International HRD Conference, Mauritius 2013: Excellence in HRD for sustainable growth

What are organizations doing about Work-life balance in Mauritius?

Author 1 Name: Anita RAMGUTTY-WONG

Email address: [email protected]
Author 2 Name: Indravidoushi Chandraprema DUSOYE
Author 3 Name: Priya GUNESH
Author 4 Name: Priya BAGUANT
Author 5 Name: Ram GOOLAUP
Author 6 Name: Indeeren VENCATACHELLUM
Institution: University of Mauritius

Paper prepared for presentation at the International HRD Conference, Le Meridien Hotel, Pointe
aux Piments, Mauritius, 17 – 18 October 2013

ISSN-1694-2140

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 International HRD Conference, Mauritius 2013: Excellence in HRD for sustainable growth

Structured Abstract
Research in WLB has been ongoing in many parts of the world, but has received little academic
attention in Mauritius. This paper addresses Work and Life issues as they apply to the individual
employee in the organizational (workplace) setting in Mauritius and draws on the findings from a
national project that aimed at identifying and addressing the gap in local knowledge and making
not only a contribution to the intellectual debate, but also allowing insights to emerge. The paper
reports on facts and insights which have emerged on the Work-life balance issue from an
organizational and human resource management (HRM) perspective. It is expected that these
would or could, serve to inspire policy changes at individual, company, sectoral and national
levels on the subject of reconciliation between work and non-work aspects of life. The target
informants were HR practitioners and employees across the different sectors of the Mauritian
economy. The research design involved the use of surveys directed at HR practitioners as well as
individual employees across all sectors of the economy both in the private and public sectors.
Findings from both employees and HR managers converged to describe a state of moderate
success in individuals’ attempts to balance work and non-work aspects of life. This suggests that
more needs to be done in this respect, more especially on the part of HR managers themselves.
From the employees’ point of view, tight deadlines, inflexibility of job design and work schedules
as well as work pressure were found to be the main barriers in the implementation of WLB
practices.
Keywords: Work-Life balance; HRM; HRD; Mauritius

1. INTRODUCTION

Work-Life Balance (WLB) has received significant attention from academics, the media, politicians, unions,
employers and employees over the past ten years or so, although the concept may have come under other related
applications well before that, especially in the area of employee welfare, employee assistance programmes, and
quality of work life (QWL). Research in WLB has been ongoing in many parts of the world, but has received
little academic attention in Mauritius.

Since the mid-1980s, Mauritius has been cited as a model for transforming its economy from one based solely
on agriculture, then manufacturing, and, more recently, to service industries such as tourism, financial services,
and information and communication technology. Throughout this evolution, both employment and the family
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 International HRD Conference, Mauritius 2013: Excellence in HRD for sustainable growth

have been subject to powerful forces of Change, such as: urbanization, globalization of business and investment,
divorce and single-isation, the Gen-Y syndrome, and the intensification of work. In Mauritius, as in many other
countries, more people are choosing to marry late, or not at all, more and more children are being raised by one
parent, and the elderly form an ever larger proportion of the population. The tightening of labour markets and
the rising cost of living have placed pressures on both men and women to remain employed for as long as
possible, and often under conditions of work involving long hours, overtime work, and few chances to take
leave. At the same time, Gen-Y workers no longer seek lifetime careers, but prefer a qualitatively superior work
experience.. The precariousness of employment, the intensification of work, and the increasing need for active
work to be matched to all time zones of the world, mean that many workers face difficulty in reconciling work
and personal or family responsibilities. Today, there is an urgent need to move the focus of attention beyond the
impact that family demands have on work, to the impact that work and working conditions have on family and
personal life.

In particular, there is a need to extend the scope and coverage of existing measures that seek to harmonize work
and family responsibilities. In order to have a real impact, initiatives taken by governments and at the
community level must be complemented by employer actions at the workplace, through various HR policies and
strategies.

Now, Individuals may well have work-life balancing needs and preferences, but many employees are not even
aware of the concept, and do not even mentally articulate them, and certainly many organizations are either
ignorant or do little (or nothing) about setting up clear policies and practices to promote work-life balance for
their employees, perhaps because HR systems are still too unsophisticated to take on board the burden of this
innovation.

This study contributes to the scarce literature on work-life balance in developing economies like Mauritius
which are still struggling to find solutions to the consequences of an increasingly knowledgeable, educated and
diverse working population. The paper here addresses Work and Life issues as they apply to the individual
employee in the organizational (workplace) setting in Mauritius and draws on the findings from a national
project that aimed at identifying and addressing the gap in local knowledge and making not only a contribution
to the intellectual debate, but also allowing insights to emerge. The paper reports on facts and insights which
have emerged on the Work-life balance issue from an organizational and human resource management (HRM)
perspective. It is expected that these would or could, serve to inspire policy changes at individual, company,
sectoral and national levels on the subject of reconciliation between work and non-work aspects of life.

In a society filled with conflicting responsibilities and commitments, work/life balance has become a
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 International HRD Conference, Mauritius 2013: Excellence in HRD for sustainable growth

predominant issue for individuals and organizations alike. As a matter of fact, business consultants, HR
managers, corporations and others have worked to identify the characteristics that consistently impact on
people‟ s ability to strike a fair balance between work and personal life. As a the result, more than 5,000
academic and trade articles have been published on the topic of work life balance since the past two decades
(Kanter, 1977).

Three major issues account for the interest in, and the importance of, serious consideration of work/life balance;

1) Global competition

2) Renewed interest in personal lives/family values and

3) An aging workforce

Empirical research has also suggested that forward thinking human resource professionals seeking innovative
ways to augment their organisation‟ s competitive edge in the market place may find that work/life balance
challenges offer a win-win situation.

2. THE LITERATURE

The term “Work Life Balance” was first presented in 1972 during an International Labour Relations Conference.

In 2004, De Bruin & Dupuis highlighted that, over the last 20 years, there has been a significant increase in the
importance given to managing employees balance between work and non-work aspects of life. Several ideas are
considered when dealing with the issue of WLB. Particular attention is drawn to job structure, time and results,
reduced resources (Hosie, Forster and Servatos, 2004), the demographic make-up of the labour force
(i.e. gender, ethnicity, dual career couples, religion, multi-generational workplaces etc), and the very nature of
the employment contract (Greenhaus and Powell, 2006).

Guest (2002) also stressed the complexity of the concept, explaining that WLB may have objective and
subjective meanings, having different measurements and adaptation to different individuals of different
circumstances, and so on. In response to workforce changes, employers have introduced innovative practices
that allow employees to find greater work-life balance (Friedman et al.,1998). Worldwide, employers are

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realizing of their own accord that it makes sound business sense to provide opportunities to achieve a better
work-life balance with a pay-back of increased morale, better effectiveness and productivity, and a greater
ability to embrace change and transition. As a result, initiatives such as flexible working hours, alternative work
arrangements, extended leave policies and benefits, and employee assistance programmes have become a
significant part of many companies benefit programmes and compensation packages. Such policies, practices
and benefit programmes are generally referred as „family-friendly policies‟ (FFPs) or „work-life benefits and
practices (WLBPs) (Kopelman et al., 2006).

A lack of work-life balance results in a reduction of physical and psychological well-being of an employee.
Quality of work life (QWL) policies have been heralded as a strategy for improving a range of work life issues,
including occupational health and safety, worker involvement and the quality of job security.

Work-Family conflict arises when the roles of work and family are incompatible(Greenhaus et al., 1989). Most
of the time, clashes occur between the time demanded of the work and that of family, in effect leading to a
spillover from one role to the other, impacting on the quality of life within one or other role, or even both.

Greenhaus and Beutell (1985). identified three forms or types of work–family conflict:

Time-based conflict

Strain-based conflict

Behaviour- based conflict

Time-based conflict occurs when the time demands for one particular role demand a restricted amount of time
from the other role having a great impact on the latter role Greenhaus & Beutell (1985). Strain-based conflict
occurs when stress from one role is transferred to the other role with consequent strain symptoms (anxiety,
irritability) in the second role., while behaviour-based conflict is based on a behaviour that is effective in one
role (for instance, an authoritarian style) but is inappropriately applied to the other role, (Greenhaus et al.,
2006). Work demands which produce work family conflict include long working hours, inflexible work
schedules, high psychological involvement in work, and an array of work-related stressors such as interpersonal
conflict, job insecurity, role overload, role conflict, and role ambiguity (Bellavia et al., 2005). Because the work
and family domains are important in most people‟ s lives, dissatisfaction with these roles promotes

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dissatisfaction with one‟ s overall life. Family life roles may also interfere with work roles. According to
Herman and Gyllstrom (1977), married individuals experience more work-family conflict than those who are
unmarried. Various terms have been used to refer to the process by which one role strengthens or enriches the
quality of the other role, such as work-family enrichment, work-family enhancement, work family facilitation,
and positive spill over (Hui-Ying, 2008).

2.1: Factors facilitating the adoption of Work-Life Balance policies and practices

Much in the way of “happy bees making more honey”, the WLB debate began with an emphasis consistently
being on the potential benefits accruing to business in terms of „„flexibility‟ ‟ and the promotion of HR best
practices that would lead to greater productivity (Roper et al., 2003). Examples of work-family policies are:
part-time work, career break schemes, parental leave, flexible hours arrangements, compressed workweeks,
offering variable hours, special agreements and diverse locations as a way of catering for different employee life
stages and lifestyles while at the same time, keeping overheads low and outputs high.

According to Fursman (2008) anti-social work hours, shift work and rosters can also be problematic in and of
themselves, but more so when workers have had little or no control or influence over them. Flexible work
arrangements, says Fursman, do report better work-life balance and higher level of wellbeing.

A secondary concern has been to encourage work life balance for its own sake, by focusing on equitable concern
over all work and non-work life aspects of employees, through an acknowledgement that any individual has the
legitimate right, irrespective of gender, to engage fully with their work, family as well as personal life.

The International Labour Organisation (Hein, 2005) has summarised the following important elements about
organizational reflection and actions on WLB:

1. The need to accommodate workers‟ preferences, safety and health requirements, business
requirements, and agreement on concrete plans;

2. Ensure with the workers that the established plans are appropriate and test the new arrangements, and

3. Organise training workshops for managers and workers about the health effects of different work
schedules and to design better working-time arrangements.

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Practical measures to improve working-time arrangement and work life balance, are as follows (ILO, 2012):

involving workers in the design of working hours;

accommodating the needs of both the work and the workers;
avoiding excessively long working hours;

facilitating the maintenance of family responsibilities;

adjusting breaks and rest time and

stress prevention at work checkpoints.

In addition is consideration about the various ways of going about changing working-time arrangements, the
most popular examples include changes in:

changing starting/finishing times;

inserting breaks in the workday;

distribution of working hours evenly over

time; allocating holidays;

arranging for flexitime;

optimizing shift schedules and

length; providing part-time work and
arranging for job sharing.

2.2: Organisational responsibilities for Work life balance

A supportive organisational culture is a must to realise work-life policies and practices and make the
organisation a more desirable place to work (Lewis 2001; Thompson et al, 1999). A supportive organizational
culture produces positive outcomes which include motivation and satisfaction, while a non-supportive culture
will yield negative outcomes such as job insecurity and workplace stress (Balthazard et al, 2006). For example, a

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supportive culture would make use of gender-neutral terms as an essential step (Liff and Ward, 2001),.
However, there are challenges in sustaining a strong organisational culture towards work life balance, embodied
by: the need for openness and cooperation; mutual flexibility; supportive leadership and strong history and pride
(Olafdottir, 2008).

For instance, rather than simply imposing a particular form of flexibility on employees, consideration must be
given to what approaches best suit the needs of employees and the organisation at a given point in time.
Implementation of the various approaches to the realisation of flexibility that cater for the different needs of
employees and organisations requires reflection on the best mix of practices to achieve strategic outcomes,
including the individuals wellbeing as well as the effectiveness of the organisation, and not just attention to
short-term efficiencies. In fact, the use of flexibility should be included in the organisational strategic orientation
and hence become a precious tool in the attraction and retention of talent for the organisation.

In addition, flexible work arrangements relate more highly to work interference with family than to family
interference with work. The two most popular forms of flexibility are „flextime‟ and „flexplace‟ . Flextime
refers to flexibility in the scheduling of work, while flexplace involves flexibility in the location where work is
done; often referring to work performed at home, also known as teleworking or telecommunicating. Time for
domestic tasks or childcare may increase with flexplace, if employees are able to effectively intertwine them
with work related duties (Osnowitz,2005).

2.3: Employee Assistance Programmes

Employee assistance programs have been defined as work-based intervention programmes designed to
identify and assist employees in resolving personal problems that may adversely affect the employee‟ s
performance (SHRM, 2009).

Berrridge and Cooper (1994) assert that the introduction of EAPs requires careful planning of its provision
as well as a precise campaign of communication with employees and managers. They further stress the
crucial role of Human Resource managers in designing EAPs which create a culture emphasising problem-
recognition and resolution for work-related and other problems in a positive and adaptive mode. As a
result, employees develop an awareness of resourceful behaviour and a range of responses to
organizational stresses and challenges, thereby enhancing their adaptability and trainability.

2.4: Human Resource Strategy and Work-Life Balance

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 International HRD Conference, Mauritius 2013: Excellence in HRD for sustainable growth

Work-life balance affects nearly all functions of HR: from recruitment to retention, advancement, and
retirement. The strategies, policies, and programmess of the human resource function should take into account
the fast-changing demand by employees for a more balanced lifestyle. The systems and policies of career
development and advancement, succession planning, performance management, work structures, and
compensation should also be tailored to those wishing to take sabbaticals, share jobs, work from home, work
shorter hours or on a part-time basis (Muna & Mansour, 2007).

Maintaining a stable workforce and capturing local, organization-specific knowledge and skill have become a
key competitive foundation, and yet over the years this has remained something of a challenge. A more suitable
management approach would place significant attention to work-life balance, in the form of flexible schedules,
alternative work arrangements, and types of leaves and benefits that would be the basis for organizational
competitiveness on the talent market. Additionally, a caring culture and climate would boost both morale and
productivity as well as ensure retention of valuable skills and knowledge (Frank et al., 2004). Around the world,
the challenges of recruiting and retaining top talent in an increasingly competitive labour market are driving
workplace change and workforce demands for work-life balance (Human Resources and Skills Development
Canada, 2005). Such a strategic orientation would include the creation and maintenance of a corporate image or

„brand‟ of a caring, nurturing, friendly and flexible employer, thereby attracting the best and making it less
difficult to develop and retain the talent pool (Celani and Singh, 2011;Vaiman, 2008).

2.5: Managers and WLB

Moore (2007), in a study of a major MNC, reported a number of policies and programmes in place to encourage
managers to maintain a good balance between work and personal commitments. However, managers of the
MNC found it very difficult to maintain an appropriate work-life balance in practice, due to the macho and long-
hours norms. Interestingly, these managers still displayed more company loyalty, in the conventional sense, than
did the workers, despite their relative lack of success in terms of maintaining a work-life balance which they
considered good.

2.6: Human Resource Development

Human Resource Development facilitates work place learning through work-life balance and individual career
development. Human resource development helps to expand the frontier of knowledge through on-going

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training and learning (Guthrie and Schwoerer, 1996; Hall, 1996), the acquisition of adaptation and adjustment
skills (Hesketh, 1995), and the development of sound career decisions (Krumboltz et al., 1986; Watts, 1996).

In today‟ s fast-changing workplace, people need the skills and competencies to ensure future employability,
and to manage new work and life realities. Organizations need flexible people, who can effectively manage
change and adapt to new organizational directions. The key to achieving these goals, for both the individual and
the organization, is career self-management (Moses, 1995).

HRD enables and facilitates learning transfer for work-life balance: Trainees knowledge, skills and attitudes
gained during a training programme which considers both learning outside and at work to form part of the
leaning cycle of the employees, could be promoted. HRD also encourages and promotes new knowledge and
attitudes towards work-life balance through empowerment of employees with resources that could be developed
for employees to help them identify, consider the feasibility and assess the effectiveness of different work-
family strategies (Bardoel et al., 2008).

One example of how to implement such a strategy would be that the performance appraisal system include work
life-balance, working environment and culture of the organisation as indicators of performance by stressing
quality of work, not by the time spent at the workplace.

Indeed, organisations must ensure that improvements in workplace behaviour and performance, and investment
in personal development are incentivized objectively, so that employees see that the organization values WLB.
For example, much attention should be drawn to work life policies during assessment by the appraiser to better
understand the types of stress that employees experience.

3. METHOD

The target informants for this study were HR practitioners and employees across the different sectors of the
Mauritian economy. The research design involved the use of surveys directed at HR practitioners as well as
individual employees across all sectors of the economy both in the private and public sectors. An innovative
strategy was employed by first constructing a convenience database of Human Resource managers out of the
following lists: the HR Excellence Awards list, the list of part-time lecturers teaching HRM at the University of
Mauritius, and HR managers of the top-100 list of companies in Mauritius. Both hard-copy and email contact
methods were used. Once contact was established, the HR managers would be requested to indicate a group of
employees cutting across their organization, to whom the employee questionnaire would then be sent. Thus the

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HR Manager survey was the starting point of the layered targeting approach. These would also be the target
participants for the Consultative workshop. Out of over 120 HR managers contacted, only 18 responded, but 20
more participated in the workshop. These same managers helped construct an employee database of over 300
employees, out of which 129 returned completed and usable questionnaires.

A separate questionnaire directed at HR practitioners was designed to cover the following broad themes:

Work-life policies and practices in place

Human Resource Management support to work-life balance

A consultative workshop was also run with a selected group of HR practitioners from the public and private
sectors, who participated in highly qualitative discussions.

Finally, a survey questionnaire was designed for employees based on the same themes as those used for the
employer survey.

Both the employee and HR manager survey instruments having yielded significant amounts of quantitative
data, the latter were analysed for descriptive statistics using SPSS, and the rich, qualitative data of the
consultative workshop was first transcribed then content-analysed according to the established discussion
themes, and incorporated into the questionnaire analyses. A factor analysis using Rotated Component Analysis
of several large variable sets was done to find concentrations of responses to certain questions and tease out the
most explanatory variables.

To satisfy the validity criteria, all variables were extracted from the extensive literature review and were
operationalised in a systematic and consistent manner throughout all instruments.

The major constraint experienced in the course of the research was the low response rate for the mail
questionnaire. Claiming considerable professional responsibilities, many HR practitioners were reluctant to
spare time for the survey. As for the employee survey, a large number of individual employees found the
instrument cumbersome to complete and a great deal of time was spent in chasing for response.

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4. FINDINGS

Most of the respondents came from the following sectors: Banking and Finance, Education, and Construction,
Agriculture, BPO, Pharmaceutical and ICT. Additionally, 64% of the respondents were female and 80% were
single. Of the married respondents, 18% of their partners (husbands or wives) were also in employment and 19%
had 3 or more children.

The majority of participants of the study work between 40-44 hours in a week, with 40% travelling less than 1
hour to work. We also observed that 89% of the respondents said that they gave “zero” minutes to their family
during their working hours but 82% give more than 2 hours during weekends. 47% said they “missed
opportunities with family and relatives due to heavy workloads”.

4.1: Organisational Culture and Work Life Balance

Respondents highlighted the notion that an autocratic organizational culture means that if WLB is not a top
management priority, it will never happen. The presence of „Old school‟ leadership style, which is command-
and-control and output oriented was decried. In addition, scarcity of resources even for the technical
requirements of the job of most employees means that there is very little left for staff welfare or employee
assistance programmes. The tall hierarchical structures of organizations were seen to act as a barrier to the
implementation of WLB. However, most respondents stated that there was no formal initiative to incorporate
WLB within the culture of their organization. Respondents from the public sector mostly commented that due to
the cost implication of WLB policies and practices, it would always be uncertain as to whether WLB could or
would be developed as part of the organisation‟ s culture, except if commitment was forthcoming from all
parties concerned at every level of the organization. Other respondents pointed out that a combination of rules
and regulations to formalize WLB, with the establishment of appropriate social norms, could lead to the desired
organizational culture.

WLB was seen as aiming to make employees be successful both professionally and personally (79%); at
reducing stress from personal and family life (67%) and creating a balanced culture (56%). However, a large
majority (89%) of respondents do not believe that reducing stress at work or developing autonomy in employees
(61%) could be objectives of WLB strategies. In fact, these figures somewhat reflect the potency of national
culture as shaping the HRM model as it is seen to exist in Mauritian organisations. In Mauritius, employees
seem to be in a perpetual struggle between values of collectivism and individualism. Much of the Mauritian
psyche is determined by the traditional need or social norm of shouldering family members in a constant,

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lifelong manner, but also by the burning need to achieve their own individual ambitions, career goals and
objectives. This tension has, precisely, created the need for greater work-life balance, whether this is recognised
or not.

Respondents were of the opinion that any presence of WLB is moulded by a number of elements within the
organisation‟ s strategic framework, such as: the HR strategy (67%), the Mission statement (56%), the business
objectives (56%) and the prevailing organisational culture (56%). Respondents did not believe that the products
of the organisations, nor the labour market significantly drove WLB policies and practices.

4.2: Role of leadership in WLB

Our workshop data was particularly revelatory with regard to support from senior management for WLB.
Although all respondents agree that, similar to any HR policy or practice area, senior management support is a
sine qua non condition for the establishment of the right culture and implementation of the right policies. It
appeared that the public sector of Mauritius suffers more than the private sector from a lack of concern on the
part of senior management for quality of work life and work-life balance. The central argument is that, in the
Civil Service, there are 25 Ministries with 25 different Heads, and commitment to WLB is very much dependent
on the Head herself/himself, given that there are Heads of departments who believe in the need for WLB while
others do not.

In the public sector, although benefits are not articulated in WLB jargon, many respondents claimed that public
officers often complain unnecessarily with respect to WLB, whereas the latter is in fact present in many forms.
For instance, leaves are extensive and generous, working hours are short and benefits such as passage credit and
transport allowance, time off, and others, served to reduce work pressure and intensity. In more intrinsically
stressful sectors, such as the police force, officers are provided with gym and sauna, to help them overcome
stress, and also psychological support whenever they need it.

4.3: Senior management’s paradigm about work

In both public and private sectors, it was found that senior management is largely perceived as adopting a rigid
and mechanistic approach towards management of the workforce, demanding productivity and output
irrespective of any other factors. As such, a lack of humanism is decried, which, respondents believe, does not
augur well for the establishment of a supportive culture that will work in favour of WLB.

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4.4: Strategic Role of HRM and HR roles supporting Work Life Balance

Findings from both employees and HR managers converged to describe a state of moderate success in
individuals‟ attempts to balance work and non-work aspects of life. This suggests that more needs to be done in
this respect, more especially on the part of HR managers themselves.

4.5: Barriers to Work-Life Balance

From the employees‟ point of view, tight deadlines, inflexibility of job design and work schedules as well as
work pressure were found to be the main barriers in the implementation of WLB practices. 44 percent of all HR
managers were of the view that WLB practices were difficult to implement because workers were not
themselves committed to the idea of WLB. The same percentage of HR managers also viewed designing a
performance appraisal in line with WLB as a barrier. Another 39% of this group believed that, as long as the
focus of work was on quantity and not quality, it would be difficult to implement a WLB culture.

4.6: Effects of sound WLB

Only positive effects were cited by respondents, and these views meet the benefits widely reported on in the
literature, as follows:

1. To enable the adoption of an Employer of Choice / Employer Branding strategy ;

2. To provide the right frame of mind for employees to work;

3. To provide the appropriate working environment;

4. To enable HR to move in the direction of setting up appropriate motivation strategies, which would
in turn drive employee satisfaction and retention;

5. To enable an improvement in the training and coaching of employees;

6. To serve to initiate time management and stress management programmes;

7. To create a culture of counselling, psychological support, providing facilities, extended leave;

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8. To help improve communication across the organisation;

9. To enable good planning of work;

10. To improve the supervision, by listening more to people, to find solutions to their problems and

11. To enable flexible working schedules.

5. CONCLUSION

This study has focused on the role of the HR function in supporting WLB initiatives in the Mauritian context.
The aim has been to investigate the organisational and individual interest paid to the concept. The findings
revealed a considerable degree of interest in and knowledge about work-life balance and its importance.
Findings show, unfortunately, that organizations in Mauritius exhibit a low take-up of WLB activities and
policies, but that employees show a high demand for the latter.

Respondents clearly highlighted the importance of senior management commitment to quality of work life and
to work-life balance. The necessity for an organization culture and strategy in support of work-life balance
policies and practices was also a widely-shared belief. At the same time, some diversity of perspective was also
noted, with some public-sector managers asserting the existence of “indirect” work-life balance policies, while
even amongst private-sector groups, both a mediocre level of WLB adapted was decried, as well as highly
sophisticated measures in place in some organizations, both large and small. These points to the need for a
broader investigation in the first instance, to establish where management is stuck in its HR, and at a deeper,
richer level, to attempt to establish best-practice models which could be sources of inspiration, and examples to
be emulated by others. The desire and expectation of employees that the HR function should incorporate WLB
policies and practices in their HR Strategies need to be taken seriously. It is imperative that the current HR
policies and practices be re-engineered having as basis WLB initiatives. As such, there is the urgent need for HR
practitioners to inculcate the notion of WLB in their organizational culture with specific emphasis on job to
person fit, stress and time management.

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Findings from the HR Manager survey indicate that HR practitioners seem to perceive employees as not being
supportive enough of WLB initiatives. Also noteworthy was the high incidence of interest on the part of HR
managers to collaborate with unions for the design and education and communication program on the holistic
benefit of WLB, directed by both employees and top management.

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