Business and Society
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In todays face moving business world, although more and more people are aware of the importance of work and life balance. 80% of Australian believes that the balance between work and life is very hard to achieve for various reasons in Dr Adams blog (Fraser, 2011). Home is not a place where people can be free up from work, but a second workplace too.
First of all, people are working longer hours compare with two decades ago. A government survey found that Australian workers today endure more stress, work faster and more intensively, and put more effort in their job than ever (Beder, 2001).
As information and data flows around us more freely and easily than ever, and with the mobile technology as well as the advanced secure remote connection and access technology, people are enabled to work almost everywhere at any time. The restriction to perform work at a so called workplace is becoming blurry. While we are enjoying the advantages that technologies bring to us, such as easy to access data, reduce travel time and cost, we also suffer the drawback from being more advanced. Many people are encouraged to bring work home and continue working after hours, either to catch up the deadlines or to complete extra work. However, people may not be rewarded finically even they created extra value for the business. According to Beder (2001), 43% of full time employee work overtime and 65% of them do not get paid for their overtime. Even worse, this trend causes problems. Lots of full time employees around the world are affected by sub-health conditions. As such, the productivity and efficiency become lower, so as the job satisfaction and commitment level.
Secondly, although people are suppose to relax and rejuvenate at home, and do something else other than work or even doing nothing, people do realise that leisure activities cant always achieve the outcomes that they would expect, but creating more burden and stressful because people try to fit in everything during their spare time, such as visiting families and friends, keeping fit, doing housework and other family obligations (Svendson 2008, p.72). Therefore, it appears that home is as a second workplace that people continue to battle after work no matter what activities they do.
Having stated the above two points, where home seems become less meaningful in terms of helping people to be relax and re-energised, rather a second workplace for people to continue their daytime duties. It is worthwhile to mention the social responsibility factor, that is, while we are fulfilling our daily life with all the business and social activities, we are not only expecting to be rewarded financially, but also intrinsically, such as happiness, personal growth and achievements, which cant be measured by money. For example, people spend time and energy to raise children, they may not be rewarded financially, yet the happiness that the children bring to the family