How can work conditions affect family life?

Many business owners may find themselves sacrificing time spent with their families to keep the company up and running during busy or stressful periods. This can impact negatively on both aspects, with work-life balance essential to remaining happy and healthy at home and in the workplace. 

A study from Pennsylvania State University has found a way improve the amount of time employees have with their family, without reducing the amount spent at work. While there are options to reduce work levels, such as by outsourcing process such as wealth management, this research believes managing workplace relationships is just as important. 

The Support-Transform-Achieve-Results (STAR) program was designed to encourage management to be more sympathetic to the personal lives of their staff. This included methods such as allowing more freedom in the day's structure, so commitments could be more easily balanced, and fostering a supportive nature between colleagues when engaging with these issues. 

This resulted in the parents included in the research spending more time with their children each day by the end of the review period. The average increase recorded by the study was an extra 39 minutes per day, a significant amount of time that these children were missing out on before the STAR program intervened. 

The university believes that the methods used in the workplace to encourage these behaviours were also deployed at home, creating a positive environment in both situations. 

"Our study tested ideas from the work-home resource model, which holds that work demands can deplete parents' resources, including their time and energy, with negative effects on their family functioning," said Research Assistant Professor of Human Development and Family Studies Kelly Davis.

"By contrast, increasing work resources can increase the resources parents use in their family lives."

These teachings are easily replicable in most businesses with next to no investment required. All that is needed is a change in attitude and an increase in support to ensure staff give their best at work and at home.