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How Facebook Manages Work-Life

Balance?
University of Applied Sciences, Soest

Authors:
Ghulam Mujtaba
Muhammad Asad Khan
Arif Hasanov

Soest 2018
Table of Contents
Work-life balance ................................................................................................................................. 4
What does that “balance” means? ..................................................................................................... 5
Relationship between Work, family and Personal Life Style ............................................................... 6
WORK-LIFE IMBALANCE ............................................................................................................... 6
Reasons: ............................................................................................................................................ 7
Consequences: .................................................................................................................................. 7
Global View of work life balance......................................................................................................... 7
Different Approaches to work life balance........................................................................................... 8
STRATEGIES FOR ACHIEVING WORK-LIFE BALANCE ........................................................... 9
Employers perspective .................................................................................................................... 10
Employees perspective ................................................................................................................... 11
IMPORTANCE OF work-life balance ............................................................................................... 14
Developing concept ............................................................................................................................ 14
Homes-Based Jobs.............................................................................................................................. 15
The concept of working from home................................................................................................ 15
Working from home in Facebook ................................................................................................... 17
Universal Basic Income (UBI) ........................................................................................................... 18
Outcomes of work life balance on Facebook, Inc. ............................................................................. 19
Recommendations & CONCLUSION ............................................................................................... 20
Bibliography ....................................................................................... Error! Bookmark not defined.
ABSTRACT
In a modern world people start thinking about the work-life balance more often. Thus, this topic is
being discussed in many Labour institutions. Some people state that work-life balance is just a
capriсe of young generation, but others are sure that without work-life balance modern life is
impossible. In our opinion this topic is a complex topic which requires more discussion and
researching. For this purpose we will take a Facebook Inc. as a model of most successful company
who implemented work-life balance and achieved tremendous results.

INTRODUCTION

WORK-LIFE BALANCE
Work-life balance is an important concept of business world, it has been of much discussion since
last few years due to the changes in working lifestyle and technology advancement. There are no
such parameters that give us a uniform definition of WLB that suits every individual.
In general work life balance can be stated as the equilibrium between one’s professional (work) and
personal life, it basically represents the prioritizations of professional and personal life of induvial.
As defined by (Greenhaus and Allen, 2006),
“Work-life balance is viewed as an individual’s effectiveness and satisfaction in work and
non-work roles being compatible with the individual’s values and priorities. That is, work-
life balance is defined as an overall appraisal of the extent in which the individual’s
effectiveness and satisfaction in work and family roles are consistent with their life values
at a given point in time.” (Sirgy & Lee, 2015)
The human life is divided mainly into four quadrants i.e
The below image depicts a work life balance scenario, where an employee has to balance his/her life
between personal (family, friends & self) and professional (job, career) commitments.
 https://www.mbaskool.com/business-concepts/human-resources-hr-terms/7045-work-life-balance.html

Work life balance is basically the satisfaction that is achieved through performing daily life tasks.
So we are able to define Work life balance as,
“Meaningful daily Achievement and Enjoyment in each of my four life quadrants: Work,
Family, Friends and Self” (Bird, 2003).

What does that “balance” means?

Whenever we have to consider the real meaning of “Work-Life Balance” we can’t refer it to equal
division of time between work and your personal life. If we try to make a perfect schedule which
includes an exact number of mins for each task it is very unrealistic approach in everyday life.
Furthermore, balance is not a constant or specific for every person, rather it varies from
Induvial to induvial. WLB depends on different variables like age, career goals and other
preferences.
As stated in the article……,
“But perhaps we’re looking at work-life balance all wrong! Contrary to what the name suggests, it
does not necessarily mean devoting equal time to work and outside pursuits” (Evolve Scientific,
2017).
We should also consider that the work-life balance can be changed anytime. In our daily life, if we
have a perfect balance at the moment, there is a possibility that we have a very different balance
tomorrow. For example, when we have a single life we have a different work life balance as
compared to our married life.
The best work life balance is something which you struggle to get and really eager to have it. There
is no perfect meaning of a right-work life balance because the work-life balance is always different
for each individual as everyone has different goals and priorities in their lives.
Time is considered as to be the main factor of balancing, it is crucial because we can either allocate
our time to work our spend it with our family & friends .If we analyze the importance we can
directly relate it with the working hours and our leisure time we spend on rest of our activities, In
this case we should take into account the working hours and their relation to work life balance.
Based on the research, the results driven are opposite to what we expect, As we observe an inverse
relationship between working hours and WLB.
“Our results show that high working hours and overtime do not lead to lower satisfaction.
Rather, more working hours and overtime have positive effects on life and job satisfaction,
but the desire to reduce working hours has a negative impact on job and life satisfaction”
(Schupp & G. Wagner , 2012).

RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN WORK, FAMILY AND PERSONAL LIFE

STYLE
Work, family and person life of an induvial are closely related to each other, the relationship
between them should be healthy and compromising each other, there should be no clash among any
of them. It is obvious that maintaining a successful relation is a challenge, some are more successful
in one aspect and fail to perform in the other. In order to attain the balance we should develop a
decent relationship between work, family and personal life instead of flourishing in a single aspect
at the cost of other.
As stated in the article
“I argued that creating a dichotomy between work and life leads down a self-destructive
path filled with frustration and disappointment toward both “work” and “life.” In contrast,
integration rather than separation of the time spent at work and with life may create a much
more positive and constructive attitude toward both of these entities” (Schwingshackl & J. S.
Anand, 2017)

WORK-LIFE IMBALANCE
Every time you get up from your bed if you feel dreadful and anxiety of showing up at your work
place. Sometimes you feel like you are going through the motions at work instead of enjoying the
assigned tasks. When you reach home, you feel like you are completely burned out. Often you feel
like you need more time to get things done. If you tick off “yes” to all of these questions, you are
clearly suffering from work life imbalance.
Having an imbalance between your work life and personal life can have detrimental effects on your
well-being. Experiencing the work life imbalance means that there is a lack of clearly defined
boundaries between your work life and personal life. If there is no healthy work balance in your life,
you will end up suffering from a variety of health issues such as anxiety, depression, exhaustion,
emotional stress and other physical ailments.

Reasons:
One of the main reasons behind causing a work life imbalance is due to having a fear of losing one’s
position or job at a workplace because there have been layoffs and people feel very unsecured they
might be the next in line. In order to avoid facing such a fate they tend to put in extra hours so that
they can protect their positions and promotions If there are any. Hence, racking up extra hours at
their workplace means their personal life will definitely take a hit and negatively be affected by this
work imbalance. Another major reason is, the expenses have increased manifolds but salaries have
not and having children at home means facing more responsibilities at home. Therefore, leading to a
work life balance out of whack.

Consequences:
Experiencing poor-life work balance can lead to many negative consequences such as:

 Exhaustion
If you are over tired and over stressed that may diminish your productivity levels at work
significantly and become a major cause of exhaustion. Henceforth, affecting your
professional reputation and health negatively.

 No personal time for Family

If you are racking up extra hours and working overtime, you are not having any quality time
for personal moments and events. Your relationships with family members may take a hit.
And, you feel like you are not wanted there and feeling left out.

 Health
Working long hours may have adverse effects on your health causing a lot of stress in your
life and maybe force you to use some external aids such as substance abuse.

 Increased responsibility
Working extra hours may impel you to take up an extra responsibility. Therefore, causing a
lot of unwanted stress and challenges that you may have a hard time facing it.

GLOBAL VIEW OF WORK LIFE BALANCE

Concerns about work-life balance appear to be fairly consistent across the globe.
Work life balance is strongly effected by the cultural differences over the globe. The variation
among cultures defines WLB different regions of the world. If we compare the working conditions
in south Asia with that of west we can clearly observe a huge difference, in India the people
unusually work on their weekend’s shorter vacations and long working hours. We can also see a
huge difference in their working Hours as compared to that of west.
There are countries with more family-friendly work conditions. If we try take in account the number
of working hours in different countries and regions.

Aisan- Recenlty North Korea

USA
Europe
##- Need some more information..

DIFFERENT APPROACHES TO WORK LIFE BALANCE

When we talk about work life balance we can relate it to different circumstances that effect induvial
lives in different ways. Every person has different thinking/mindset to bring balance between his
professional and personal life.
There are generally two scenarios that are usually discussed in relation to work life balance. There
are people who live to work and others who work to live, it’s a matter of your priorities in your on
world/life. It’s very difficult to achieve greatness in our work or professional life without sacrificing
our happiness and well-being.
“What work-life balance does come down to your our own priorities:
• What are you ultimately living and working for?
• What is your big “why?”
• Is having fulfillment in all four pillars of life—vision, health, relationships, business—
your priority?
• Is striving to leave a legacy like Edison, Lincoln, and Bonaparte your goal?” (Lee, 2015)

As mentioned in the article “Work-Life Balance: A Quality-of-Life Model”:

Based on different researches we can theoretically categorize work life balance in to four
streams/approaches.
(1) balanced role commitment
(2) positive spillover,
(3) role conflict,
(4) Social alienation.
Balanced role commitment
The theory of role commitment states that work-life balance is achieved when people are fully
committed in their various social roles in a balanced way. The balanced commitment allows
individuals to spend their time and energy to meet the needs of various life domains.
In sum, the role commitment approach to work-life balance focuses on engagement and involvement
across various social roles—the more the individual is engaged and committed to his or her various
social roles in a balanced way, the more likely that he or she would experience work-life balance
and subjective well-being.

The Positive Spillover Approach to Work-Life Balance

Positive spillover refers to positive mood, skills, values, and behaviors that transfer from one life
domain to another (Edwards and Rothbard 2000).
For example, a person experiences good mood at work and it persists when he comes home. This is
mood positive spillover.
In sum, the spillover approach to work-life balance states that work-life balance is achieved through
the successful transfer of positive skills, values, privileges, status, and affect from one social role to
another in varied life domains. The spillover approach focuses on work-life balance resulting from
role enrichment—the degree to which participation in one life domain enhances performance and
quality of life in other life domains (Frone 2003; Greenhaus and Powell 2006).

The Role Conflict Approach to Work-Life Balance

The role conflict approach to work-life balance asserts that work-life balance is achieved when there
is little-to-no role conflict between social roles
In sum, the role conflict approach asserts that work-life balance is achieved when there is a low
degree of role conflict. Work-life balance can be enhanced effectively by engaging in work and
family roles in a balanced way in terms of time and psychological involvement.
The Social Alienation Approach to Work-Life Balance
The social alienation approach to work-life balance states that lack of engagement and involvement
in a life domain (i.e., social alienation) has a negative impact on life satisfaction (Michaels et al.
1988).
In sum, the alienation approach to work-life balance states that social alienation in a life domain has
a negative impact on life satisfaction. This is because social alienation in a life domain results in less
efficient functioning of roles with little or no role enrichment. (Sirgy & Lee, 2015)

STRATEGIES FOR ACHIEVING WORK-LIFE BALANCE

“Achieving the elusive “work-life balance” can often feel like an impossible goal, especially
for people who strive to give everything 100%. In today’s “do more with less” competitive
reality, how can we manage careers and families, and feel satisfied with both?” (Smith,
2013).
When we talk about achieving work life balance from both employers and employees perspectives
we see a clear difference in their preferences.
According to a survey by WorkplaceTrends.com, a research and advisory membership portal
“2015 Workplace Flexibility Study.” Following a national survey of 1087 professionals, both
employed and unemployed, in addition to 116 HR professionals, 67% of HR professionals
think that their employees have a balanced work-life, yet almost half (45%) of employees
 (35% of job seekers) feel that they don’t have enough time each week to do personal
activities.” (Trends, 2015)

Achieving a work life balance is challenging, it is very difficult to manage the balance among all the
four quadrants of life. We have to clearly define our priorities, set our preferences and daily goals
and focus on the tasks that give us maximum satisfaction.
““If you want balance–and not everybody does–you have to force yourself to edit yourself
personally and professionally,” says Jody Greenstone Miller, an author and chief executive of
Business Talent Group” (Weiss, 2009)

Employers perspective
A good work life balance is not merely important for employee, it is equally essential for the
employer and the business unit.
The firm’s benefits are associated with work life balance for employees encourage the employer to
take necessary measures and design polices for a better work place environment. A happy workforce
results in increased performance for a company.
John Rampton (2016), recommended some steps for the companies to adopt some approaches to
ensure the work life balance for their worker.
1. Flexible Working Hours
When it comes to work life balance strategies the first thing to start with is providing the facility of
flexible working hours to the employees. So, the employees can adjust their working time to meet
their personal requirements. This will increase the motivational level of the employees as they can
control and balance their schedule according to their personal life. boosts morale since employees
can schedule their work hours around their personal lives.
One example of BurgerKing where I work, offer personal accounts where we can upload our
availability and unavailability via an application online. The management see our availability
schedule and plan the working hours according to those time.
2. Working from Home
This is not viable for every job, but if it is possible for an employee to work from home
occasionally, they will be able manage their personal problems like child care, or rush to the work
when they are sick minorly or have appointments with doctors or have some home maintenance
required them to stay at home for the maintenance team, they can manage it well with getting
worried. As we live in a global village and connected with each other no matter where we are, the
companies can keep in touch with the employees anytime and anywhere.
3. Additional Off Time
Other than sick leaves and vacations, companies can also offer individual off days so that they can
join their personal or family necessitates without getting anxious. For instance, allowing the new
parents to have extra holidays to stay at home so they can fully prepare before coming back to work.
4. Set Limits
Technology is blessing but not all the times, it could also turn out as a curse. It is astonishing that we
can be in contact with people anytime, anywhere we need to. But this is also an issue, just because
the employee has the ability to respond quickly when they are away, does not mean that companies
keep contacting them for work problems when they are off from work.

Such policies should be developed by management to offer better work experience and defining the
balance depends on different organizational structure and the management approach towards the
concept of work life balance.

“Accoridng to cofounder and CTO of Hubspot, Dharmesh Shah the notion of work versus
life is misguided, and the company has baked in a three-word policy “use good judgement”
designed to give employees autonomy, in hopes that each individual will strike their own
personal balance. “We know that people are often working even when they’re not at work,”
“So, we accept that reality and offer our employees unlimited vacation, flexible work
schedules and other things that reflect that in today’s modern workplace, happy productive
employees want work-life harmony.” (Dishman, 2015)

Employees point of view.

When analyze the WLB for employees point of view the foremost criteria to figure out the positive
work life balance depends on the demands/requirements of professional and personal life of an
individual considering his age ,gender and other variables.

“In order to have a good work and home-life balance, the following must be aligned:
personal priorities, work, family, health, and well-being (Riordan, 2013). It is important to
find the job that works for each individual. To be able to do that, each 15 individual must
know their own definition of “success.” Employees who find a job that suit them, have lower
levels of stress (Riordan, 2013). That means, achieving the work and home-life balance that
employee is looking for. Good work and home-life balance ensures that employees feel
successful at home and at work (Lingle, 2004).” (Connick, 2014)
Based on different researches the following recommendations were made by Karl Vicars that
whould help employees to attain the balance between their professional and peroanl life:
Learn Your Employer's Policies. Inquire about your company's policies on flextime and working
from home. If you're a strong performer, you have a better chance of negotiating an arrangement
that works for both you and your employer.
Communicate. If you won't be available for certain hours during the day or weekend because you're
dealing with family issues, let your manager and colleagues know, and get their full support.
Use Technology to Your Advantage. Technology should help make your life easier, not control it.
Ban technology at certain times so that you can focus on your family or friends.
Telecommute. Telecommuting a few times a week could help free up valuable hours. You'll be able
to focus on work for long stretches at a time and use the extra hours to meet personal
responsibilities.
Learn to Say "No." Remember that you can respectfully decline offers to run the PTA or serve on
an extra committee at work. When you stop doing things out of guilt, you'll find more time to focus
on the activities that truly bring you joy.
Fight the Guilt. Superwoman--and Superman--are fictional characters. Real people can't devote
100% to everything they do. Stop feeling guilty if you miss an occasional soccer game or bail on a
colleague's going-away party.
Rethink Your Idea of "Clean." Unmade beds or dusty moldings are not signs of failure. Try to get
used to a little messiness and spend more time enjoying your life. If you can afford to outsource
help, pay someone else to clean your house.
Protect Your Private Time. Allow yourself to daydream in the subway or appreciate good weather
on your walk to work. If you don't allow yourself pockets of personal time, you'll become too
burned out to fully appreciate any part of your life. (Smith, 2013)
An employee’s satisfaction in their personal life and their ability to meet personal commitments
greatly affects their success as a worker, which greatly benefits any company.
 System Individual
approach approach
(The left leg) (The left leg)
 Involvement
balance
 Time balance
 Satisfaction
balance

2 legs of work-
life strategy 3 features of WLB
Bird(2006) (Greenhous,
Collins, & Shaw,
2003)
WLB initiatives

Work-life balance
 Part-time working
 Flexi-time working
 Staged hours
 Compresses work
weeks • Segmentation
 Job sharing and 5 models of WLB model
(Guest, 2001) • Spillover model
splitting
 Term-time working • Compensation
 Telecommunicating model
 Career breaks • Instrumental model
• Conflict model
 Parental leaves
Importance and benefits of WLB to
 Dependence
employers and employees
initiatives

Retrieved from: (Tariq, Aslam, Siddique, & Tanveer, 2012)

IMPORTANCE OF WORK-LIFE BALANCE
The importance of work life balance is equally important for both entities employers and employee.
Work life balance in employees’ life has direct effects on the businesses. The employees with better
work life balance has high performance and productivity ratio as compared to others.
“One of the biggest employer benefits of work-life balance is improved workplace morale
and staff retention. When your staff enjoy their work and find it rewarding (thereby
improving the “life” side of the work-life balance), they are more inclined to work harder
and more efficiently. They are also more eager to solve problems that would otherwise
prevent the company from increasing its market share.” (Southeastern Oklahoma State
University, 2016)
“Without creating a work-life balance a person isn’t able to take time to enjoy the life they
have worked so hard to create. They aren’t available for friends and family members, and
often take their stress out on the ones they love. They can also suffer from illness and
physical disorders that stem from prolonged stress such as heart disease, alcoholism, and
even diabetes.” (Meenakshi, Subrahmanyam, & Ravichandran, 2013)
“It is important to consider Work–life balance as a priority issue and make appropriate
changes in the working conditions, thereby not only increasing the long-term productivity of
communities but also protecting the social fabric of our society against irreversible damage.
As stated by Xerox CorporationCEO Anne Mulacahy, “Businesses need to be 24/7,..
individuals don’t.”” (Indian Journal of Psychiatry, 2010)

DEVELOPING CONCEPT

“In the past, work was a location. Today, work has shifted from a place to a space. The
technology shift from fixed communications to mobile communications has redefined how
and where we work.” (Jenkins, 2018)
“With the millennial generation of workers projected to take up 75% of the workforce by
2025, many leaders think it’s time to redefine what work-life balance looks like.
Over the years, the knowledge and approach of work-life balance has been constantly
evolving, and it might be helpful for employers to identify the difference in opinions among
the Baby Boomers, Generation X and Millennials.” (Kohll, 2018)
Every generation seeks a healthy work-life balance, but it's Millennials who most demand it from
their employers. In today's employee market, creating work-life balance for Millennials is a
compelling competitive advantage.(Ref: https://www.inc.com/ryan-jenkins/this-is-what-millennials-
value-most-in-a-job-why.html)
A recent study by Fidelity Investments has found that 58 percent of millennials ranked the quality of
the work environment they would be joining over the financial benefits being received from the
same.This is quite an astonishing number for the generation that has often been judged to be highly
materialistic. Rose Ernst, the National Director of G10 Associates programme told TIMES
“Earlier generations were probably too afraid to ask for flexibility. The mindset was that work
comes first,” (Ref: https://yourstory.com/2017/04/millennials-work-life-balance/)
This goes to show that while evaluating a possible job-opportunity, the salary being offered isn’t the
primary deciding factor anymore –A well-functioning work-life balance, recognition, and
purposeful work culture also feature as subsequent game-changers.
https://yourstory.com/2017/04/millennials-work-life-balance/

HOMES-BASED JOBS
The concept of working from home
Working from homev (also known as Telecomutting) is respectively modern concept. It assumes
people accomplishing some tasks without need to appear or rarely appearing at work place. This
concept was developed mainly thanks to Information and Communication Technologies and the
development of personal computers industry (Which is also played the main role in “Online
Education” concept). This idea of working from home using computer and internet was a revolution
in many people’s life. Disabled people could now afford working and earning money. Housewives
now could take care of the house and do a part-time home-based jobs simultaneously. People who
could not find a job in their own city/country now could find a home-based job online and without
need to move to another city or country could work from home and easily manage their work-life
balance more effectively. These and many other reasons made home-based jobs so famous.
According to statistics we can see some amazing numbers:
 “2.4 million employees working from home at least half the time” (Bloom, James, Roberts,
& Zhichun, 2015)
 “Two-thirds of managers who offer telecommuting flexibility report that employees who
work from home are overall more productive.” (Schumacher, 2016)
 “Employers offering at least part-time telecommuting flexibility collectively save $44 billion
each year.” (Fundera, 2018)
 “Larger companies are more likely to offer telecommuting flexibility than smaller ones are.”
(Fundera, 2018)
Another statistics can be observed from Bureau of Labor Statistics, U.S.A.:
 “Men and women were about equally likely to do some or all of their work at home in 2010—22.9
percent of employed men compared with 24.5 percent of employed women.
In 2010, multiple jobholders were nearly twice as likely to work at home as were single jobholders in
2010—39 percent compared with 22 percent.
Self-employed workers were three times more likely than wage and salary workers to have done some
work at home on days worked in 2010—64 percent compared with 19 percent.
In 2010, on the days that they worked, 36 percent of employed people age 25 and over with a
bachelor's degree or higher did some work at home, compared with only 10 percent of those with less
than a high school diploma." (Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2011)

An interesting report done by the Stanford University shows that in some special cases some
companies and their employees can really benefit the concept of home-based jobs:

“A rising share of employees now regularly engage in working from home (WFH), but there
are concerns this can lead to ‘‘shirking from home.’’ We report the results of a WFH
experiment at Ctrip, a 16,000-employee, NASDAQ-listed Chinese travel agency. Call center
employees who volunteered to WFH were randomly assigned either to work from home or in
the office for nine months. Home working led to a 13% performance increase, of which 9%
was from working more minutes per shift (fewer breaks and sick days) and 4% from more
calls per minute (attributed to a quieter and more convenient working environment). Home
workers also reported improved work satisfaction, and their attrition rate halved, but their
promotion rate conditional on performance fell. Due to the success of the experiment, Ctrip
rolled out the option to WFH to the whole firm and allowed the experimental employees to
reselect between the home and office. Interestingly, over half of them switched, which led to
the gains from WFH almost doubling to 22%. This highlights the benefits of learning and
selection effects when adopting modern management practices like WFH.” (Bloom, James,
Roberts, & Zhichun, 2015)
Many companies find home-based jobs very beneficial, because the company does not have to hire
office, buy computers, furniture, organise service for employees and so on. Especially IT companies
can benefit from this concept more than other companies. Because majority of employees in IT
companies most of their working time work with computer and very small part of it is wasted to
communicate with managers or other employees. Which is why, these type of employees are having
absolutely no problem in transferring their job from office to home. With the help of new apps in the
market allowing a large team to work on one project regardless of their physical locations, working
from home became even more prosperous working style for IT companies. However, not only IT
companies benefit from the advantage of working from home, but also many other companies can
do so. In the example above, the Stanford University wrote a report about NASDAQ-listed Chinese
travel agency organising and offering an opportunity for its employees to work from home gives
tremendous results both in performance of employees and benefit of the company from this concept.
E-Commerce companies can also benefit from offerin home-based jobs for its employees. Orders
received from E-Commerce platform could be arranged online and the special agreement with
shipping company allow these companies to instruct the shipping companies to take the item from
their warehouse and transfer it to the customer. Many other examples for different sectors can be
provided. In fact most jobs that can be digitalized, most likely can be changed to home-based jobs.
But of course, there are always people who will use trust of people for their own benefit. In this
sense, as bigger becomes the working from home concept, the more scammers appear on the market.
As mentioned above home-based jobs especially useful for people who can’t find job because of
some circumstances, like disability, looking after child, economical situation in country etc. So these
people trust to every work from home advertisements and sometimes waste their times and money
just for scammers.
“The most common way that scammers find victims is to play on people's emotions. When
you want something badly, your emotions can lead you to make illogical decisions in pursuit
of it. Finding a work-at-home job is not easy, so you will need patience and to keep a clear
head. Be especially wary of any opportunity that tries to play on your emotions by saying
you "deserve" something.” (BRUNELLI, 2017)
Experts advice to check everything twice before making some steps for home-based jobs. Nothing
or no one should be trusted right away. Some scammers call playing online casino games as a
“home-based jobs” and people burn their money for those kinds of things.
Begin by doubting everything you see, then do your research with a clear head. Even if an
opportunity looks legit, do not send money to any organization without thoroughly checking
it out. This means know where it is physically based and possibly trying to contact it via
phone. Look it up on social media and do an internet search for reviews of it. It often helps
to do an internet search with the name of the company and "scam," or "review." You
probably have to take the results with a grain of salt but it can be a starting point.
(BRUNELLI, 2017)

Working from home in Facebook

In this sense the company Facebook did not let its chance to lose this tendency and also organized a
lot of positions and possibilites which would allow the workers to do their job without the need of
appearing in office, except for only weekly or monthly meetings and in some cases not coming to
office at all by communicating through video conference calls.
In general Facebook has very flexible working hours and employees choose themselves when they
want to work. The only requirement is weekly total hours need to be fulfilled. Thus, employee can
discuss with manager about the works he or she can work from home and if the approval is received
then he or she can easily work from home. According to Gus Luxton who worked in Facebook for
four years, “Most employees have laptops rather than desktop machines and VPN access is all
preconfigured, so working as though you were in the office is often easy.” (Luxton, 2016)

UNIVERSAL BASIC INCOME (UBI)

For centuries work conditions of people were becoming more and more optimised. After Industrial
Revolution in 18s and 19s centuries (1760 – 1840) many people changed their work profile and
some others just lost their jobs, because majority of routine jobs were accomplished by giant or
sometimes tiny machines which could work almost 24/7 without need for a rest. More or less,
Industrial Revolution faded out and machines became inevidable part of modern production process.
Automation and robot integration is currently evolving with amazing speed. This will make robots
to replace human in near future in a big scale. Which in its turn, makes people to think about the
future of work and earning money. For manufacturing companies decreasinig the cost is very
beneficial, but leaving people without work also is not good idea, because people will not have
money to buy the products that companies produce. And here comes the idea of Universal Basic
Income. At first glance the idea is very simple: Raise the taxes for manufacturers and with that
additional budget each month pay some amount to citizens. Government controls all this process.
However, this concepts also brings dosens of new questions like: “How much money must be
paid?”, “Who are eligible for this payment?”, “How will society evolve with this money?” etc.
Answering each question will raise a new questions. That is why this project is still under the
development and only some very developed countries like Norway, Finland, Sweden etc. try this
concept and analyze the results of this concept. As the Industrial Revolution took almost a century
for people to get used to it, a big scale robotisation and applying UBI also requires many decades to
achieve.
The UBI is not a social program to help the people who need help economically. It is a basic income
that will be paid to everyone without the exception. Even rich people will get it. It is a compensation
for an automation of industry. More and more people in the near will lose the job because of
automation with robotisation and Artificial Intelligence. That is the reason this basic income must be
paid to keep the society economically wealthy. Perhaps that is the reason why some experts express
the worriness about this new concept, stating that it will develop laziness and counter productivity
for people, nevertheless most experts see many positive aspects of this idea. In their opinion this can
give people chance to further develop themselves with education, work less and spend more time
with family, thus achieving the best work-life balance in their life. Attitude of society receiving
stable money each month regardless their social status, race, religion, age etc. is yet to be discovered
and researched. People will spend their money for alcohol? Drugs? Tobacco? We don’t have an
answer for it yet. 2013 study of World Bank specifically examined if poor people would spend their
money on tobacco and alcohol if they would receive it in cash? The clear answer is “no”. The
opposite is true. The richer the person, more drugs and alcohol he or she uses. The image of lazy and
drunk poor people is nothing more than just a stereotype.
“We have investigated evidence from around the developing world, including Latin America,
Africa, and Asia. There is clear evidence that transfers are not consistently used for alcohol
or tobacco in any of these environments. This is particularly true when relying on the
randomized trials. For all studies, the only evidence for a positive, significant effect is
inconsistent across estimates within the studies themselves; and in those cases, the size of the
impact is trivial. Thus, it seems that the flypaper effect and the effect of women controlling
more resources (the household bargaining effect) likely compensate for the income effect,
leading to no significant net change in alcohol and tobacco consumption. We see no
difference between conditional and unconditional cash transfer programs, so this does not
seem to be a function of conditions. We also observe no difference depending on the region
of the transfer program.” (Evans & Popova, 2014)
Of course this topic can be expanded and discussed more from the economical and social
perspective. However we would like to discuss about the effect of this concept on the work-life
balance of people who work. As mentioned above, with stable money receiving each month people
can plan their lives more easily, decrease working hours, increase the time they spend with their
family and build their life more efficiently with additional education or realizing hidden creative
potentials. In general our opinion is that UBI will have very positive effects on work-life balance. In
the future people will have more creative jobs than routine jobs. All routine jobs will be replaced
with automated robots. This will require less and less working times for people. No work start time,
no work end time. People will have to plan their working day themselves. Everything will be
connected to results. Which is a perfect basic conditions for work-life balance management.

OUTCOMES OF WORK LIFE BALANCE ON FACEBOOK, INC.

Thanks to work-life balance programs provided by Facebook, today this company can be benchmark
for work-life balance. Together with being one of the best tech company in the world to work for,
now Facebook is also can show tremendous improvements in work-life balance. “It was one of the
first to drive the relaxed start-up-style culture that we’re all so used to seeing today.” (Darmody,
2017)
Employees in Facebook can schedule their working times themselves. If someone likes to wake up
early, then they can come to work early and leave early, and on the other hand if someone likes to
stay awake late night, can come to work late and leave late. Other than that, employees can take
some of their tasks to home and work from home. In this questions Facebook policy is very flexible.
And this is all because of achievement of high work-life balance levels in the company.
According to Business Insider research report, Facebook is a better place to work than even a
Google. (Bort, 2013)
As can be seen from the graph below Facebook employees rate their company better than the
Google employees.
 “Satisfaction ratings are based on a 5-point scale: 1.0=very dissatisfied, 3.0=OK, 5.0=very
satisfied. So, we can see that employees are highly satisfied with both companies.
Interestingly, Google's rating has been climbing, indicating that current employers are
getting happier. As of this quarter, the two companies are tied at 4.5 each, as the chart
below shows:” (Bort, 2013)

As can be seen from graph, Facebook achieved very good results in work-life balance of its
employees. Surely, lot of improvements are still ahead, but first steps are far behind.

RECOMMENDATIONS & CONCLUSION

With the development of technology and computers/robots replacing human in workplaces, people
could start thinking about new concept like “work-life balance”. Which means this concept is
relatively new and still requires studies and researches on it. Even though physical work worns out
people more, the idea of “work-life balance” started and evolved mostly in mind working sector -
especially in IT sector. Because many IT people come home and continue working on laptop or PC
and don’t separate enough time for family or personal life. Perhaps this is the two sides of the coin
in technology: It is good because it can be mobile and also it is bad that it can be mobile.
In work-life balance, the “balance” is the key word. A lot of people think of work-life balance as of
90% life 10% work, which is far from realism and can damage the economy of the country severely.
As we discussed with basic income case, even with monthly basic income of $1000 people still
prefer to work rather than sitting home or travel around the world. But of course with basic income
they could decrease the working hours so they can have more time for themselves. Nevertheless,
people want to work as well. Because working is not only about earning money, but also is gaining
new friends, finding love, networking, realising him or herself, helping the economy of country etc.
For some people working is meaning of their life. In fact working is part of life. Yes, most of the
people don’t live to work, but work to live. But still, it is part of life. In some countries people work
as a teacher, because they want their society to be educated, even though teacher in that country
earns less money than waste workers.
“Work life balance has recently taken the attention of both researchers and executives. This
subject interests almost everyone with a professional career. This widespread interest is
partly due to its reflection on all aspects of life. For those who think that the main objective
in life is to work, their career becomes the core of life. However, people have limited time
and therefore have to perform many other activities other than their jobs. Without a balance
between the two, many mishaps can be experienced in both.” (Delecta, 2011)
In this article we discussed how Facebook handled the work-life balance of their employees. But
there are thousands of companies all around the world who do not count work-life balance important
and try to get maximum working hours and overtime hours from their employees, even though this
greatly affects the performance of their employees.
Work-Life Balance is a very important aspect of our modern life. Thanks to technology today we
can plan and build near to perfect balance between work and personal life. But this concept always
must be developed to fit the needs of society. A big companies like Facebook and Google will
always try to improve their working conditions, including work-life balance. Because these type of
companies are there for new ideas, new work styles and handle new challenges.
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