Men's Work-life Balance: Factors Affecting Balance

Work-life balance has become a key issue in the workplace, however, both in research and practice, it is primarily female centric focusing on their multiple roles in the workplace and beyond. There is little focus on men's changing roles as fathers, husbands and workers and how they juggle these roles while striving to achieve a balance. This paper investigates work-life balance from a male point of view by focusing on how men define work-life balance and what factors affect this balance. First, factors affecting work-life balance for both men and women were compiled from the work-life balance literature. Then, an e-survey was administered to male employees in the UK from public, and private sectors asking them to define work-life balance, whether they had been able to achieve balance and to identify the factors that affected their achievement of balance. Coding, statistics and quantitative techniques were used to analyse the data. Results suggest that societal views and flexible working were statistically significant with the achievement of balance. For example, whether a person achieved a balance or not was likely to be dependent on whether they used flexible work option and what type. In addition, while personal choice and partner/family support were identified as facilitating achievement of work-life balance, economic factors were seen as hindering the achievement of balance. © Common Ground