Measuring work-life balance and its covariates

摘要

There has been much discussion of the work-life balance of employees in the late 20th century, but few attempts to measure it directly or see what were its main predictors. This study was able to measure employees' work-life balance and found weekly hours of work was a very important determinant of employees' work-life balance, alongside their occupations, gender, age and caring responsibilities. In terms of relative importance, working more than 48 hours per week had the largest single effect promoting work-life imbalance; caring responsibilities and being aged 36 to 45 were approximately equal in size and contributed to work-life imbalance approximately half as much effect as work- ing more than 48 hours per week. Contrary to earlier suggestions, managers were not always found to have higher levels of work-life problems than professional workers after controlling for other things. Similarly, private-sector employees did not have systematically less work-life balance than public-sector employees. This may be because of increased stress for public-sector employees from the many restructurings, internal markets, targets and short staffing. If the government wishes to affect the work-life balance of employees in Britain, the single most important change needed is to reduce long weekly working hours, and especially in the higher grade occupations. In fact, we could all benefit from working shorter hours, and especially in the so-called prime age years (36-45) and women in particular. Since hours above 48 per week give rise to the highest degree of work-life problems, any solutions appear to require the reversal of Britain's opt-out on the European working time regulations.