Enhancing work-life balance using a resilience framework

Work-life balance is achieved when equilibrium between work and other life domains is viable and sustainable. The benefits of having work and non-work life in balance impact both individual employees and employers. The benefit of work-life balance to employees includes less stress and a sense of personal control over schedules and responsibilities. The benefit to employers is that a more satisfied and less stressed workforce has potential for greater stability and productivity. Although work-life balance research identifies work-life balance issues, the research is vague in terms of resolving and fixing problems or conflict. Insights from the research on resilience provide a framework of moving toward resolution once work-life balance issues are identified. The resilience framework identifies behaviors/tasks/responsibilities as either energy and life enhancing or energy and life depleting. Although every individual has unique work-life balance issues, the universal key for improved work-life balance is to increase the weight and impact of enhancers and reduce the weight and impact of depleters. This paper offers an analytical resilience framework for examining and improving work-life balance, supplemented with three mini-cases followed by work-life balance and resilience analysis of the cases, demonstrating the strength and benefits of the resilience framework.