Skip to main content

Work life balance tips for HRs

  • Benefits—Tangible and to the Culture of an organization that undertakes the adoption of policies designed to help employees with work-life balance?  What does an organization stand to gain if it can work through the growing pains of implementation?  
Employers who choose to adopt some work-life policies may find that the candidate pool of applicants increases since employee are always interested in balancing their work and personal lives.  Clearly, a benefit is being able to attract the best possible candidates.  Absenteeism may decrease if employees are able to better structure their lives because of time, or a day, to be taken may not need to be taken if the employee is able to use a flexible schedule, (Kossek, 2009).  Additionally, those employees who wish to start a family may feel at ease knowing that as circumstances in their life changes, their employer has mechanisms for employee flexibility.  This means that there may be less absenteeism.  Responsiveness to critical problems may be able to be solved by work-life flexibility due to the incorporation of technology in the workplace.  Employees who able to benefit from work-life flexibility with laptops, smartphones, video chatting, to name a few, (Kossek, et. al., 2008) 
  • Have you worked as an employee—have you worked for an employer who offered work-life policies?  How were they implemented?  Were you able to use them?  Discuss your experiences as they relate to what you’ve read.  
Yes, I have.  Working for Broward College as an administrator we are paid a salary and that salary is based on working 37.5 hours a week.  Never did we work 37.5 hours a week.  It is more like 60 hours a week since we were so comfortable, we all felt compelled to work additional hours.  But that was of our own free will.  I say free will but it was a standard practice of all administrators.  There were no set hours.  We could work from home whenever we wanted so long as it didn’t affect our performance or outcomes.  We had essentially unlimited sick days.  Technically, they were not policies but procedures.  The procedures were not to be abused and professionalism had to be demonstrated.  When I was not in the office when I was expected to be in the office, I would call, or email, my supervisor’s administrative assistant.  Since I reported to a Vice-President, my Outlook calendar was shared so that the Vice President, or their designee, would have access to be sure there was some oversight.  However, as previously stated, no one EVER micromanaged.  Whenever I wanted.  Provided my tasks were complete. 
References: 
Kossek, E.E., & Lautsch, B. (2008). CEO of me: Creating a life that works in the flexible job age (pp. 1-40). Upper Saddle, NJ: Wharton School Publishing.

Kossek, E.E., (2009). Managing a Diverse Workforce: Aligning and Managing Work/Life Relationships in Organizations. Society for Human Resource Management. Alexandria, Virginia
            Retrieved from: https://www.shrm.org/academicinitiatives/universities/TeachingResources/Pages/AligningandManagingWorkLife.aspx
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Example of a Self-Concept Case Study

Cultural Intelligence for Leaders (2012) defined self-concept as “the totality of complex, organized, and dynamic system of learned beliefs, attitudes and opinions that each person holds to be true about his/her personal existence” & the self-concept we hold to be true helps us form a “perception of who we are based on expectations from, and responses to, our social environment; stimulated by internal and external factors that can create intense emotional responses, impacting on our willingness to learn and our choice of action - guiding our behaviors” (p. 127). In the case (WA, 2018) Jack is a 36-year-old leader within a major hospital who prides himself as a professional. In his work, he supports and helps each of his team members. In his personal life, he used to focus on eating healthy and exercising regularly. In the past year, his focus on healthy living declined because of professional responsibilities. As a consequence, his state of health deteriorated to a point that hi
Post a Comment
Read more

DeBeers - the diamond trading company

PESTEL analysis Political aspect: In 1994 the DeBeers operation was prohibited in the United States territory because of antitrust legislation. These facts complicate the DeBeers operation and shake the whole company. Economic aspect: Although in 1990s DeBeers ruled the whole industry, after several events such as Soviet Union collapse and Alrosa’s appearing, DeBeers lost its control over the market. In addition, Canada’s appearing in the diamond market forced DeBeers to hold back a large portion of its diamonds from the market and purchase much of the excess supply from these producing countries often at inflated prices (McAdams, Reavis, 2008, p.7). Social aspect: In the mid-1990, Angola, Sierra Leone, Liberia and Democratic Republic Congo were outflanked by rebel forces opposed to the government. DeBeers sponsored this military conflict by “blood diamonds” purchasing. Technological aspect: The main threat is the synthetic diamonds grown is the lab-conditions. This tec
Post a Comment
Read more

Case Study 2: Young, Confident, and Moving too Fast

Introduction             The increasing complexities of organizations as it grows and as some take the path of globalization resulted in diversity and attracted many forms of cultural differences. Hence, the need to manage these cultural differences existing within organizations has been increasingly becoming necessary. This is particularly true for managers who may be caught in between various individual culture that each of its subordinates is accustomed to. Managing cultural differences requires what they called cultural intelligence (CQ). Broadly speaking, CQ is the ability to cut across various cultural contexts such as ethnic, generational, or organizational cultures (Livermore, 2011, p. 5). In this paper, the generational cultural differences between Joanne, the manager, and Julia, the newly hired subordinate will be discussed. To give a brief background, Julia is a confident, fast learner, and passionate young woman who wants to do more in her job without being micromanaged
Post a Comment
Read more