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Work Life balance tips

his week’s readings outlined the benefits and challenges to organizations implementing work-life policies.   An organization can create policies, but cultural change requires more than just a change in policy.  As your reading points out:
  • Policies are sometimes under-utilized by career-oriented professionals.
  • Users may face stigma; career backlash; glass ceiling effect.
  • Policy use is sometimes not supported by management.
Absenteeism, supervision, equity, performance, customer service and the overall creation of more work for managers who have to coordinate the implications of more complex policies are among the most prevalent concerns of among management when considering the implementation of these types of policies.
Given the valid concerns, what are the benefits—both 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?  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. 

Concerns of work-life Policies

     There are many concerns when it comes to work-life policies and what are the real benefits versus the risks of not meeting the desired outcomes. To name a few of the concerns YourStory.com (2016) includes the possibility of employees taking advantage of the flexible schedules and missing more time out of work than what was intended to assign. This also adds the issue of lower productivity, lack of ownership because the employee is not even present and who is responsible for the missed time. For employees with the flexibility of working from home, there’s always the risk of network problems, no phone connection which translates to the fact that this type of flexibility is not meant for everyone in the workplace.

Benefits of work-life policies

     One of the benefits of work-life policies is to achieve employee retention. There are other benefits for both the company and the workforce. Chris (2016), details the benefit of better time management for staff by allowing flexible time. This allows the employee to personally evaluate how and when he or she can be more productive this creates and increased performance and allows the employees to meet the required goals or tasks on time.Work-life policies can also achieve more content employees and with better morale because the employees feel appreciated. The work-life policies helping the balance between the employee personal life and professional life help staff be more concentrated and ready to succeed.

Company gain from work-life policies

     Companies can benefit from work-life policies and the issues of implementing such ideas in the workplace. According to Rampton (2016), the companies can benefit from increased productivity this reflects from less fatigue and stress in the workplace. Another benefit to count is that happy employees tend to stay with the company which translates to less turnover and fewer recruitment costs. Is also important to mention that employees with high level of stress tend to be more absent from work in other words if the life-work balance helps to minimize the stress that also adds up to the employee productivity.

Work-life policy experience

     At my current office, some changes were applied to some areas like informatics and the employees are able to work from home and have flexible time as long as they complete the needed tasks and responsibilities. I have heard good feedback from the staff enjoying this benefit. To implement this flexibility the company had to make some investment in licenses for collaboration software (WebEx) so staff could participate in meetings by video conference. The purchasing of Jabber licenses so the staff working remote could utilize the computer as a desk phone and call any internal extension and VPN software installed to all remote staff so the can access all network resources as if they were in the office. The implementation was a little pricey but in the end, I believe it has worked for the benefit of both the staff and the organization.

Conclusion

     Better focus workforce, with less stress, with the ability to manage time to be as productive as possible all the mentioned concepts benefit both the employee and employer. Happy employees produce better results and are more company focus. The policies are not just written in a paper the company must be able to evaluate and monitor the utilization of the flexibility by staff. Proper training and assessment are needed for the policy to be successful. If you look at the benefits vs the disadvantages the evidence eights in favor of the work-life balance policy.

References

Chris, J. (2016, January 19). Benefits of Work Life Balance for Employees and Employers. Retrieved March 21, 2019, from http://www.josephchris.com/benefits-of-work-life-balance-for-employees-and-employers
Rampton, J. (2016, February 29). How Work Life Balance Can Keep Your Employees Happy and Your Business Healthy. Retrieved March 21, 2019, from https://www.inc.com/john-rampton/how-work-life-balance-can-keep-your-employees-happy-and-your-business-healthy.html
Yourstory.com. (2016, September 14). Work-life balance is not always a good thing, here's why! Retrieved March 21, 2019, from https://yourstory.com/2016/09/work-life-balance-disadvantages
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