Tackling the work-life balance challenge in professional service firms: The impact of projects, organizing, and service characteristics

Noury, Lucie; Gand, Sébastien; Sardas, Jean-­Claude

doi:10.1093/jpo/jow010

Cited by 14 publications

(23 citation statements)

References 57 publications

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“…Second, we answer the research call to study work-life balance perceptions in the context of highly demanding knowledge-intensive work and notice a remarkable ambiguity in these perceptions. On the one hand, organisational work-life balance policies are perceived positively by the millennials in our study, much more so than in earlier studies that surveyed older workforces (Kaiser et al, 2010;Litrico et al, 2011;Noury et al, 2017;Peper et al, 2011). On the other hand, the additional policies in strategy houses cannot prevent more negative work-life balance appraisals.…”

Section: Introductioncontrasting

confidence: 79%

Work-life balance policies in high performance organisations: A comparative interview study with millennials in Dutch consultancies

Bouwmeester¹,

Atkinson

Noury³

et al. 2020

German Journal of Human Resource Management

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The literature on work-life balance primarily focuses on how individuals cope with high work demands. This study, however, investigates how young professionals experience the work-life balance support offered by organisations. Twenty-four millennial consultants were interviewed to explore their perceptions of work-life balance and organisational support policies in an extreme work context. Twelve consultants worked for strategy houses with an average working week of around 60 hours, while the other 12 worked for general management consultancies with average working weeks of roughly 50 hours. Our comparative findings suggest that overall work-life balance perceptions stay positive in both settings. In strategy houses, where work pressures are highest, reported policies and practices go beyond health programmes, training and coaching, which are the most common work-life balance measures. Strategy houses monitor their consultants’ work-life balance experience weekly, provide options to outsource components of the work, and offer multiple forms of compensation. These further policies are much appreciated. Despite these positive assessments, we also observe an increase of negative work-life balance experiences due to the higher work pressures at strategy houses. There is, therefore, some ambiguity in the work-life balance perceptions of consultants, who recalibrate what are ‘normal’ work demands and reframe and refocus on the bright side of work life. Such occupational ideologies indicate a ‘dirty work’ experience.

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Section: Introductioncontrasting

confidence: 79%

Work-life balance policies in high performance organisations: A comparative interview study with millennials in Dutch consultancies

Bouwmeester¹,

Atkinson

Noury³

et al. 2020

German Journal of Human Resource Management

Self Cite

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“…To move HRM research forward, future research is needed to identify the key HRM practices and examine their impact on professional staff and firms. For example, work-life balance has been found as an emerging and increasingly important HRM practice in consulting firms (Noury, Gand, & Sardas, 2017). Some other vital HRM practices which are worthy investigation include talent attraction and retainment (Gorman, 2015), as well as compensation and rewards (Adamson, Manson, & Zakaria, 2015).…”

Section: Limitations and Future Researchmentioning

confidence: 99%

Chinese and Irish professional service firms compared: Linking HPWS, organizational coordination, and firm performance

Bosak

Flood

et al. 2019

Journal of Business Research

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Strategic human resource management (SHRM) has an important influence on organizational performance. Previous research has established the positive impact of a specific set SHRM practicesknown as high performance work systems (HPWS)-on firm performance. This study furthers our understanding of the performance impact of HPWS by: (a) proposing organizational coordination as a unique process-based mediator between HPWS and firm performance and (b) examining the impact of national cultural differences on the relationship between HPWS and organizational performance. Data were collected from 98 Chinese and 93 Irish accounting firms. The findings support the mediating role of organizational coordination in the relationship between HPWS and firm performance. Additionally, we found that the effects of organizational coordination were stronger in the high power distance and collectivistic culture of China than in the low power distance and individualistic culture of Ireland. Implications are discussed.

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“…In addition to these market pressures, because of the emergence of work-life balance demands from professionals most companies have introduced most flexible career policies and alternative roles to partnership, creating new positions for non-partners (Malhotra et al, 2010;Noury et al 2016;Smets et al, 2017). This paper extends the previous research in several ways.…”

Section: Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 66%

A decision support system and a mathematical model for strategic workforce planning in consultancies

et al. 2018

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Strategic staff planning in consultancies is a major problem that directly affects the firm's performance and capacity for dealing with projects appropriately. Furthermore, the decisions taken now will have long term consequences, because consultants are highly qualified workers who need very long learning periods to achieve enough expertise. In other words, the size and composition of the future workforce depends on the decisions taken today. It is important to underline that the system anticipates future capacity adjustment in response to forecasted demand requirements; therefore, it is flexible to plan the workforce in different scenarios and time horizons. This paper proposes a decision support system based on a mathematical optimization model for solving strategic staff planning, taking the company's strategies, policies and objectives into account and optimizing both the costs and the staff composition. The tool is tested by applying it in an office belonging to a multinational consulting firm.

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Tackling the work-life balance challenge in professional service firms: The impact of projects, organizing, and service characteristics

Cited by 14 publications

References 57 publications

Work-life balance policies in high performance organisations: A comparative interview study with millennials in Dutch consultancies

Work-life balance policies in high performance organisations: A comparative interview study with millennials in Dutch consultancies

Chinese and Irish professional service firms compared: Linking HPWS, organizational coordination, and firm performance

A decision support system and a mathematical model for strategic workforce planning in consultancies

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