Benefits Of Work Life Balance Policies And Practices

Today people are looking for benefits what will help them manage their work-life life-styles better. Today, with the help of technology, employer is now starting to be more capable of offering flexible options with great results.

Technology advances has been most dramatic in clerical and service work, which has led to the deskilling of labor. The basic job of this service work is to handle, maintain and process information. Improvements such as the computer, voice recognition software and automation processes have led to the deskilling of this service work. As a result of this technology people are now facing the threat of losing their job because a process has been changed, upgraded or eliminated.

Work-life balance has been a popular topic for employees across all age and occupations for years, representing a rising concern of contemporary human resource management and labor policies. This topic has attracted the attention from the millennium generation, who is stepping into the market and beginning to grow a career. Therefore considering the increasing demand, well-designed workforce planning with diverse scheduling options offered to employees appears to be extra credits for most companies. This research paper aims to communicate the positive effects of four-day workweek, and providing support for why employers should adopt this schedule for employees and themselves through 1) introducing background and history of four-day workweek as a work schedule option and 2) demonstrating benefits of four-day workweek from both employer and employees’ perspectives.

In the case brought to us in the text, it gave us two examples of employees seeking work life balance. The first example is a man that has risen in the ranks at his company. Instead of having less working as he had thought, he faced much longer work hours with very little time with his family. In the second example a woman is looking at changing companies and in her negotiations she negotiates items such as a flexible work schedule. Although this option works well for the women it does not work for every employee.

It is noted that employees spend a large amount of their time at work. Work is becoming more than just a 9-5, but a place work longevity friendships are created. Also created is what the article termed as workaholism, reporting that workaholism not only cause a great deal of stress but can also cause mental fatigue and physical somatic systems. All of these aliments can hinder spiritualty – which can lead to absence, low performance, and a financial hit for the company. The financial components include medical expenses, loss of productivity, health insurance.

Changes in the way we work, the workplace and the role-assignment are not invisible to anyone. The fact that we work differently and our approach to work has changed is widely acknowledged in modern discourse. These changes can be attributed to numerous factors including cultural shifts, changes in cultural beliefs and values, need for better quality of life, rising cost of living, changes in science and technology and of course growing access to education.

Our society is ever-changing and such is true with our work environments as well. Today’s contemporary workforce has significantly changed the way business is done. The contemporary workforce has put great demands on organizations calling them to meet many challenges these challenges include: changing the corporate culture, becoming more adaptable and to focus on workforce steadiness. The modern workforce can yield some great advantages while also producing many disadvantages and for this very reason it highly important that employment laws remain in place.

Over the past decades we’ve been hearing a lot about work-family balance. On average people these days spend every third day working at home in evenings and weekends. Certainly, the composition of today’s workforce continues to change. There are more females coming to workplaces, more dual-career couples and single -parent employees, and more workers involved in caring for significant others. This increasing diversity requires re-examination of how the work and life domains intersect. Juggling the demands of and satisfaction from the work and life domains can be challenging. The borders between our work and life domains are becoming more blur. Also, the modernization and advancement in technology have resulted in more opportunities to engage in work anytime, anywhere.

This paper, summing most of the research available on this subject, proposes that if the individual is given the appropriate framework in which this can be done, it is likely his or her productivity will increase, along with the level of employee retention, decreasing, thus, the overall costs for the company. With this in mind, the paper will look at some of the existing research, draw conclusions on the pros and cons of implementing work-life programs in the business strategy and embrace the idea that overall pro elements are consistently more important for the company's activity to support the implementation of work-life programs in an organization's business strategy.

The world of work is transmuting. The working patterns experienced by the post-war baby boomer generation (born: 1946–1964) are no longer acceptable to much of generation X (born: 1965–1980) or the millennial generation (born: 1981–2000). Work-life balance has entered the business lexicon and it is here to stay. From the perspective of employers often faced with skills shortages and skills gaps. Provision of flexible working arrangements is now part and parcel of the brand image of many organisations, particularly where the labour market for staff is global – where it was once national or even local. Moreover, in a world of always-on, always-connected economies, the line between work and home is becoming increasingly blurred.

There is a generally wide perspective that, in the last quarter of the 20th century and the present century, that there has been significant transformation to the sorts of work available, how they are practiced and who engages in them. This has been influenced by the changes in technology, manufacturing and global economic activity. Work has become these secure and more flexible, as many recent jobs are being more fixed term and part time rather the full time permanent employment. (Billett 2007: 3)

Every code of companies have the pros and cons, so does work-at-home policy which KGDV was trying to introduce. Whether the company decided to expand work-at-home policy at fast speed or slow down the expansion, the side effects caused by the policy that may bring about high moral hazard in the company would become most likely apparent in the long run and should be observed. In order to demonstrate appropriate proposals for the problem, the essay will first outline two issues of the programme. Then, how to build up trusts and encourage workers to communicate to minimize the side effects from the aspect of leadership theories will be carefully argued. Finally, a summary of proposals will be shown.

Today 's organizations as often as need to deal with the ever changing client needs and wants, the competition within niche markets as well as the rapid improvement of technology. Organisations therefore need to execute flexibility in the workplace as it is a basic element to overall workplace effectiveness. Flexibility is a methodology use to state when and how work is conducted as well as how vocation are organized. Pilbeam and Corbridge (2002), describe flexibility at workplace as ‘the capacity of an organization to adjust the size, structure, responsiveness and expenses of the people inputs required to accomplish objectives and goals of the organization’. Working flexibility is about how flexible work is organized in the workplace so that the organizations and employees benefits. Workplace flexibility can be regarded as ‘the capacity of employees to make decisions influencing when, where and for how long they engage in work’ (Jeffrey, 2008). Flexible working is a kind of working arrangement which gives a level of flexibility on how long, when, where as well as at what times employees work. Employees access flexible working through HR arrangements, which as a rule require supervisory approval. The changing environment of work is making new difficulties and opportunities that organizations can only meet with the sort of alacrity that flexible working arrangements provide. Therefore, implement a workplace flexibility strategy is a fundamental part for any organisations,

This study concludes that many companies are working towards a flexible working environment, improving sustainability and profitability. For some businesses, flexible working practices may be challenging to implement, the likes of small businesses providing face-to-face customer services. However, it appears that in many cases the real barrier preventing flexible work arrangements are workplace cultures as they do not support the use of flexible work practices. The attitudes of immediate managers or employers will need to change.

Work-life balance has become a primary concern in both society and a big number of organisations in the globalised world. Furthermore, according to Sok, Blomme and Tromp (2014), this issue now becomes more difficult to make decisions for people who are in charge of management positions. Ideally, to cope with this prominent issue, the notion of flexible working is created; however, this also brings significant challenge. These aspects will continue being basic concerns in the future due to the fact that our world of work changes across the time. From these reasons, personally, I chose this topic to gain in-depth understanding about aspects which delight comprehensive human-being in workplace. In this report, I will shed light on the summary of the topic and my individual reflection when running this.