Technology, lack of policy hinder a healthy work-life balance: survey

While various processes at the workplace have been simplified with technology, it is blurring the lines between work and home, and professionals are finding it harder to maintain work-life balance. In a new survey by Monster.com, more than half of the respondents rated their current work-life balance as average to terrible, while one-third said that technology makes it difficult to manage work and family commitments.

Meetings, calls, and trainings after office hours combined with a negative attitude of supervisors towards work-life balance also emerged as hindrances for professionals in maintaining a healthy personal life while working, according to Monster.com’s new survey, ‘Understanding Work Life Balance survey’. The job site surveyed over 2,000 working professionals aged 18-55 across sectors like IT (hardware and software), BPO/ITES, BFSI, engineering and construction, production and manufacturing, automotive, healthcare and pharma, telecom and education. Half of the respondents were from non-metro cities.

“If, there’s one thing that comes out distinct in this survey is dichotomy. At one level, 60% of Indian respondents feel that they balance their work and life; while on the other hand, as high as about 78% respondents would like to be ‘segmentors’ and not ‘blenders’ i.e., clearly defined boundaries between their personal and work lives and not blurring the line,” said Abhijeet Mukherjee, CEO, Monster.com, APAC and Gulf.

Three-fourths of the respondents in the survey said that their workplace didn’t have a separate work-life balance policy, while 25% were not aware of such a policy. “These findings indicate that employers either need to establish such policies soon or need to find more effective ways of communicating them if they already have one,” the survey said.

About 50% of the surveyed confessed to them or their partners being irritable because of the lack of work-life balance.

Whereas 67% said they think of work when not at work, and 70% said they would prefer to work from home to avoid the daily commute.

The survey also reported lack of sleep, depression, anxiety and irritability, hypertension as top work-related illnesses, while responses also included back pain, frequent headaches and fatigue, and obesity as other stress-related ailments.