Do Work Life Balance Policies Work

1
Do Work Life Balance Policies Work?

• An Evaluation of the Work Life Balance (WLB)
  Challenge Fund, UK
• Adrian Nelson and Kathryn Nemec
• The Tavistock Institute

2
Background to the Study

• In March 2000 the Prime Minister launched the
  Work Life Balance (WLB) Challenge Fund.
• Public, private and voluntary sector
  organisations could access consultants to help
  them introduce WLB policies and practices.
• The resulting interventions were designed to
  enable employees to better balance work and the
  rest of their lives.

3
Methodology

• Work-Life Balance Audits
• (management,staff, WLB consultants)
• County Council
• Regional police force
• Hospital trust
• Primary school
• Food industry supplier

• Exploratory Interviews
• Building society
• National charity
• County cricket club
• Airport rail service
• District local authority
• Market research company
• Mushroom farming business

• Longitudinal survey of employees
• Job satisfaction (Warr Cook Wall, 1979)
• Organisational commitment
• (Mowday Steers Porter 1979)
• Mental health (GHQ12)
• Home-work conflict
• Culture
• Management style
• Sickness absence

4
Research Findings

• The need for full employee participation
• The need for management commitment
• The influence of organisational structure
• Effective communication
• The need to look outside of WLB
• Problems of measuring success

5
The need for full employee participation

• Participative, bottom up interventions increase
  stakeholder satisfaction and empower staff.
• Working arrangements were designed by ward staff.
  (Hospital)
• Interventions were tailored to 6 different teams.
  (County Council)
• Provides opportunity to contextualise WLB within
  the presenting issues, such as work load, long
  hours, or recruitment and retention problems.
• In addition, senior management/director level
  buy in is critical.

6
The influence of organisational structure

• Branch vs. Head Office structures.
• There was greater resistance at branch level
  offices to take up WLB initiatives due to
• concern about how a busy, understaffed branch
  office could cope.
• feelings of loss of control over staff.
• competing business needs.
• underlying conservatism towards flexible work
  patterns.

7

• The importance of effective communication
• Problems of continuity of working relationships
• Uncertainty about entitlements among employees
• The pivotal role of first line managers and the
  need for management training in WLB

8
Looking outside of Work Life Balance

• Examples of interventions stalling because the
  organisation was not ready for implementation
• The need to address some basic issues before WLB
  could progress
• In some cases the underlying problem has not been
  a WLB problem

9

• Problems of measuring impact
• Unrealistic indicators
• Difficulties ascribing causality between WLB and
  outcome measures
• The need to take a long-term view