Work Life Balance in Economic downturn

Question: Write an essay on work life balance in economic downturn. Answer: Introduction The report aims at studying one of the most important concepts that is being by millions of organisations today. The concept is known as flexibility. The report aims at studying the differences that might have erupted in the concept as the organisations have evolved over time because some people believe that flexibility has lost its original purpose. The report also discusses the effect that long working hours can have on the overall performance of the employees and how can an organisation ensure work life balance when it is going through a period of economic downturns. Flexibility The present day business organisations are competing in a very complex business environment where the competition amongst firms have reached a global level and is still on the rise as more and more countries are implementing globalisation. In this era of globalizations, companies cannot reply upon products, services, suppliers, distributors, processes, supply chain management systems, etc. to gain market competencies as all of them can be easily duplicated within a short span of time. The only resources that can provide market competencies in the present day world are the human resources that an organisation holds ("Why is Human Resources Important? | Importance of an HR Department | TriNet", n.d.). Therefore, it is important for the business organisations to look after their human resources and take necessary steps that would help in the development of the human resource so that they become more productive and efficient in the neck to neck market competition. Flexibility is one of the most important strategies that the organisations are implementing today to provide a better work environment to their employees. Flexibility at workplace helps the employers and the employees to make arrangements in working conditions that are suitable to both the parties. The basic idea behind workplace flexibility is that it provides the employers with an approach to bring down operating costs, increase productivity and efficiency while it allows the employees to maintain a better balance between their work and personal lives ("Flexibility in the workplace Employee entitlements Fair Work Ombudsman", n.d.). Some of the advantages of workplace flexibility are discussed below: It helps in increasing the organisational commitment and loyalty amongst the employees. It helps in increasing the quality of life of the employer as well as of the employees. The biggest advantage of flexibility is that it helps in increasing productivity, efficiency and job satisfaction amongst the employees. Workplace flexibility is in great demand today and even the small business organisations are being threatened due to the absence of this concept. The employees now demand a greater balance between their work and personal life if the company wants them to show greater productivity and efficiency because most of the times, the family conditions, problems and pressures have a huge impact on their performances and they are unable to cope up if they are unable to maintain a balance between their work and life. Employees have themselves reported in a number of researches that they tend to be more productive and engaged in the work when they are provided with better aspects to manage their work life balance. Flexibility in workplace has also shown positive results related to mental and physical health. Researchers have also concluded that flexibility can help in reducing the levels of stress amongst the employees ("WHY EMPLOYEES NEED FLEXIBILITY", n.d.). Workplace flexibility is a very good concept that has a number of benefits. The concept has improved the work environment for the employees and they are becoming more satisfied with their jobs. In companies that do not have flexibility options, most of the employees are unsatisfied and have the maximum tendency to leave their jobs and search for organisations that offer them greater flexibility ("A Revolutionary Change: Making the Workplace More Flexible | Solutions", 2011). The argument made by Juliet Bourke is not appropriate as flexibility is still one of the best strategies to cope up with imbalances between the work and personal lives of the employees. There are millions of companies that have implemented workplace flexibility while the others are planning to implement it in the near future. According to Juliet Bourke, the concept of flexibility has lost its paradigms because now it demands lower number of employees to achieve greater objectives but this is actually not true. If the situation is considered practically, the employees who are provided with flexible work hours have been found to have greater job satisfaction, job engagement, work commitment and organisational commitment, which obviously mean that they are ready to achieve higher objectives for the organisation. If looked upon from another point, it can be said that workplace flexibility can be quite difficult for some companies to be implemented in their workplaces. It is these companies that are not able to cope up with the flexibility strategy as the terms and conditions of the strategy might put additional burden on some senior managers but from an overall perspective, flexibility is still one of the best strategies and has the desired capabilities to help the management in achieving higher efficiency, productivity, employee retention rate and job satisfaction amongst the employees. Implications of long working hours on employees Long working hours can be beneficial for the employees and the employers as it helps in compensating for unexpected changes and absence of human resource without having to hire extra human resource. However, the negative aspects of long working hours, on the employees, far outweigh the benefits of long working hours. Though many employees find overtime working as a good opportunity, the researchers have concluded that there can be a number of negative effects of long working hours on the employees. Some of the negative effects are discussed below: Increase in health related problems a number of scientific studies have found a positive relation between health problems and long working hours. Some of the health problems related to long working hours are: Injury in the lower back due to heavy physical work Higher blood pressures in people performing white collar jobs An increase in the issues related to mental health Decreased birth weight and gestational age in women Increase in alcohol consumption amongst men Increase in the rates of suicides Further studies have also found that people who work for more than 50-60 hours in a week have severe family conflicts, which ultimately leads to divorces, reduced mental health and alcohol problems. A Canadian study has also concluded that long work hours can cause unhealthy weight gain in men while the women can experience depression ("5 Negative Effects of High Overtime Levels", 2016). Decreased productivity some managers might think that they would be able to achieve an increase in the overall productivity if they can manage to make the employees work for longer hours, which is actually not true. Studies and reports have concluded that the productivity in organisations can suffer if the workers work for longer hours. In white collar jobs, the productivity was found to decrease by 25% if the employees were made to work for 60 or more hours in a single week. In some of the cases, the researchers have observed fatigue amongst the employees because they become too tired because of the physical and mental efforts that they have to put in while working for such long hours. Further, by providing more time to the employees to accomplish a particular piece of work, the organisation ends up slowing down the work rate and as a result, the productivity of the organisation decreases. If the employees are not able to maintain a proper balance between their work life and their personal lives, they might start to show signs of presenteeism which means that the employees remain at work physically but their mind is not concentrating on the job and is concentrating elsewhere. Increased absenteeism an increase in the working hours can increase the absenteeism in a business organisation. When people have to work for longer hours than they can comply with, they experience poor health, fatigue, or they simple feel like taking some time off from their hectic work schedules. As a result, they start to take longer leavers and the absenteeism in the organisation increases. Further, to compensate for the employees on leave, the company has to either hire new staff or has to rely upon its old staff to work overtime and take responsibility of the work of the people who are absent from the organisation. This makes the problem self-perpetuating. Further, increase in working hours can also cause other problems such as loss of employee morale, low productivity, high turnover, higher absenteeism and labour issues. Increase in the turnover rates with high levels of absenteeism prevailing in the organisation, it is quite obvious that the turnover rates would also climb up. The lack of work life balance and experience of fatigue due to long working hours would obviously worsen up the scenario. As a result, the turnover rates of an organisation increase. Turnover rates are found to increase only in those organisations where they ask the employees to work for longer durations without providing them with any compensation for the extra efforts that they put in ("5 Negative Effects of High Overtime Levels", 2016). Stalled work another disadvantage of overtime working hours is that the employees who work overtime are generally paid for the extra efforts that they put in and to maximise their earnings, they might stall their work during the normal work day and make claims that they would require extra working hours to accomplish the task allocated to them. In such cases, the performances of the employees might turn out to be much lower than the expected performance or the performance that they would have shown if there were no extra working hours and incentives ("How Does Overtime Affect Employee Performance?", n.d.). Segmentation long working hours or overtime can also cause segmented work duties, which is quite an unexpected result. The employees who work for long working hours have a tendency to become territorial and want to take over the all responsibilities of the long work hours as they gain benefits from them ("How Does Overtime Affect Employee Performance?", n.d.). Increase in mistakes researches have also proved that if the job of a person involves interpersonal communication, making judgement calls, managing emotional reactions or dealing with the emotion of other people, the performance can suffer great impact due to long working hours. Even if the employees are working for longer hours voluntarily, they have higher chances of making mistakes ("The Research Is Clear: Long Hours Backfire for People and for Companies", 2015). Work life balance in economic downturn Work life balance is an important human resource management concept that has emerged in the past few decades. Work life balance is defined as the balance that the employees are able to maintain between their work lives and personal lives. It has been found that existence of a good balance between personal life and work life is quite necessary in the modern day world as the employees with lower work life balance have shown negative job aspects, such as stress, reduced job satisfaction, job commitment, performance, efficiency and productivity. Therefore, all organisations today understand the importance of work life balance and are trying their best to improve the work life balance of their employees so that they can achieve higher productivity and efficiency (Naithani, 2010). In periods of economic downturns or recessions, which is a consecutive period of negative growth in growth domestic product, companies are forced to take necessary steps that would help them in surviving the tough business conditions bought forward by the economic downturn. As the sales and the revenues of the companies fall below par, the organisations have to take strict actions and lay-off their employees and freeze their recruitment processes altogether. Further, to cut costs and improve the bottom line, business organisation might also have to stop purchasing new equipment. In such a scenario, the employees also become insecure about their jobs and are always at a risk of being laid off by the employers to meet with the expenses. As the work force gets reduced, the same work has to be accomplished by a lesser number of employees and it definitely interferes with their work life balances. It increases the levels of stress amongst the employees and they find it difficult to work i n such situations and maintain a perfect balance between their work and life. Though some people are of the view that recession means greater work life balance because the work load gets lesser but they probably talk about the employees who get laid off or temporarily terminated. The rest of the employees have to work harder to fulfil the requirements of the company and lose their work balance. On the other hand, the employers can take a number of initiatives during economic downturn periods to provide a greater work life balance to the employees and also ensure that they are able to retain them. Providing the employees with greater work life balance would also help the employers in cutting down on the operating costs. Let us consider some of the initiatives that the employers can undertake to facilitate work life balance during an economic downturn: Part time working arrangements and job sharing the employers can provide the employees with an opportunity to work part time so that they can boost their efficiency and can allow them to enhance the balance between their work and life. Part time workers have already proven to have greater efficiency than full time workers and the researches in the past have shown that the most effective employees are those who work around 19-20 hours in a week. Further, if the employers are able to implement part time work arrangements during a recession, they would also be able to reduce their operating costs as there would be lesser number of employees present in the workplace and the operating costs will consequently come down and the company would not even have to lay off employees to reduce the head count in the organisation (Buchholtz, 2016). Sabbatical leaves another way to help the employees in coping up with recession and work life imbalances is to provide sabbatical leaves to them. Sabbatical leave is defined as the duration in which an employee is not required to report to the employer but still remains employed with the same company ("Sabbatical leave dictionary definition | sabbatical leave defined", n.d.). Offering sabbatical leaves to the employees would help the companies in reducing their wage bill temporarily. The company can also send the employees for training or a development activity. Usually, sabbatical leaves are unpaid and the employer can use it to reduce the number of employees if the present situation demands less human resource while a greater work force is required in the near future (Buchholtz, 2016). Term time term time working is a concept that allows the employees to work more in a particular period so that they can work less during the remaining period. If the business organisation has seasonal demands or business then both the employee and the employer can be the winners by implementing this concept. This would allow the employees to work less during the recession periods while they could work more during the periods when the economy is at its best. Further, it would also help them in maintaining a healthy balance between their work and personal life. E-working e-working is one of the best ways to reduce the expenses of an organisation during the period of recession or economic downturns. Using e-working, business organisations can allow their employees to work from home using internet and information systems, which are more productive ways to do business. It provides the employees with a great deal of flexibility in their work lives and for the employer, it saves a lot of operational costs as they do not have to pay for the services or facilities that they provide to the employees when they work in the workplace (Buchholtz, 2016). Conclusion The survey done on the literature clearly shows that flexibility and work life balance are closely related and are very important concepts related to human resource management in the present day business world. Even though the concepts had originated couple of decades ago, they are still useful today and using these concepts, both the employers and the employees can achieve a great deal of benefits. The concepts have a bright future as they are still being implemented by a number of organisations while some of the famous business firms in the world have already achieved success in their implementation. Further, the study also helped in understanding the importance of providing flexibility and work life balance opportunities to the employees during an economic downturn and how the employers can facilitate them during recession. References 5 Negative Effects of High Overtime Levels. (2016). Circadian.com. Retrieved 18 May 2016.. Flexibility in the workplace Employee entitlements Fair Work Ombudsman. Fairwork.gov.au. Retrieved 18 May 2016. Forbes Welcome. (2016). Forbes.com. Retrieved 19 May 2016. Forbes Welcome. (2013). Forbes.com. Retrieved 19 May 2016.. Morgan, H. (2015). 3 Benefits of Workplace Flexibility. US News World Report. Retrieved 19 May 2016.