The report found that work and life
balance is crucial to Australia's workforce
recovering from the recession.
Image: iStockphoto

Improving work and life balance for working women, making it easier for Australian workers to learn new skills and negotiate more flexible working arrangements will be key factors in driving a strong recovery from the recession and building a sustainable future workforce.

In the latest national survey of Australian workers – the 2009 Australian Work and Life Index – researchers have found that many Australians are still finding it a struggle to balance work with the rest of their lives.

One of the authors of the 2009 report and Director of UniSA's Centre for Work + Life, Professor Barbara Pocock says that when asked about how well work fits in with home and community life, a quarter of full time Australian employees surveyed said work often interfered with activities outside of work.

This places Australia 9th in a group of 32 European countries, ranked from best to worst for work life balance – below Germany and the United Kingdom but above France and Italy.

"The striking result in our latest survey is the very poor outcome for Australia’s full time working women, with two thirds of them feeling constantly rushed and pressed for time," Prof Pocock said.

"We are seeing a real shift in how women feel about work and the survey gives us some clues about why that is - women are struggling to balance all their commitments beyond work with their jobs and this affects not only on those working full time, but also part timers."

Professor Pocock said the results of the survey should concern all employers interested in planning for better economic times in the future.

"We tend to adopt a ‘batten down the hatches’ mentality in times of recession when we should be looking at survey results like these and considering how we can build a sustainable workforce for the future," Prof Pocock said.

"In a broad sense the workforce has become highly feminised as we’ve moved from a commodities to a service-based economy, so if women become disaffected with full time work, we are going to struggle to maintain national productivity.

"We need to be thinking about the key factors that will provide better work-life outcomes for all of our workers – that may include more flexible workplaces, cutting down commuting time to work, developing increased flexibility around working from home or making better use of ICT to build in job flexibility."

Prof Pocock said much more needed to be done to ensure workers were supported to improve their practical and professional skills.

While 60 per cent of Australian employees who were not in education or training believed they would get financial support or time allowed to complete studies from their employers, more than half of these workers said education or training would not fit with their family and other life commitments and almost 70 per cent said they didn’t have the time to study.

"Supports to enhance the skills of people already in the workplace should be an important plank in any national education and workforce development strategy," she said.

She said flexibility was also a key issue and changes introduced in the new Fair Work Act were a step in the right direction.

"AWALI 2009 shows that in the past year that about one in five employees made requests with only a third of those requests knocked back.

"But we also know that about 80 per cent of employees are not making requests for a range of reasons including that they feel their jobs don’t suit flexible arrangements or that they have too much work on their plates. This new legislation opens the door to more constructive conversations around workplace flexibility that will help workers balance their life commitments as well."

Prof Pocock said the 2009 Australian Work Life survey provides baseline data against which progress can be measured.

"We have an opportunity to create Australian work cultures that deliver economic prosperity and a workforce with high levels of well being," she said.

"We need to be careful that we don’t go further down a path that puts pressure on individuals and their families, especially women and those working long hours, creating a constant strain between work and life."