Innovative Hr Practices to Maintain Work Life Balance of Employees

Introduction

The role of work has changed throughout the world due to economic conditions and social demands. Originally, work was a matter of necessity and survival. Throughout the years, the role of “work” has evolved and the composition of the workforce has changed. Today, work still is a necessity but it should be a source of personal satisfaction as well.

One of the vehicles to help provide attainment of personal and professional goals is work-life benefits and programs The issue of work-life balance has developed out of demographic and social changes that have resulted in a more diverse, declining workforce, different family and work models. Supporting work-life balance (WLB) is seen as a way of attracting and retaining the labour force needed to support economic well-being. In organizations and on the home front, the challenge of work/life balance is rising to the top of many employers’ and employees’ consciousness.

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In today’s fast-paced society, human resource professionals seek options to positively impact the bottom line of their companies, improve employee morale, retain employees with valuable company knowledge, and keep pace with workplace trends. However, experience has shown that policy on flexible work practices needs to be supported by strategies to achieve effective implementation. This research provides suggestions and options for Human Resources Managers on developing and managing equitable flexible work practices.

It has been designed to provide practical advice to assist organizations in achieving successful implementation of these policies which would be a key initiative for inclusion in an organizational WLB.

Defining work-life balance:

” Work-life balance is about effectively managing the juggling act between paid work and the other activities that are important to people. It’s not saying that work is wrong or bad, but that work shouldn’t completely crowd out the other things that matter to people like time with family, participation in community activities, voluntary work, personal development, leisure and recreation” . “Working practices that acknowledge and aim to support the needs of staff in achieving a balance between their home and working lives”

"people having a measure of control over when, where and how they work. It is achieved when an individual's right to a fulfilled life inside and outside work is accepted and respected as the norm, to the mutual benefit of the individual, business and society. " UK organization Employers for Work-Life Balance

Meaning:

In recent years there is a dramatic change in much organization with respect to work-Life balance (WLB) which is named as flexible work time arrangements, the sensitivity of topic is reflected by its idea which is to provide personal work style preferences. This arrangement is famous for job satisfaction, commitment, and engagement of an employee. When we talk about flexibility the first thing which we relate it with is relaxation, relaxation in terms of tasks, duties, responsibility, but when we particularly talk about WLB it means that we are talking about nontraditional great schedules and working away from campus.

There are a significant percentage of employees already involved in flexible time arrangements that they do not work the standard schedule of 8:00 am to 5:00 pm which is being followed by the most of the organization. Variable arrangements provide for daily, weekly, monthly, or annual fluctuations in scheduling. Flexible arrangements are a broad term we are not only talking about daily scheduling but it may vary to monthly or even annual rearrangements of time. In flexible arrangements we are not bound to an old stereotypical standards but a fair customize scheduling. Work-Life Balance does not mean an equal balance.

Trying to schedule an equal number of hours for each of your various work and personal activities is usually unrewarding and unrealistic. Life is and should be more fluid than that. Your best individual work-life balance will vary over time, often on a daily basis. The right balance for you today will probably be different for you tomorrow. The right balance for you when you are single will be different when you marry, or if you have children; when you start a new career versus when you are nearing retirement.

THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK

• Importance
• Productivity

Managers can increase the productivity of employees by responding to their need to balance work and personal obligations. This positive approach by managers can:

1. Inspire increased loyalty and commitment from employees.
2. Retain employees and make savings on the costs of employee turnover, training and absenteeism.
3. Examine how work-life balance policies affect another variable such as job satisfaction or organizational commitment, and then correlate these variables to productivity.

Job Satisfaction: When work extends into family time, it can create stresses which then extend into the workforce.

One meta-analysis suggests that there is a consistent negative relationship between work-family conflict and job satisfaction. As far as work-life balance policies can reduce the conflict between work and family, they can increase job satisfaction. There is no strong empirical evidence of a positive association between high employee satisfaction and high productivity, but job satisfaction does have a clear negative relationship with absence and turnover. A satisfied workforce may be valuable because employees are then less likely to be absent and consequently affect the bottom line.

Other commentators suggest that work-life balance policies can increase organizational commitment. Higher levels of organizational commitment are then correlated with lower turnover and better job performance.

Saving Costs: The work-life balance is important to reduce for the cost of an organization such as Reduced staff turnover, Estimated cost of replacing a manager, and the estimated cost of replacing an employee. Organizations rest upon the assumption that work-life balance policies will improve staff retention.

Reducing staff turnover leads to lower costs, as recruiting new staff is a costly process. Staff loss leads to direct costs and indirect cost. Direct cost associated with recruiting, such as advertising, and interviewing. However indirect costs associated with the loss of institutional knowledge and contacts. Greater staff retention also reduces training costs. Having staff staying longer in a firm, increases the returns on investments made in their training. There are Cost savings also if work-life balance policies reduce absenteeism.

The main objective of our survey is to focus on employee satisfaction with organization policies so as to control level of stress, lack of productivity, lack of moral etc. which effect employee retention and turnover. Therefore to achieve high employee satisfaction and engagement different innovative human recourse policies could be adopted. To address this issue, our survey is conducted to investigate the innovative human recourse policies to maintain work life balance of employee that aims to improve satisfaction and engagement.

How The Survey Help?

A comprehensive evolution of Work-life balance can best be seen as a “check-up” on the human resources policies of your organization. Like any check-up, you learn both what is working well and where there are areas needed improvements.

When conducted on regular basis, a systematic method for assigning employee satisfaction will let you identify key trends and patterns among employee attitudes towards the WLB, thereby enabling you and your company to anticipate and act on upcoming problems and issues. As a result, an human recourses policies study conducted will enable you to use the information from your employee as a tool for change within your organization. We strongly believe that human resources policies studies should represent a mutual exchange of information between employee and organization. To fulfill this simple principle, there is a critical need to make employee feel that they are part of the research process.

For maximum effectiveness, employee must believe that work-life balance have values to them as well as to the organization, that believes in clarity demostaticting to employees this study is an opportunity to be heard and directly influence human resources policies . This approach not only measurable impact on participation rates but also effect the degree to which employee trust the outcomes when finding are reported back to them. For these reasons, all questionnaires are carefully designed for a case of use, including straightforward wording a clean layout and simple navigation.

Research Methodology:

Method of data collection: The survey was developed by a department team comprised of representatives from several organization, institutions, and the business farms. Evaluations provided technical assistance, and the team reviewed on human resources polices for maintain work-life balance.

Following extensive discussion, the team determined the basic structure, format, questions, and methodology for administering the survey. Each workgroup member was asked to include participants from management, professionals, and support staff. The purpose of the test was to determine the following: Determine which technique will influence the Work-life balance in human resources policies. Determine if the employee feels about work-life balance. To solicit suggestions for improvement of the human resource policies. To solicit information on employees willingness to participate in such a Survey. To solicit information on ways to encourage employee participation.

Research Methodology:

Research can be define as “ process of systematic inquiry that is design to collect, analysis, interpret and use to understand, describe, predict or control an educational physiological phenomenon or to empower individuals in such contexts. This research undertaking is designed to be a descriptive study about objectives, types of data, sources of data, questionnaires, sampling and sample design.

Collection of Data: There are two kinds of data can be taken as the survey is concern about they can be,

1. Primary data
2. Secondary data

From the above types of data, the data can be extracted as follows:

Primary Data: It includes the Questionnaires taken for the survey include ten factors with rating options.

Secondary Data: It includes the literature review as follows:

There is clear evidence of a strong business benefits in the case studies, however these conclusions are context specific, and not necessarily general sable. There is No “one size fits all” business case for work-life balance policies. The larger, econometric studies are less common that the case study work but they do find a correlation between productivity and the presence of work-life balance policies. The evidence of the business benefits of work-life balance policies is reasonably strong, and increasing.

There are many incentives for the usage of WLB policies - according to a 2002 National Development Plan Study, the level of family friendliness of the workplace (as measured in terms of number of family-friendly policies available) was significantly correlated with the work satisfaction of fathers and mothers. The benefits of such policies included employee satisfaction, attracting/retaining employee productivity, reduced labour turnover, reduced absenteeism and improved business results.

Questionnaire: Quantitative data in this study is collected through a questionnaire that was distributed to IT sector employees. The purpose of the questionnaires is to know about the employee satisfaction with organization policies which effect employee retention and turnover. The questionnaire is designed to determine the actual and perceptive view of the employee. To do this, the employees were asked to complete the questionnaire in two ways. First, they were asked close ended questions like “yes/no” according to their perception. Secondly, they were asking open ended questions in which they can write anything according to related question.

Sampling: A process of selecting no. of units for a study in such a way that the unit represent the large group from which they are selected. The sampling can be defines as “ a finite subject selected from population with the purpose of investigation of particular objective is called as sampling.

The sapling method for this survey was a “simple random sampling”. Simple random sampling is the easiest from all probability sampling it assure that all the members in the population are included in the list and then randomly selected the desired no. of sample.

Analysis of data

Processing and analysis of data involved open and closed-ended questions related to work-life balance which are performed the summarized collected data and organizing it in a manner that gives the answer to the research question and objective. The questionnaire was as below, “ This study is being undertaken for purely academic purposes on work-life balance i. e. flexible timing at the workplace.

On the basis of a survey done on “Innovative Human Resource Policies for Maintaining Work-Life Balance of Employees” the conclusion can make as follows: While performing work-life balance policies in the organization the sex (male/female) should be considered a priory. It is concluding from survey, as the employees are the major assets of an organization their satisfaction (that is 97. 61% feel) will play great role for the growth and development of organization. A committed workforce is the hallmark of a successful organization. Committed employees are more productive and work with a focus on quality to increase organizational goodwill. However, the employees are the organization's most important audience and they hold the keys to organizational success.

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