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    60% working Indians rate work-life balance from average to terrible: Monster.com survey

    Synopsis

    Lack of sleep, depression, anxiety & irritability came up as the top work-related illnesses.

    worklife balancwGetty Images
    60% of Indian working professionals surveyed rate their current work-life-balance average to terrible: says Monster.com.

    More than half of Indian working professionals rate their current work-life balance average to terrible says, the ‘Understanding Work Life Balance' survey of 2,000 working professionals by Monster.com. Significantly, as much as 45% of the respondents were from non-metros cities where work-life balance is supposedly a lesser issue.

    Collectively, 67% of India’s working professionals either sometimes, often or always think about work when not at work. About half of the respondents in relationships currently, confessed that the lack of work-life balance makes them or their partners irritable or ill-tempered.

    Lack of sleep (17%), depression (16%), anxiety & irritability (9%), hypertension (4.5%) came up as the top work-related illnesses. Back pain (15%), frequent headaches & fatigue (14%), and obesity (5%) came up as other stress related physical illnesses

    As opposed to the belief that technology is a facilitator, one-third of the young professionals find technology (laptops and mobile phones) a hindrance in managing family with work commitments. This becomes significant as 54% of the respondents were single.


    Other two hindrances that emerged were meetings, calls and trainings after office hours (18%); and negative attitude of supervisors towards work-life balance despite the policy (11%).

    When asked, what work-life means, ‘flexible work hours’ came as the number one response at 41%. This was followed by leaving work on time and not bringing work home at 39%. The other significant response that came from close to 40% respondents was to get time to pursue their hobbies and passion.

    22% feel that taking time off regularly is how they define work-life balance.

    60% of respondents spend one to two hours to travel to work; about 70% respondents would like to work from home to avoid the daily commute.

    75% respondents have said that their workplace doesn’t have a separate work-life balance policy and 25% are not even aware of such a policy. These findings indicate that employers either need to establish such policies soon or need to find more effective ways of communicating them if they already have one. In organisations where there is a work-life balance policy, the top three provisions offered were flexible work hours (62%), holiday (46%), and pursuing hobby/passion (25%).

    Abhijeet Mukherjee, CEO, Monster.com, APAC & Gulf said in a release: “If, there’s one thing that comes out distinct in this survey is dichotomy. At one level, 60% of Indian respondents feel that they balance their work and life; while on the other hand, as high as about 78% respondents would like to be ‘segmentors’ and not ‘blenders’ i.e. clearly defined boundaries between their personal and work lives and not blurring the line.”

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