Work Life Balance

"Hardworking, committed " are words that we hear every time when we try to understand the work ethic of Indians. Whilst EU insists on a 40 hour week and the western world moans about working 50 hours an average Indian works at least 50 hours if not more in a week. We have culturally been groomed to believe in a day’s honest work. It is not that we are incapable of working smart. There are many smart workers who manage their tasks and time efficiently but they also tend to put in long hours. The question that comes is what does work life balance mean in an Asian and specifically Indian context? When we talk about work life balance, the discussion always presumes that we are talking about women. I decided to look at the work life balance literature to see if there is a gender bias and was really surprised to note that more than 50% of the literature talked about work life balance from a working women perspective. I also noticed that most of the literature had a western perspective and nothing much was talked about the oriental or Asian perspective. Roles that were analysed pretty much fell into nursing, support functions, teaching and so on... In India, these days it is very rare to find a house wife or a house husband. When families have both husband and wife working discussing work life balance discussions from a woman’s perspective is not relevant. Both my parents were working however my mother also managed the kitchen and my father did all the other chores around the house. He used to do the shopping, washing etc. When it comes to managing finances it was always a joint decision. His behaviour was an anomaly than a norm in the 70's and even in the 80's. However, something strange happened in the 90's. More and more couples became vocal about sharing the burden of running a household. Blame it on education, increased awareness... Therefore, any discussion on work life balance has to transcend beyond gender specific information to be meaningful. Work life balance literature also emphasises on balance from a care perspective. For example it talks about caring for children or flexible working to manage family commitments and so on. Although this holds good in one level if we look at our culture, unlike west, we are not a nucleus family. Many still continue to live in a joint family set up and that presents two scenarios. In a joint family, parents of working couples will invariably offer to take care of grandchildren. So the concept of day care etc doesn’t hold good in this case. In variably when the parents get old and need to be looked after, working couples have to manage their work accordingly. As far as i am aware, limited work has been done in this area. In this context aping work life balance policies of the west doesn’t add any value to improve work life balance in the Indian context. If Corporate are seriously considering introducing work life balance initiatives they have to move from the traditional literature or management speak and devise polices that mirror reality. For example the average time an individual commutes to work has increased from 30minutes to a hour and a half at least. You are talking 2-3 hours a day and if it is a five day week its 10 to 15 hours which is close to a day or two days productive time that is spent on commuting. They should for example introduce flexi / remote working to people who are in value protecting roles ( like the support functions). I am not saying that companies are not doing it. What i am advocating here is companies should get more creative in developing policies. From an academic perspective researchers in India have to focus on the specifics that impacts work life balance from a cultural perspective.. They could then conduct a transnational study to reveal uniqueness of the work life balance perceptions of Indians. Corporates should support research initiatives like this and use those findings to create policies and procedures to understand and improve the work life balance of the Indian workforce.