view of the general population. Work-life balance is the degree to which a person's personal and professional life activities are equal in importance and how hard they try to keep them that way. It also describes how much work-related activities are done at home. The real and best way to balance work and life can be talked about from different points of view. Studies based on anthropologists' discussions show that anthropologists define happiness as having little or no difference between a person's work and personal life. But as technology has gotten better, work-life balance has become a huge problem. This is because the physical location is no longer as important in determining work-life balance. In the beginning, before a lot of progress, it was almost impossible to switch jobs or take work home, so there was a clear line between work and personal space (Le et al., 2020).

A bad balance between work and life often leads to stress. According to the informational economy, mental stress is a big economic and health problem. This is because employees think they need to do more in less time, which makes it hard to keep your mind at peace in your everyday life. From an organisational point of view, one of the most important parts of the work-life balance debate is who is responsible for making sure employees have a good work-life balance. Employers should be responsible for their workers' health. Aside from moral obligation, stressed-out workers are less productive and more likely to make mistakes (Irawanto et al.,2021).

Background Of Modern Business Environment

In the modern world, many companies and people have recently started to put work-life balance at the top of their list of priorities. They have also started to realise how important it is to keep their work and personal lives in balance. Some ways this is done are by letting people work from home, setting their own hours, giving them enough time off for vacations, and giving them time off for family care and sabbaticals. People often say that most employees in an organisation don't put work-life balance first, and that's why they end up doing a lot of work at the last minute. Better planning can help employees avoid wasting time, which they can then use to take care of themselves. Relaxation is important because it gives you a better work-life balance and makes you more productive at work. It also gives you plenty of time to work on the life side of the balance, which helps with self-grooming sessions (Rosa, 2022).

Aims and Objectives

The research aims at establishing a rational and practical sense of prioritizing work-life balance for every individual.

The objective of the research is

• To find out how much time and energy one gathers for oneself to maintain a healthy work-life balance.
• To objectify the view on the definite importance of the work-life balance of an individual.
• To identify how much an individual gives prioritizes the fact of having a healthy work-life balance.
• To find out the merits and demerits of work-life balance through its implication on an individual.

Research Questions

The primary question of the research is based on:

What is the importance of work-life balance? How much the work-life balance must be applicable in an individual's day-to-day life?

The secondary questions of the research stand on:

• How does an individual define the subject of work-life balance?
• How does work culture affects an individual’s work-life balance?
• How far it is important to have self-proclamation timing to pursue one's interests and hobbies in day-to-day life?

• How can one maintain a strict boundary between one’s professional and private lives?
• How much vacation becomes a necessity for self-detoxification?

Rationale

Modern business culture is based on a geocentric approach, which means that the main focus is on making money. Studies have shown that, in order to focus on making as much money as possible in a short amount of time, most companies don't take an employee-centred approach. This means that employees don't get a friendly work environment where they can manage and pursue their work-life balance and keep their professional and personal lives healthy. There, the research aims to show how important work culture is in helping employees find a good balance between work and life. The research gives a descriptive evaluation that shows how a good balance between work and life can boost a person's motivation and help them do their best in both their professional and personal lives. The goal of the research is to find out how the importance of work-life balance can help people feel less stressed and lead them to spend their free time with people they care about. So, the focus of the research is on why and how important work-life balance is for an individual and, based on previous research on this topic, how much this work should be used to change the way people all over the world see and think about work-life balance (Le et al., 2020).

Brief Literature Review

According to Kelliher et al., 2019, the balance between work and life is an imperative factor in every person's life. One of the biggest reasons for a work-life balance is one's happiness which in turn gives fulfilment. Balance is all about feeling good about oneself and having control over one's life and career. Because only by maintaining a balance between work and life one can understand the real meaning of life.

According to Wood et al., 2020, the work-life balance can be summed up as a work-life interface that can generally be termed as an intersection of work life and personal life that can amalgamate with each other sometimes with mixed reasons, whereas sometimes with clear distinction. The work-life interface is again considered to be as bidirectional as work and personal life can intersect with each other consecutively at a single phase of time with more than one aspect of personal life that can intersect with work that includes family life, leisure time as well as most importantly health. One can opt for two types of work-life balance where one must be a chosen form whereas, the other must be earned with hard work where the initial one makes one more done than the others and the latter one deprives one of getting promoted or makes one unemployed.

Moreover, according to Le et al., 2020, work-life can be defined with practical analysis which includes the work-formed stress getting minimized and a stable and sustainable way of work getting established along with good maintenance of health and general well-being in day-to-day life. The work-life balance can be framed in the form of the difference between the amount of time and energy one invests in his work and the amount of time and energy one keeps for oneself in the form of personal life. Studies have shown that in an organization almost 25% to 28% of employees get drained out emotionally due to workload and work stress which in turn negatively affect their personal life including friends and family and self-time. The definition of the work-life balance is not a static factor, it is a constantly changing and evolving phenomenon that defines a huge part of an individual's life. Understanding the importance of having a balance between life and work is the most necessary part of social survival as man is a social being.

The general understanding explanation regarding the importance of the work-life balance comes with a certain number of factors summed up as to make a praiseworthy impact at work and also in the world without mental health and happiness getting sacrificed, a positive impact on one’s family, especially children, and should be present at the appropriate time and the moment with an actual thinking space. The priority should be given to one's self, including self-care without any feeling of shame, guilt, or apology. The creation of a powerful boundary that can give a secure feeling about one's self-esteem while enforcing the boundary should be applied and to try to do the best to achieve success without giving up.

Therefore, according to Palumbo 2020, the balance between work and life is a feeling of being content about who one is and what decisions one is making. The content feeling is a brainchild of one's mindset, it is not found, it is achieved and created by oneself with hard work. So the balance begins with an individual and with self. To create an extensively balanced life one must understand why a work-life balance must be prioritized because it is difficult to retain and sustain something which is not understood. Creating a balanced lifestyle does not come easily, to gain the grip over work-life balance one requires to possess self-priority, self-control over a self-career path and self-simplification of life.

Studies have shown that work-life balance is necessary for everyone irrespective of gender, race, caste, and nationality. The only difference that should be appreciated is the difference in the language people use to express themselves. Women primarily talk about having a meaningful and balanced lifestyle, while men talk about having self-priority time and making a productive impact both in the work as well as in daily life. In a deeper sense, both men and women talk about the same thing, with only a difference in the way of speaking. So balance is for all, men and women alike.

Methodology

The methodology of any research is one of the most important of its elements because it is related to the collection and analysis of data; without the collection and analysis of data it is impossible to develop a research study and for that reason the methodology is significant. The Saunder's Research Onion Model shall be used for giving a structure to the research and the methodology would be divided into the following components: research philosophy which would be interpretivism, a research approach that would be inductive, research design that would be exploratory, research strategy would be mixed containing both qualitative and quantitative elements and data collection and analysis which would both follow the methods related to secondary data.

Research Philosophy

The philosophy for this research would be interpretivism. Research philosophy is an important part of the research methodology which gives a base and shape to the research. Once the data for this research would be collected the author would use the approach or philosophy of interpretivism while analyzing the data. The interpretative philosophical approach would allow the author to understand and analyze the various factors related to the concepts of work-life balance and its relevance in the modern work environment (Cr, 2020). Naturally, an author may come across various problems while carrying out the research but the usage of interpretivism would allow the author to identify the various problems related to the entire subject matter. Interpretivism is ideal when it comes to comparison and for this research, it would allow the author to compare the relevance and importance of work-life balance in modern and earlier working environments, which would further strengthen the cause of the research.

Research approach

For this kind of research, the author would use an inductive method. The main benefit of the inductive research method is that it lets the author focus on the different research questions, goals, and objectives that are set at the beginning of the research process. By focusing on the research questions and goals, the researcher would be able to understand the research better, which would allow the academic depth of the research work to be increased (Mishra and Alok, 2020). The inductive method would also help the author find the right meanings for all the data and information that would be collected for the research, which would lead to the right identification of all the datasets. The author would also find it easier to come up with theories if he or she used the inductive method. One of the best things about the inductive method is that it lets the author use ideas from different research instead of limiting the scope of the whole study.

Research design

The research design is an important component of the methodology since it serves as a framework for the many research techniques and procedures. For the purpose of this study, an exploratory research design would be utilised because it would be of assistance in providing understandable explanations for the various findings obtained from the investigation. In spite of the fact that considerable research has been conducted in this field, the topic is not yet fully comprehended, and there is still a research void (Mohajan, 2018). It would be beneficial for the researcher to employ an exploratory research design for this study because exploratory research designs are best suited for research projects on subjects for which there is insufficient previous research.

Research strategy

This research would be constituted with the help of a mixed research strategy as the study would be constituted with both qualitative and quantitative data. Although a large part of the data collected for the research would be qualitative, some amount of quantitative data would also be used and required for the culmination of the research. The first and foremost element of any research strategy is the creation of research questions as it is the research questions that indicate what the author wishes to find as a result.

Data collection

Secondary data would be collected for this research and secondary data collection techniques would be used. The two main sources of secondary data are organizational records and data that are usually acquired from pre-existing research (Pandey and Pandey, 2021). To acquire data from pre-existing research, the author would need to browse different databases such as Google Scholar and while searching those databases it is common to not get the exact outcome at once, so the author would need to type in and search various keywords related to the subject of the study. Keywords such as 'modern business environment', 'work-life balance, 'modern trends in the business environment, etc. Besides pre-existing research, various organizational records would be explored and browsed to find data related to work-life balance policies and prevalent practices related to the working environment. Both qualitative and quantitative would be collected during this process.

Data analysis

Data analysis is the immediate next step after data collection and for this particular research, quantitative and qualitative data analysis methods would be used. Although the overall theme would be narrative analysis keeping in mind the heavy influence of qualitative data in the research, the basic qualitative and quantitative data analysis methods would also be used for the culmination of the research.

Expected outcome

This study will focus on the increasing significance of maintaining a healthy work-life balance in today's competitive corporate environment. The issue of this research is an essential one since there has been a recent uptick in the number of rules in the corporate world that are related to maintaining a healthy work-life balance. This study would attempt to evaluate and clarify the topic from an academic standpoint, as well as investigate whether or not the trend toward a more healthy work-life balance is actually occurring, as opposed to merely what is often believed to be occurring but actually is not. There are many nuances of this particular trend that needs to be academically assessed and analyzed in the light of findings and discussion for proper research and this research would consequently help in decreasing the research gap which exists within this subject area. The most important outcome of this research would be to fill the research gap using research. The research would fill the research gap by collecting both qualitative and quantitative data from secondary sources and the research problem would be addressed. This research would benefit the workers across the world who are professionals in corporate or any other business environment; if the rising prevalence of work-life balance is legitimized using academic research then the various other business organizations and companies which are not trying to maintain work-life balance would be compelled. This research could even open new avenues as one of its most possible outcomes that could serve as a base and justification for the work-life balance-based legislation and policy-making (Rinjit, 2020). The qualitative data would be taken from various literature related to the evolution of the business environment and how it reached where it did in its most modern outlook. The outcome of this research would also be dependent upon the data that would be collected from important business organizations across the world and their practices and take on the issue of maintaining work-life balance within the business environment. Most importantly, to summarize, the possible outcome of this research would be that it would fill the research gap in the subject area and benefit the workers across the world who could use some work-life balance in their life.

Limitations

Every research study has limitations because it is not possible for a researcher to be able to collect data in every way possible in a faultless manner. The main limitations of this particular research could be the time crunch; the lack of time for the development of certain research makes it difficult for the researcher to collect data properly. Also, since the topic of this research is to analyze the modern business environment at large, it would be impossible for the researcher to completely assess the modern business environment of the entire chosen region of research because the sample constituted for research, how diverse it be, it will not be able to completely include the case for an entire region. The lack of information due to a significant research gap in the subject area would also be a limitation of this research (Snyder, 2019). The research would be secondary and the lack of primary data for the culmination of research related to the modern environment would also prove to be an important limitation for the overall nature of the study.

Ethical consideration

Despite the limitations, the author would try to present the findings honestly to acquire proper results so that ethical consideration can be maintained. Since the work would primarily rely on secondary data, the author would make sure that no form of plagiarism is done to maintain the ethics of research. Plagiarism is a bane that destroys the credibility of research and would be avoided. The author would also take responsibility for the results, data, or findings published as part of the research.

Reference

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Kelliher, C., Richardson, J. and Boiarintseva, G., 2019. All of the work? All of life? Reconceptualizing work?life balance for the 21st century. Human Resource Management Journal , 29 (2), pp.97-112.

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