Assignment in Human Recource Management

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`Rewards in the workplace an make or break performance levels. Use corporate examples and analysis of key theorists to determine an answer'.

Work-life balance is an effective management tool. It allows keeping a balance between the paid work and other activities which are important to employees. It is not a theory which will help to get away with work they have to do, but rather just to make sure that the work an employee has to do is not pushing out the other things that matter to them, like time with family, participation in community activities, personal development, leisure and recreation. It is very difficult to find a work-life balance because maintaining it is a very personal thing, so organizations should make sure that they have a strategy which will fulfill needs of employees. Properly adjusted work-life balance will benefit not only employees but also employers. This may result in a better productivity and performance of employees, lower absenteeism rates, a more motivated, satisfied and equitable workforce, reduced spending onto employees' needs, improved customer experience and other benefits. Every organisation wants to have more motivated, satisfied and equitable workforce that is willing to achieve corporate goals with enthusiasm. In order for such situation to exist in any organization, the management should ensure that employees are able to spend more time on friends and family, sport and hobbies, voluntary work and self-development. Therefore they will come to work each morning full of life, with brighter ideas in their heads and with better health conditions.

British government is actively working towards finding ways to achieve a healthy work-life balance for citizens. The government is aiming to ensure that employers are doing the following:

· knowing that both employers and employees benefit from work-life balance;

· understanding that part time does not mean half hearted;

· wanting employees to enjoy their full holiday entitlement;

· encouraging them to work from home when appropriate;

· enabling employees to share jobs and adopt flexible hours in school holidays;

· allowing their employees paid paternity and maternity leave.

Work roles have become an important part of lives of individuals. Work creates challenges such as balancing long hours spent doing the job with parenting and caring responsibilities. Although there is no such thing as two completely distinct parts of our lives, one being at work and the other elsewhere. As R. Taylor has pointed out from summarizing the work from the ESRC programme, work and life are not two distinct parts of our lives, but are overlapping together in many aspects. In his book `The future of work-life balance' he has mentioned: `In the experience of most people a clear-cut distinction can be established between the world of work and the world of family, friends and social networks and community. In practice, over the length of our lives it is impossible to establish neatly-constructed demarcation lines. Moreover, the word - balance - implies the existence of a settled equilibrium that can be achievable between paid employment and a life outside the job. This is highly questionable.'

On behalf of ESRC initiative he argues that we are faced with challenges related with our understanding the reasons behind the changing nature of employment. A growing competition amongst businesses and technological innovations lead to the jobs becoming more complicated. Employees start feeling more insecure about their jobs and are working under a pressure. McKee and his colleagues consider that the work-life balance issue is related to historical changes in UK labour market. Those changes were caused by such historical cases when male workers were leaving their jobs and going to war, existence long working shifts due to economy demand, a change in gender balance in employment through entry of women into employment since they had to replace the workplaces of men who left to war, increase in single working parents, a decreasing proportion of economically active population, regulation and intensification of hours of work and a tend towards giving everyone equal opportunities. These days the publicity is interested about the nature of work in future, flexible working patterns, gender segregation of jobs and a growing influence of telemediated business. Hochschild A. believes that a wrong implication of the work culture that is used now has resulted in taking the home life away by replacing it with work. Therefore there is a question if organizations take care of their employees, since they do not take care of families of those employees. In some cases workers get attracted to work in organizations because they would be taken care of in there. Employers have to follow the standards and offer good working conditions to their workforce in order not to be under pressure from the government and competitors. This care creates a home-like environment for employees. But home is becoming more efficient because it is a place where a person comes to relax and get rid of any stress and pressure. The result is that work is becoming more feminized, while home becomes `masculinised'. Hochschild also mentions a growing influence of `first-shift' work - paid employment, over and at the expense of the `second-shift' work - entertainment, house work, socialization with friends, relationships. Although `second shift' work is not so demanding as first one, it still requires to perform household duties. In case if both, the wife and the husband are working, it may create a problem for their relationship since they would have to decide on who will do particular home duties or any other duties which would be normally done if one of the spouses, usually woman, would be not working.

Historically the nature of British industrial relations system shows a reliance on voluntary agreements over pay, working hours and conditions of work. At the moment UK's application of the EU working time directive reflects a voluntarism through giving employers options to negotiate working hours with trade unions, but not applying any strict rules. On October 1998 the Working Time Regulations came into force. These regulations were used to implement the European Working Time Directive and parts of the Young Workers Directive. The last being aimed at young workers aged between 16 and 18. Working Time Regulations were amended in 1999, 2002 and last amendment was made in 2003.This European legislation had a positive effect on work hours in the UK. From the date when directive came into force, the average number of hours worked per employee has been decreased by 3 per cent. According to British Chambers of Commerce this reduction in working hours has cost 2.3 billion pounds a year to employers. The basic rights that are stated by the Regulations include:

· a limit of an average of 48 hours a week which a worker can be required to work (though workers can choose to work more if they want to).

· a limit of an average of 8 hours work in 24 which night workers can be required to work.

· a right for night workers to receive free health assessments.

· a right to 11 hours rest a day.

· a right to a day off each week.

· a right to an in-work rest break if the working day is longer than 6 hours.

· a right to 4 weeks paid leave per year.

On average, British employees are working longer hours than employees in other European countries. This overload of work is a serious issue for British because it results in people getting stressed at work. Stress gives a negative result through having a bad effect on health of employees and employers having to pay high amounts of money for damages caused by workplace stress.

When it comes to discussing the difference in work hours between the UK and other European states it turns out that Britain is country which has the fewest bank holidays than other EU countries. Only 8 days each year are considered to be bank holidays comparing to other countries like Spain and Portugal where bank holidays take from 12 to 14 days. This data shows that people in UK work more on average than citizens of other European states. When considering the total average number of vacation days, Britain is still a leader in the number of working days amongst EU countries, with only 28 vacation days. Although when taking into account data from around the world, the picture changes. In USA employees take only 13 vacation days. In most of the developed world there is a trend for decreasing the average annual working hours, but UK shows no significant change in this figure. The figure below represents the average normal weekly working hours in for full-time workers in year 2006, which was agreed by collective bargaining the 28 countries examined (letters on y-axis represent country codes of European countries).

Organisations are aiming to get more and better work out of fewer people, and most employees are continuously told that they must work smarter, faster, better, longer, and harder. Employers pay for employees' time and presence at work for a certain period of time. This long hours culture is likely to be due to overall job intensification. Managers tend to aim for 24/7 customer culture try to increase companies' profitability. Unfortunately this is usually done at the cost of employees' or their own well-being. Although this is a very controversial question. In most of cases this is employees' choice to work long hours. Reasons behind such choice might be because they simply enjoy their job or perhaps it helps them to forget about the problems in the family, or they aim to earn extra money, or there can be many other reasons.

Most of the large organizations in UK have launched work-life balance initiatives. The example of British Telecom supports this evidence. BT, which won the Parents at Work Employer of the Year 2001 award, has offered to its employees a flexible employment schedule by giving to 4000 employees the benefit of working from their own home. Another initiative by BT was a `Freedom of Work' programme. This programme has enabled workers to choose working hours which would suit them, as far as the set targets would be achieved. The management is trying to ensure that employees are being valued by the organization. Such care and attention towards workforce has resulted in an improved productivity, lower level of absenteeism and increased rate of return back to job after maternity leave.

It is interesting that while there are so many policies and regulations to protect employee's right for work-life balance, people still work very long hours or even work at home, and some of young parents hesitate to take Paternity and Maternity Leave because they think it may lead to job loss. Many companies ignore employee's voice and do not implement the policies, thus making people experience lack of recognition, isolation and lots of stress. Many policies are informal and unwritten (Hyman and Summers, 2004) so many employees do not know about them, thus about their rights and `just let things go' and complain to each other that there is no personal life working for this or that organization.

The government is aiming towards improving the employment relations. This is achieved by laws and regulations, some of which were mentioned above. The strategy that the government is concerned with is about making the employment relationship of individuals simpler. But at the same time this strategy is slightly going to opposite direction from going towards decreasing hours spent at work. The effect that long time spent at war has is usually reflected through poor quality of life, weaker health and stress. It is not surprising that those mentioned conflicting policy drives disturb the equilibrium between work and life. This confusion can be related to the existence of individualization of the employment relationship on one hand, which is similar to the policies applied in the United States. But on the other hand there is an existence of European model, which is distinct for its regulation of balance between the work and life. This model is based on social needs. One of such is April 2003 legislation which gives right to those employees who are parents of children under 6 years old or children who are disabled and under 18 years old to get the benefit of working on a flexible schedule basis. Such regulation should be giving an opportunity to approximately 375000 parents to choose flexible timetables of work. In case of getting a refuse to the eligible applicant for this opportunity, employer risks to have problems with the law.

To conclude it is important to say that any organization, large or small, which is attempting to be successful in the market, should give priority to care of its employees. This is what is happening in UK employment relations now. There is a trend showing that organisations aim not to overload its workforce and offer various initiatives in order to keep the balance between paid employment and life outside work. This is partly because of the success of the legislations and norms implemented by the government. Both, employees and employers benefit from work-life balance initiatives because the result is a higher satisfaction from work by workforce and better performance of the business. Most studies prove this idea, although it should be said that most of the studies about work-life balance are based on studies of middle-class families. Therefore it might be having different implication for certain groups.

The Working Time Regulation which took its roots from the European Union has created norms in UK which should be aimed towards. Those norms help employees to achieve a work-life balance. So far there was a positive effect on British workforce from the legislations adopted by the government.

work management industrial

References

1. Beardwell, I., et al, 2004. `Human Recource Management. A Contemporary Approach.

2. Hyman, J. and Summers, J., 2004. `Lacking Balance? Work-Life Employment Practices. In the Modern Economy'. Personnel Review, 33, 4, 418-429.

3. Sparrow, P.R. and Cooper, C.L., 2003. ` The Employment Relationship: key challenges for HR'. Butterworth Heinemann: Oxford

4. Tailby, S., Howe, S., 2005. `HRM and Employment Relations'.

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