Juggling Work and Family

One characteristic of a good family life is the family spending time together. For a husband and wife to experience a flourishing relationship, they need to spend time together. Also very important is each parent being able to spend time with their children. While it is better for both parents to be with the children, this is sometimes impossible. It still remains, though, that each parent must find time to spend with their children.

Balancing a career and family life means that one must learn what they must do to have their career and keep their employer happy while spending quality time with their spouse and children.

Something that enters into this picture is whether or not the employer will or will not allow flexibility in an employee’s work schedule. In the case of couples, it is perhaps harder because both people’s employers must agree to flexibility in their work schedules. This is, perhaps, the biggest obstacle to overcome. Of course, an obstacle that must be overcome is the initial decision as to what schedules the couple will try to execute.

While I don’t really feel it has made work and family issues more complex, changes in traditional gender roles have changed who may do what in the home. As we saw near the beginning of the Juggling Work and Family video, there are numerous cases where the man starts doing duties at home such as cooking. While not shown, men probably also do things around the house such as laundry and cleaning.

Employers can be sensitive to their employees’ needs by allowing time off as needed. This is not always possible for an employer. Sometimes, it takes digging really deep in the thought process to come up with ways to meet job schedules and employees’ needs. A good example of this is Marriott. As we learn in the video, Marriott has struggled with this for over ten years now. One thing they did to try and help out their employees was to build a day care center in Atlanta. Unfortunately, not many Marriott workers took advantage of the center. It was finally determined that they needed to build another day care center closer to several of their hotels. When they did this, they saw an excellent increase in the number of employees using the day care.

One excellent example of how companies can assist their employees is that of Baxter Industries and Joanne. Joanne’s mother was terminally ill with cancer. Baxter allowed Joanne to work four hours per night, usually from 10:00 p.m. to about 2:00 a.m. Her other four hours per day were taken as Family Medical Leave Act time. That helped protect Joanne’s job. In fact, Joanne was doing so well that she received a promotion at work while she was only working.

An excellent example of what employers can do is how the hospitality industry in San Francisco banded together and supplied day care for the workers. Workers use the facility and are able to work their schedules and not lose their jobs. Along these same lines, if an employer or group of employers is unable to have their own day care center, they can provide vouchers to employees to help pay for the needed day care.

Family members can make balancing priorities easier by volunteering to help with the family, whether it is by taking care of the children, cooking, or cleaning. Co-workers can help out in the same way. They can also support the employees by working shared schedules, if permitted by the employer. Neighbors may find it easier to help workers out the same way family members can because they are right there by the employee’s home. Another good way neighbors can help out is by allowing the worker’s children to be home “alone” if they want and the neighbors can still keep an eye on them.

Compared with how things were for employees thirty to forty years ago, many employers are now much more cooperative and much more concerned with how an employee balances their life between home and work. They are now realizing that an employee will be much more productive if a balance is achieved. I believe this idea has more to do with employers striving for a balance than many other things. Employers are realizing that productivity will increase if they work with their employees in this manner.