Work-life Research
Lead Researcher: Paul Blyton
Background
For organisations, CSR issues have both an external and an internal focus. The latter primarily concerns the responsibilities of employers towards employees, and covers a wide range of issues, for example health and safety and responsibilities when making redundancies (Blyton and Bradbury, 2002). In recent years, an increasingly prominent issue has been the responsibilities of organisations for facilitating employees’ work-life balance. This has understandably primarily focused on provisions for women with dependent children to enter/remain in the labour market, through for example extended leave arrangements and rights to request changes in working arrangements. BRASS researchers have contributed to this field by providing a much needed cross-national perspective on work-life issues, as well as a more theoretical and critical approach to the issue of work-life balance (Blunsdon, Blyton, Reed and Dastmalchian, 2006; Blyton and Dastmalchian, 2006; Blyton et al, 2006a,b; McNeil and Blyton, 2006).
While some aspects of work-life balance have been extensively researched, other issues remain relatively neglected and the current research programme address a central area of this neglect: the work-life balance issues facing older workers, and the organisational and public policy issues stemming from these. These issues include, for example, obstacles facing the development of phased or gradual retirement schemes, and the work-life issues relating more generally to the employment of older workers, particularly in the light of current legislation on age discrimination.
Key Outputs
The Sage Handbook of Industrial Relations, Sage (ISBN: 1412911540) Amazon | Google Books
Paul Blyton, The Realities of Work, Palgrave Macmillan (ISBN: 1403994935) Amazon | Google Books
