How to achieve balance between work and personal life!

Various policy initiatives on the European and national level have been launched in the past years to support working parents in response to the intensification of work, drop in fertility and ageing of the population. Now the CINEFOGO Network give some suggestions!

Prof. Thomas Boje from Roskilde University in Denmark, who is International coordinator of the CINEFOGO Network and responsible of this research, says: “European policy measures for assisting working parents to achieve a desired work-life balance have to consider globalisation processes as well as quality of life issues”.
For example CINEFOGO researchers say that it is important to consider the issue of work-life balance from a life course perspective as work and family needs change over time. For young people eg. the integration of work and care is intermingled with the transition from education to employment and from precarious to stable jobs, with housing transitions, identity construction and wider social integration.

Moreover, Boje explains that civic activities are also an important part of the balance between time and efforts devoted to different spheres of life and that the consideration of work-life balance should include not only paid work and family care but also the varied forms of volunteerism.

Another aspect that the CINEFOGO researchers suggest is that national state policies should be flexible and allow parental choice, as well as strongly encourage employers to acknowledge and provide resources for employee’s care responsibilities. Besides policy programmes and measures there is a need of policy campaigns targeting organisational cultures and assumptions about 'ideal' workers as well as 'proper', male and female work and 'proper' male and female parenthood.

To achieve balance between work and personal life and to make an effective work-family policy, Boje emphasizes that: "it's important to have the involvement of policy makers, employers, trade unions, community and parents’ organizations in designing, implementing and monitoring of the measures”.

If you are interested in hearing more about the topic, do not hesitate to contact scientific communications consultant Ellen-Kristina Kristensen on telephone number [phone] or mail [e-mail]

Source web: http://www.cinefogo.org/workpackages/wp24

Working papers are available to download from the CINEFOGO outcomes database: http://cinefogo.cuni.cz/index.php?&w=50&srch=WP24&id_result=7963

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