Work/Life Balance

Work, Family, and Stress

Balancing work and personal responsibilities can be a challenge. Employers are increasingly acknowledging these struggles and are instituting policies to help address them. Please address the following:

· Suggest two policies that you think employers could institute that would best promote work-life balance among their employees. Be sure to explain why you think these policies would help.
· Would all employees benefit from these policies or just certain types of employees?
· Once these policies are instituted in the workplace, what role does workplace culture play in whether or not employees take advantage of them?
· What effect would these policies promoting work-life balance have on workplace productivity?

Emotional Labor

In preparation for this discussion, review the following resources:

Emotional Labor Study at the University of Memphis -

You may also want to read, "Stress in the Workplace: A costly epidemic

There are many stressors in the workplace that affect employees. Emotional stressors are no different. As our economy has moved from a manufacturing to a service-based economy, there are many more workers in a variety of occupational fields that are expected to manage their emotions according to employer demands. Emotional labor refers to a form of emotion regulation that creates a publicly visible facial and bodily display within the workplace. The increasing prevalence of this type of work introduces a new set of stressors in the workplace.

In your initial post:

· Describe examples of emotional labor in the following professions:

Teachers
Nursing
Human Resources

· Give a suggestion of what employers can do to help employees address the personal impact of emotional labor?