After surviving the Global Financial Crisis, the vast majority of employees in Australia are looking to restore balance to their working lives after putting in the hard yards during leaner economic times.
According to Randstad Workmonitor’s global study, 17 percent of Australians showed no interest in improving their work life balance in 2011, with 83 percent of respondents hoping to improve their work-life balance in 2011, after dedicating greater time and effort to their jobs in 2010.
The study, which analyses responses from 27 countries, also found that despite their personal fatigue, most employees had confidence in the organisations they worked for. Over three quarters (76%) of Australians said their employer was doing well, with 65% confident their organisation would continue to grow.
Randstad Asia Pacific CEO, Deb Loveridge, said the perceived strength of organisations in Australia, when contrasted with high levels of employees chasing a better work-life balance suggests that employee pressure from the global financial crisis may have been more than organisations actually realised.
“While businesses in Australia clearly found the last 12 months extremely challenging, the results of our research suggest that employees shouldered a significant burden, sacrificing their social, personal and family life to ensure their employers continued doing business,” said Loveridge.
“Now that conditions are improving, employees are looking to restore balance to their lives. Employers would be well-advised to encourage and facilitate a better blend of work and life, otherwise they risk losing their best assets – their people.
“We have a culture of hard work and just reward in Australia and in 2011 there might be some ‘catch-up’ required in the area of reward. Meeting and surpassing employee expectations will be crucial if you want retain your top talent in the business and remain competitive.”
The research found more than half of employees (57%) in Australia were expecting an increase on their base salary at their next review, while 44 per cent were expecting a promotion, which was modest compared with other global respondents. Respondents from China topped the list at 88%, India closely followed (84%) with Mexico not far behind (76%).
“There are a couple of reasons that employees in Australia may not be as aggressively pursuing promotion at this point in time – with promotion usually comes greater responsibility and more work, which could severely compromise the search for balance.
