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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
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