Work, Life, and Family Imbalance

Workers everywhere feel the tug-of-war between work and home: Do they go to a child's game or stay late to finish up a spreadsheet? How should they respond when a boss wants to talk about a new project just as they're leaving home to attend a religious service? How do they justify an unexpected, weeklong business trip to a spouse? Managers struggle as well. How much on time should they expect from their employees? How can they allocate work properly when many employees serve as irreplaceable caregivers to children and elderly parents? Should organizational needs prevail over family come crunch time? Welcome to the world of work in the twenty-first century, where 24/7 work obligations and always-on electronic tools ensure that work and family conflict on a daily basis. Michele Paludi and Presha Neidermeyer offer solutions by bringing together leading thinkers on the problem of balancing home and family life. Going far beyond commonplace prescriptions, their new approaches and insights for both individuals and organizations offer hope to those caught in the vise of conflicting expectations. Work, Life, and Family Imbalance showcases the most current and innovative practices in solving the work-life crisis. These practices will shed new light on the issues and help individuals find a sane, yet productive, approach to balancing work and life. And they will help organizations promote family-friendly policies that benefit both individuals and the organization. Applying insights from the fields of management, ethics, sociology, and law, the authors go beyond traditional approaches to offer fresh thinking and methods for individuals and organizations, as well as groups with special needs: nontraditional families, academic families, and those with care-giving responsibilities. Along the way, Paludi and Neidermeyer dispel common myths and misconceptions regarding work/life balance, and they offer practical strategies for achieving balance from both the individual's and organization's point of view. Most important, the book concludes with a series of templates for developing workplace policies and training programs that promote employee well being and corporate profitability. Managers and business leaders of all stripes will find Work, Life, and Family Imbalance an invaluable aid in creating policies that keep employees and their families happy while not just maintaining but boosting the bottom line. What's more, they'll learn a few things about maintaining a productive balance in their own lives.

Michele A. Paludi is president of Human Resources Management Solutions and participating faculty at Union Graduate College, Schenectady, NY. Paludi is series editor for Praeger's Women's Psychology and Women and Careers in Management and has authored or edited 38 texts on workplace discrimination, sexual harassment, psychology of women, workplace violence, and campus violence. Presha E. Neidermeyer is associate professor of accounting and management at West Virginia University. A member of the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants, she has published dozens of articles and conference proceedings on ethics, accountability, and management.