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In the 21st century, the balance between work and family has become one of the most important challenges and, at the same time, a necessary skill for every worker with a family. Research has long shown that conflict between work and family roles negatively affects workers’ physical and mental health, work productivity, job satisfaction and family life, and other important aspects of private life and work. . As a result, it has become not only a personal matter for the employee, but also a headache for employers.
It can be assumed that the level of work-family conflict experienced during this global pandemic has increased further and the resulting problems have worsened.
Why? In particular, a significant number of workers have been laid off / absent / downtime or have started working remotely from home.
Since all educational institutions were closed, the children also began to study in a home environment. Government-announced quarantine conditions have made even a walk in the park, a cup of coffee at a coffee shop with friends, colleagues, a workout, or any other routine activity outside the home, simply or impossible. Then the walls of the house began to shrink and press.
Human resource management professionals share the observation that childcare workers were the first to return to work after alleviating quarantine conditions. Also, this limited home space not only had to combine changed and intensified family and work roles, but also try new ones: like “sales manager, dad and seventh-grade physics expert” or “online engineer, mom and restaurant at home “24 hours a day” chef “,” computer scientist, son and provider of food and medicine “.
There is a growing need to learn new ways of working, provide additional support for children’s learning, and care for older relatives. Then the challenge of reconciling different roles became more difficult. Finally, along with the abundance of activities per day, unfortunately, it did not increase, and the same 24 hours. often it became an alloy of work and leisure. “Going” to work and “coming back” became difficult to catch on time. All this interrupted the normal regime for many, the rhythm of life was interrupted. Summarizing the situation described, the idea of a “human orchestra on the edge of the world” comes to mind, from which pleasant communication in the family and professionalism at work are expected.
However, is it possible that under such difficult external conditions, a “human orchestra” could sound harmonious? The answer is yes, work-family interaction has a positive side. Scientific literature pays more and more attention to the phenomenon of work-family enrichment, which means that a person’s available social roles do not hinder, but help to fulfill the requirements of another role.
Enrichment can take several forms: instrumental (when knowledge, skills, and behaviors learned at work are used in the family, and vice versa) and affective (when emotions, feelings, and moods come out of work, they color family life and vice versa). It has been observed that the perceived enrichment between a person’s work and family has a positive effect on the mental health of employees, their job satisfaction and productivity, which is a benefit not only for the person but also for the organization. So how can this actually be accomplished during the quarantine period?
Let’s briefly analyze an example: An engineer, a woman who works for a medium-sized company, responsible for the work of her 4-person work group, raises 2 school-age children at home. During the quarantine period, both the mother’s work and the children’s education were moved remotely, so the house also became an office and a school.
The first task was to create an agenda for family members. The method tested with the working group was also applied to the planning of the task (an instrumental enrichment of the work was carried out to the family). Furthermore, by helping children connect with the remote tools used by the school, the mother selected the one that would be most useful to her in her work roles (there was an instrumental enrichment of the family at work).
In this way, the main actor in the situation used the knowledge and skills related to the different roles in fulfilling their work and family responsibilities. It also saved time, which is always missing, especially during the quarantine period. Successful implementation of activities at reduced cost is likely to have helped the engineer mother experience positive emotions, and the place where it was experienced became brighter and less depressing.
So what led to the positive consequences in this situation? First, the heroine of the situation’s efforts to consciously analyze and reflect on their roles, specific activities, and opportunities to move them from one area to another. Based on a review of research by Lappiere and colleagues (2017), the list of important factors for achieving family and work enrichment could be complemented by:
1. Family-friendly organizational policies and work culture mean all the organization’s formal and informal rules and regulations that should help employees reconcile work activities and family responsibilities, such as extra sick days or flexible work hours. ;
2. Social support at work (from the manager and colleagues): all formal and informal emotional and / or material support provided to the employee by the manager and / or colleagues;
3. The employee’s perceived and available freedom to perform work-related activities, such as the ability to set their own work hours, to choose how to perform tasks;
4. A greater participation of the employee himself in the job means the dedication and immersion of the employee in the job;
5. Family support means all emotional and / or material support provided by family members;
6. Greater employee participation in the family means dedication and immersion of the employee in family life.
Therefore, to transform the work-family conflict into enrichment, not only the efforts of the individual are important, but also the contribution of the workplace and the family.
The mission “Sustainable sound of the human orchestra” during the quarantine period is possible when all parties interested in a positive work-family interaction work together: employees are interested and have the opportunity to evaluate what functions of their work and / or family roles can be successfully transferred from one area to another, the family supports this, and the organization is ready to provide the necessary support, thus caring for its employees and creating the image of a family organization.
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