Work-Life Balance Practices Among Irish Hotel Employees:Implications for HRM

The aim of this article is to examine work-life balance in the Irish hotel sector from an employee perspective with implications for HRM. This particular article presents part of a larger study on work flexibility and work-family balance (Farrell, 2012). The study included a survey of managers and employees. Two-hundred and forty-six questionnaires from employees were returned which was a 22% response rate from the original sample group. The research data show that company benefits were not associated with numerical flexibility, but associated with functional flexibility and work-life balance supports. This would suggest an integrated approach to human resource management (HRM) whereby some companies engage in a contemporary, employee-focused approach, whereas other companies tend to be more traditional. The study advances the literature on the link between work-life balance programmes and other HRM practices such as company benefits and functional flexibility. We see that educational reasons and time for leisure were significant drivers of work-life balance arrangements. The research concludes that hotels need to put in place more organisational supports such as work assistance and care supports for employees to achieve a better balance between work and life