Emerging HRM interventions for work-life balance: An emphrical study of working mothers

The Indian women, who were confined only to the socially acceptable jobs like banks, teaching, nursing etc., are now stepping into various sectors. Managing work and family responsibility can be very difficult for the women employees in dual income families. Professional women especially working mothers has to perform multiple roles in balancing their work-life and personal-life. Each role has its own set of demands and when such role demand overlaps/interacts, an imbalance is created leading to stress, attrition, absenteeism etc. Thus, there is an increasing need for organizations to address these demands of working mothers by implementing innovative HR policies. Work-life balance is one such HR practice that enables the employees particularly working mothers to give proper prioritization between work and life roles.

The present paper based on empirical work, provides a deep insight of work-life balance of working mothers at various fields including IT, ITES, Banking, Insurance, Manufacturing, Public sectors etc., All the sectors were evaluated on 6 sub scales viz: personal factors, balancing factors, organizational support, motivational factors, career advancement and psychological factors. The results reveal the picture of difficulties faced in balancing the work demand and the life (family) responsibility. There was high correlation between the difficulties faced and the balancing act to be performed. The significant results reflected in the areas of organizational support, career advancement factors and psychological factors. The study defines certain specific HRM interventions for better work-life balance, per se.