Men and women are struggling in today's world to balance their work and their social or family time, according to Maria Akbar Saberi, a Bahraini lecturer and researcher with a special interest in human resources management and organizational behaviour. The increasing demands of the global market with its 24/7 customer service facility, and the information communication technology explosion have revolutionized the way we work, but this has also led to the rise of the Long Working Hours (LWH) culture in response to these demands. In recent years, women have also entered the labour force in large numbers, which has in turn led to requests for changes in working patterns, and calls for alternative and more flexible working arrangements.

Maria Saberi discusses these issues in a new publication on the 'Effects of long Working Hours on the Bahraini Woman's Work-Life Balance' published by Bahrain Centre for Studies and Research. "During the last decade" explained Mrs. Saberi "the topic of WLB has attracted growing interest in Europe and North America, but received little coverage in Bahrain or the Gulf region". Seeing a need to look at this important issue from a Bahrain and Gulf perspective, Mrs. Saberi undertook a study of the literature on the subject of Work-Life Balance (WLB), as well as an empirical study of women in a private offshore bank in Bahrain as part of her MBA dissertation research.

"In many organizations, particularly the banking and service sector, the LWH culture has become linked to the belief that it will bring success and ensure a faster rise up the organizational ladder for an employee", explained Mrs. Saberi.  However, she added, "this has left no space for personal goals or needs". 

In 1919 the International Labour Organization (ILO) set the maximum number of working hours per day at eight hours and 48 hours per week.  According to literature studies quoted by Mrs. Saberi, Long Working Hours are considered to be 49 hours per week or more and very long hours 60 hours or more. Yet there is still a strong belief that to be successful in one's career, one must work long hours in order to be able to rise up the corporate ladder.  This has, according to Mrs. Saberi, left no space for personal goals or needs and ultimately leads to a demoralized workforce with high staff turnover and the chasing away of skilled and professional staff.

Looking at statistics from the United States and Bahrain, Maria noted that in recent decades women have increasingly entered the workforce. In the U.S. women make up almost half the U.S. workforce, but these women also have primary responsibility for the home and the family, which can at times negatively affect their work attendance. In Bahrain, women make up nearly 26% of the workforce, according to the most recent 2001 Bahrain government statistics, as compared to 5% in 1971.

While women have attained greater equality by entering the workforce, and their families have gained financially, this has also led to a reduction in the size of families, the reliance on foreign nannies and a weakening of the mother/child relationship, according to a 1990 study by Dr. Munira Fakro, quoted by Mrs. Saberi.

What seems to be apparent, explained Mrs. Saberi, is that women with children in Bahrain prefer the shorter and more convenient working hours offered by government jobs, but that these jobs are often less well paid than comparable jobs in the private sector.  A large number of young Bahrainis (100,000 according to a McKinsey report for the Bahrain Economic Development Board) are expected to enter the workforce in the next decade, many of whom will be women, and this will significantly increase the local workforce.

Mrs. Saberi stressed that it is not just women with children who are affected by the LWH culture, but that single employees and men often find themselves isolated from family and leisure activities, and that LWH are a key pressure admitted by two thirds of men surveyed in the literature quoted by Mrs. Saberi.

For her research on the topic, Mrs. Saberi chose an offshore bank in Bahrain and targeted all the female Bahraini employees at various levels in the organization, with a response rate of 74%.  From the sample surveyed, the researcher found that long working hours affected the family, social activities, academic development, health, employee productivity and turnover. 95% of all the women surveyed admitted to spending very little time with their families. 50% had housemaids to take care of the children and the average number of children for the married and divorced working women was two.  91% of respondents said that they had difficulty in undertaking further studies. 60% had thought of leaving work because of the long working hours, yet 90% said that they would stay if flexible working hours were implemented.

According to Mrs. Saberi's study, life priorities vary among individuals depending on their life circumstances (age, marital status, whether they have children, job position, etc.) confirming the need for different and more flexible work patterns. Women often feel that they are only able to attain a certain level in their careers and hit a "glass ceiling" in the organization, and are not able to move further up the ladder because of the compromises needed to balance family and work commitments.

Hence, the importance of Work-Life Balance schemes, which come in many forms of flexible alternative working patterns. These include: job sharing; part-time employment; remote access to work or working from home; flexible starting and finishing times with core business hours; plus periodic paid and unpaid work interruptions for the care of children or the elderly.

The benefits of these schemes have been noted in successful models quoted by Mrs. Saberi in Denmark, the U.K. and the U.S. These include the saving of money, attraction and retention mechanisms for staff, time incentives which can be just as important as money, and a more balanced life with less anxiety and stress.

Yet, even in countries where flexible working first developed people still work very long hours, most noted being the U.S. The challenges for the future, explained Mrs. Saberi, are to convince managers of the benefits of Work-Life Balance and to allay the fears of organizations that with these new patterns of working organizations will lose control of their labour force.  Change takes time, emphasized Mrs. Saberi, and working practices are bound up in cultural attitudes to work, where evaluation is often made on the time spent at work, 'face time', rather than on the evaluation of performance and production. 

What of future work patterns in Bahrain?  Economic development changes working patterns, explained Mrs. Saberi, and if Bahrain's Labour Market Reforms are successful, Mrs. Saberi feels that only then could Work-Life Balance schemes be considered in Bahrain.

These are all future challenges for organizations and for their human resources professionals.  Mrs. Saberi has brought attention to Work-Life Balance issues in Bahrain and hopes that further research, study and discussion will be conducted in this important area.

The Effects of Long Working Hours on the Bahraini Woman's Work-Life Balance is available from the Bahrain Centre for Studies and Research, Tel: 17754757.