Work Life Flexibility Replaces Work life - MyAssignmenthelp.com

Question: Discuss about the Work Life Flexibility Replaces Work life Balance. Answer: Introduction Work life life balance is the proper engagement between the work, career and ambition and other things in life and lifestyle such as health, spending time with family, nurturing the hobbies and spiritual development through meditation. Whereas flexible working is the new way of maintaining work life balance. Flexible working means that a person in a company do work at any point of time. In todays world the work has become such a level that it requires to work may be all over the week. In that case flexible hour working is necessary. In this report there will be portrayal of the new methods adopted by the employees . Then there will be explanation of behavior of the human resource managers in unconventional methods (Agarwala et al. 2014). Then there will be the decisions and the implications of the leaders and the managers of the organization in this case. There are certain reasons for which flexible working has come into existent. The first thing is to improve the productivity of the company or organization. It will also lead to the better sustenance of the potential employees. It will lead to the reduction of the stress and tiredness of the employees. It will help the employees of the employees to spend time with family and friends. It will also permit the employees to nurture his or her passions. Thus, in short it will enable the employees to maintain the work-balance life. Thus, there will be less absentees of the employees in the organization. Moreover the company will have better customer service for these perspectives and consequently the employees will be committed to the organization. The human resources of the company will be enriched due to this decision. Different new methods adopted by the employees In this modern period one cannot expect a single shift of working. The business of any organization or companies have to interact with the clients and other business partners . Hence, in that context employees faces various challenges in the workplace and it becomes very difficult for the employees to give time to family, his or her own health and time for ones health. So, in order to solve this important issue the flexible working hour has been the new methods to solve this issue. Otherwise poor working balance leads to certain problems like the employee has to leave the job or become socially detached for excessive workplace. There are various types of flexible type of working :- The first one is the flexi time. Flexi time can be operated in different ways varying on the business requirements. On the other way there must be a procedure to permit employees to build up additional hours, which can be used to leave early, come in late, or take longer periods off, with the permission of the managers. For example in call centre the timings of the staffs are arranged in different times because the type of this business is not restricted to only one shift and the employees must also need time to maintain a work-life-balance. In this case the employees can also select the working time according to their convenience. The other type of flexible working is part time working. Part-time work is the most common type of flexible working. Part time working includes any sort of arrangement where the employee is contracted to work less than the full time hours and there is no obligation or any contract for it. The potential benefits of part time working leads to the employees to chose shifts according to their own choice. They can dedicate their time to other commitments and responsibilities. They do not have to obligate just like the permanent employees. But there lies a problem that they do not have any surety of their jobs. Another important feature is the job sharing where two people share the jobs . They share the pay and benefits in proportion to the hours each works. Joint workers or partners may work split days, split weeks or alternate weeks. It has been observed many times that the successful collaborators and partners jointly handle many large projects. It helps them to divide their work according to the potential of the workers. The benefit of this type of working is that when one person is at holiday then the other person can look after the work. It helps the employee to work without stress due to the sharing of the work. Another type of hour is annualized hours system is where the total number of hours to be worked over the year is fixed but there is flexibility over the employees daily and weekly working patterns. Typically, the times an employee is contracted to work are split into set shifts which cover the majority of the year unallocated shifts which the employee can be asked to work at short notice In some systems the employee is paid for unallocated shifts and owes the time to the company (Bader, Froese and Kraeh 2016). The company holds these hours or payback shifts in reserve and can ask employees to work them at short notice, to cover for colleagues or to cope with a peak in demand. The term 'zero hours' is generally understood to be an employment contract between an employer and a worker, where the employer is not obliged to provide the worker with any minimum hours of work. Moreover the flexible worker is not obliged to accept any hours of work that are offered to them (Golden, Chung and Sweet 2016). There is another type of flexible work which is named as Zero hours' contracts to meet a temporary or changeable need for staff. Zero hours contracts may be appropriate for some people who want occasional earnings and are able to be entirely flexible about when they work. Home working is also considered as another type of working when an employee regularly carries out all, or part of, their duties from home rat her than the employers premises. It could also be done occasionally or it could be a full time arrangement. Hence, it can be said that in todays world due to the improvement in technological aspects it is easy to do work from home (Lyonette 2013) . Hence it allows every person to balance his or her work working with the other responsibilities and commitments of life. However, flexible working is very fruitful and appropriate in todays world. But there are also some cons in this respect. The employees sometimes fail to maintain a balance while they are doing flexible work (Galea, Houkes and De Rijk 2014. There is an additional pressure on the employees who are not at all interested to do flexible work. Sometimes the employees are forced to do work which deteriorates the quality of services provided to the customers. There are some problem in communication when the employees do work from the home. Another factor is risk of undermanned of the staff when there is no business in the organization (Perlow. and Kelly 2014) . Inspite of this limitation there are importance of flexible working in nowadays. In that juncture the planning and policies of human resource managers and the contribution and the motivation of the leaders are very necessary. New Methods Implemented by the HRM In this time human resource managers must imply some different and strategic policies in order to maintain the flexible life working. They are :- The human resource managers of the company totally looks after the human resources of the company. It depends upon the human resource managers to a arge extent that how they will tackle the situation of the employees or the labourers of any factory ( Lewis et al. 2016) . The Human resource managers must listen the problems of the employees carefully and then take the proper decisions for them. The priority should be given according to the needs f each employee (Galea, Houkes and De Rijk 2014) . If necessary, they must consult with the managers in order to take exact decisions for it. The hr managers must provide look after the safety and security of the employees in that case he or she must be very particular about the policies of the employees. The arrangement and staffing of the employees is technically done by the hr managers. Hence, in that situation the hr managers must talk with the supervisor in order to deal with the situation (Skinner et al. 2014) . The hr managers must observe and supervise the facts that employee who are doing flexible shifts and part time jobs are not exploited in terms of doing extra work. Employees who are working from home needs proper communication and technological help in the home , in that situation it is very much important for the hr managers to look after this problem (Gangwisch 2014). The hr managers must also consider and help to grant certain leaves such as periodic leave. Periodic leave is granted to members of the staff of the organization who have served not less three years in a cooperation (Nam 2014) . It can be considered that the full payment of salary, pension and national insurance is continued , but this type of grant is mainly restricted to people who are in academic field (Zheng et al. 2015). There is another type of special leave with pay which is granted for very short time to attend meetings of learned societies, give papers at the conference and similar other purposes (Davies 2014). So, in present days it duty of the hr managers to look after these factors so that the employees can gain a proper life balance and also it enables the company to sustain valuable employee (Poggesi, Mari and De Vita 2015) . Implication of the Leaders and the Managers The leaders and the managers of the company plays the most vital role in a company or any organization. The leaders and managers are different types. Some leaders are mainly power wielders and profit-seeking . It is very much true that the leaders will focus on the profit and product generation of the company. But they must consider certain facts of life which is closely related to the different policies and features of corporate social responsibility (Shagvaliyeva and Yazdanifard 2014). The corporate social responsibility is inclusive of promoting work, family and community integration is an important part of corporate social responsibility which that is gaining prominence in many organization (Paul, Dutta and Saha 2015) . This is because businesses are having to recognize their impact and their force for change in much broader arena which was not issue of matter in the conventional business strategies . Work-life balance is one of the important aspect of the corporate social respon sibility (Lee, Back and Chan 2015 ). This is because this is not only related to the benefit of the organization only, it is highly connected to the wider thought process of not only does it impact on important organizational issues such as workforce diversity, it also has obvious linkages with the wider society. Employees are more than just valuable members of an organization or company , they also often have different purposes and roles within the community which are threatened when the particular organization puts unreasonable demands on their time (Smeaton, Ray and Knight 2015). A research conducted by the Roffley Park can be said that the the employees of the organization not only needs to spend time and carry out responsibilities regarding the friends and the employees but they also need to contribute to society by working in the charities (Cahill et al. 2015). This is inclusive of corporate social responsibility Flexible working is one of the option for the work-life balance and thus the term has been considered as work-life flexible working. In that circumstances sometimes flexible working creates pressure over the employees due the increasing in the productivity of the company (Yadav and Dabhade 2014). Hence in those circumstances it is very much significant for the leaders and the employees to thing about the benefits and interests of the employees. In emergency cases it is appropriate for the employees to work hard more. Otherwise it is not at all right to create pressure over the employees. Hence it depends on the leaders that in what ways they will tackle the situation. The leaders must also look after the moral an d ethical culture of the company in order to see that during the office hour the work is done in a proper way So, that the leaders and the managers can deliver adequate quantity of time for maintaining a work balance life. During the hours of flexible working .sometimes the managers are not present there, in that situation managers must recruit other leaders so that the work is done in a proper manner and the employees do not have to do extra work and it create anarchy and problem in the work place (Kim 2014) . Another crucial thing is according to different surveys and studies if the leaders and the managers of any organization does not give s excessive importance of work . But they also gives values on spending time with family and friends, and it is very much responsible in doing some charitable works then it is obvious that they will implement same policies in context to working. Research presented at the 2001 British Psychological Society conference demonstrated that senior executives who can work flexibly perform better than full-time managers do (Smith, Smith and Brower 2016). There is another study, which reflected the facts that the managers rated 70% of flexible workers higher than full-time colleagues and their own output in previous full-time work. Job sharers were also rated very positively, whereby 7 0% of job sharing executives were perceived to have 30% increased output over one person doing the same job. Conclusion In conclusion it can be said that the work life flexibility which is maintaining the work-life-balance depends largely on the attitude of the leaders and the managers of a company. Basically, it depends on their strategies and plans and policies of the leaders and the managers that whether the employees of the organization will able to get a s healthy lifestyle or not. Another recent research report which explored the role managers play in work-life balance in Canada which concluded that good managers are key to helping employees cope with the daily struggle of trying to balance the demands of work and home. The research, conducted by The Conference Board of Canada, highlighted the role of managers as the translators of the corporate culture and as gatekeepers to flexible work options and innovative family-friendly policies. 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