Work-Life Balance - An Exploration.

For Ireland to continue to build on its competitive success, recruitment and retention of quality employees has become a major concern for employers. Work and parenthood can create conflicting pressures on employees, resulting in problems for both employers and employees, such as lost time and reduced productivity. Today, skilled people have more options than ever before about whom they work for. As the labour force becomes diverse, the issue of managing this diversity, including family-friendly, worklife balance issues, is both a challenge and an opportunity for organisations. Innovative ways are increasingly required to both encourage existing staff to remain with an organisation and also to attract those considering a return to the paid workforce. Family friendly work arrangements/work-life balance are an essential aspect of the process of allowing workers to combine labour market participation with their caring responsibilities and personal life outside the workplace. Work-life balance arrangements are beneficial for both employers and employees. From an employers point of view, offering work-life balance can benefit the organisation in many ways, such as increased productivity and staff retention. From an employee's point of view, benefits such as combining work and family responsibilities can be facilitated by a company that offers these initiatives. The focus of this dissertation is to research issues relating to a family-friendly workplace and work-life balance policies and practices, including the analysis of concepts, exploration of usage and take-up in ANFIS Ireland and employee satisfaction rates