Ibm- Overcome the Stress of Can’t Take Off

How might IBM go about improving its flexible vacation policy to help alleviate some of the stress experience by employees who feel like they can’t take time off? The flexible vacation policy is aim to give employees the option to take limitless days off creates a better work environment. Employees have the autonomy to manage their own workload and take vacation, sick or personal days whenever they need to and for as long as they need. There is no unused time at the end of the year, there is no carry forward into the next year, and there is no payout of accrued days when the employment relationship ends.

Flexible vacation policy can increase the productivity since the employee can choose the where the location they doing their job and when they are doing, these can lead employees more willing to contribute to the organization if they felt their working environment is comfortable. Otherwise, the traditional vacation policy allocates a specific number of vacation, sickness, and personal days to each employee depending on length of time at the company. Sometimes employees are able to carry over a certain portion of unused vacation time into a new year or they can sell back their unused days to the company.

To tracking these days off using costly and time consuming accounting and administration methods. Now there are many companies using flexible vacation policy, such as Netflix, IBM, or Morningstar. Since 2003, IBM had flexible vacation time for every employee. People who work for the company simply give their supervisors a heads up, but otherwise, take time off when they want it. Instead of tracking the hours of employees work, the electronics company has implemented what it calls a "results only work environment," where workers are measured on achievement alone.

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Although flexibility vacation policy can be benefits to the organization, supervisor and employee, flexible work arrangements but it also pose a series of challenges and disadvantages. The stresses experienced by employees who feel like they can’t take time off mostly due to the ongoing project which in on hand, and many colleague taking time off all the same time. These are the two reasons always caused discontented happened in an organization. To deal with these problems IBM trying out a new vacation policy, in which fixed vacation rules are replaced by informal agreements between employees and their immediate supervisor.

The guiding principle is that the work must get done. As long as this is the case, employees can take as much vacation as they want, even on short notice. Avoid ruining the beautiful vacation by being call back during the vacation it is better to hand over or replace the job to someone or make sure the task is fully completed before the holiday tune is on. To make this policy going on effectively that is needed the cooperation of all employees because supervisor concerns about equity.

Supervisors worry about being fair to employees when they know everyone can’t have flexibility. The key is making sure that the process is the same that every employee’s request is fairly considered, even though the outcome may vary. The present of technology in flexible vacation policy may help IBM to overcome the problem of having many colleagues taking vacation at the same time. IBM can create a page for all IBM’s workers-the management information system, to update the newest information and the vacation date employees wanted or planning to take off.

Management of information system is any organized of people, hardware, software, communication networks, data resources and policies and procedures that store, retrieves, transforms and disseminates information in an organization. The system can reduce the chance of error occur, such as forgot to inform their head or supervisor, clash date with colleagues vacation date and so on. To manage this page is needed a person to in charge, to allocate employees leave or vacation based on the system data which updated by employees. Even there is flexible vacation policy but still need some workforce to carry on the organization activities.

Besides that, the communications between organization, supervisor and employee also can reduce the imbalance emotion of the workforce because of they can’t take time off. Annual or semi-annually meeting or a gathering for all workers should be maintain even because of the technology’s reach can provide non specific location for workers to contact with their supervisor or head via computer or cell phone by using video conference, e-mail, mms and so on, but a face-to-face meeting can brings a lot of advantages sometimes. It can avoid conflict happened by using text conversation, it can shows the sincerity and so on.

No matter how flexible the vacation policy is, the contraction between all stages of workforce should be maintain and fix in a time. Example, a general meeting of every department in held on every second week of the month, it is the chance for each department head to meet their workforce and share the newest information in between them. Other than that, company should organize two or more person work in a team so that if one of the member who take day off, there is another person who will replace the position, it can reduce the cases of calling back the worker who is on vacation.

Synergy always can make task to be more efficiency and done with more effectively. If use this way, it brings a lot of advantages. First of all, colleague of the member who is on vacation can response on the continuing job which can save more time and money. Second, it can increase the satisfaction of workers inside the company because they can get their happiness vacation without the obstruction of the job. Grouping work can also increase the effectiveness and efficiency.

Resisting change

Whether it’s the labor shortage, or labor mismatch, the brain drain, the traffic, the new demographics, or technology, there are many profound and reasonable reasons to change the way we work. Being proactive in the face of change is much better than being reactive in this fast-paced business environment. Fears of abuse. There are some employees who may take advantage of their work situation, no matter what the policy. As one supervisor put it, “There are always a few bad apples. They have to be dealt with.

It’s much better to manage for the good apples. ” If employees are well managed, abuses will be kept to a minimum whether the employee works on a flexible arrangement or not.

 Skeletons in the closet

Just because flexibility was tried with one employee in the past and didn’t work doesn’t mean that the same outcome is inevitable if it is tried again—especially if the individual is well matched with the flexible arrangement. Mistakes can be used as important tools in making improvements. It takes more time to manage. Interviews with managers at JPMorgan Chase who supervise employees using some flexible work arrangement reveal far fewer problems than managers anticipated: 95 percent of managers say it does not require more time to manage people on flexible arrangements; 88 percent of managers who are managing employees on flexible work arrangements report no negative impact on their ability to supervise; and 66 percent say managing flexible work arrangements enhanced their management skills.

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