A Critical Approach to Work-Life Balance: The Moroccan Perspective

“Be steady and well-ordered in your life so that you can be fierce and original in your work”. Gustave Flaubert, French Novelist. When reflecting on this quotation, it is clear that maintaining a good balance between work and life can lead to good performance results and quality of lifeQuality of life. This is particularly important with the constantly changing business environment. In this chapter, we focus on work-life balance (WLB) within the Moroccan context using a critical approach to understanding how people manage their work and nonwork domains. As a progressive country, MoroccoMorocco has seen significant changes in the last few decades, especially in regard to gender rolesGender roles and established equality through Article 19 in the Moroccan Constitution. This has led to an increase in women’s participation in the workforce, which, as a result, challenged the normative gender roles and had a significant impact on family structures, particularly in regard to work-life balance. The resulting imbalance leads to a disproportionate burden and difficulty in managing personal and professional roles successfully. Understanding societal changes facilitates the identification of strategies and policies geared towards the retention of employees, allowing Moroccan organisations to develop and implement HRD strategies and policies creating workplaces that are more supportive of professional and personal goals. This chapter provides recommendations to improve the status of employees’ WLB within the Moroccan organisational context.