Responsibilities of the Human Resources Department: The Creation of a Conducive Working Environment

One of the responsibilities of the human resources department is the creation of a conducive working environment that will facilitate the realization of the organizational objectives. Human resource professional achieve this by putting in place policies that are aimed at making the workspace personal yet professional. At the center of many of these policies is the goal to ease tension and strike a balance between the work life and family life of the employee. These policies are geared towards resolving the conflict that exists in the personal and professional lives of employees. In spite of their noble nature, most of these policies fail to achieve their goals. This paper thus presents a discussion of these policies, analyzing why they fail and offers alternative policies that can be put in place.

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Policies currently being implemented.

Existent literature has shown that the primary reason of work-family life conflict is the absence of employee-parents in either family or work engagements (Kelly, Moen, & Tranby, 2011). For example, some employee misses out on important family moments due to work-related engagements. To reduce this conflict, human resource managers put in place flexible work schedules to allow such employees to carry out their professional duties as well as attend to family matters (Kelly, Moen, & Tranby, 2011). Most companies are abandoning the fixed 9-5 schedule for more convenient schedules. The policies of other companies go ahead to allow their employees to leave the workplace after they have successfully completed the days workload. The downside of this policy is that it is job-specific i.e. it cannot be used in all types of jobs. For example, senior management is excluded from such arrangements (Kelly, Moen, & Tranby, 2011).

Similar to the flexible schedule policy is the work-from-home policy. This arrangement is synonymous with jobs that have a freelancing attribute i.e. data entry and writing (Miller, 2016). The employee is allowed to carry the workload and complete it at home. This, thus puts the employee at a close proximity with his/her family and can, therefore, attend to family issues, as they arise, while still working (Miller, 2016). This policy, however, reduces the productivity of employees. Employee-parents who work from home register a low output compared to their counterparts who work in the companys workspace (Sims, 2007). This is as a result of the numerous distractions that compete for the employees attention and as a result, the employee ends up completing a small percentage of the assigned workload. Also, work produced under this policy is not uniform. When employees work from one workstation, they can be easily supervised and directed to work in certain manner. However, with the work-from-home policy, such supervision efforts become complicated if not impossible. Therefore, implementing this policy will pose a threat to the quality of products and services delivered by the company and lead to reduced customer base and decline in sales.

Another policy that is slightly different to the one discussed above is bring family to the workspace. Under this policy, the company offer daycare facilities to look after the children of their employees. This policy is usually put in place to help employees with small children, especially lactating mothers. An example of a company that uses this policy is Google, the tech giant (Miller, 2016). Therefore, the employee-parent can have a peace of mind and concentrate on job tasks with the assuredness that his/her children are well taken care of. The downside of this policy is that it increases the operating expenses of the company thus reducing its profitability. Such costs are huge to small companies but immaterial to organizations such as Google.

Additional Policies to be Implemented

Organizations, instead of focusing on hours worked, should focus on the output of the employees. According to Armstrong (2012), focusing on hours worked promotes employee soldiering and putting in time and not productivity. This worsens the work-family life balance. Employees should be encouraged to increase their output within the shortest time possible without compromising the quality of the work produced (Armstrong, 2012). After this, employees can be allowed to resume their family responsibilities.

Paid leaves can also help improve the work-family balance of employee-parents (Simons, 2011). During this period, these employees can concentrate on family projects and interact with their friends whom they rarely get to interact with. Other forms of leave such as maternity and paternity leaves for new parents should also be put in place to allow such employee-parents to get acclimatized to the new responsibilities (Simons, 2011).

In conclusion, there is a need to maintain a healthy work-life balance. Such a balance will motivate the employees to work at full capacity thereby achieving the organizational objectives in the most efficient and effective way. It is also important to engage with employees during the policy formation process. Employees should be consciously involved in every step of the process and have their input considered when formulating them. This will result in policies that are pro-employer and pro-employee thus achieving a work-family life balance.

References

Armstrong, M. (2012). Armstrong's handbook of human resource management practice, 12th edition London, U.K.: Kogan Page.

Kelly, E., Moen, P., & Tranby, E. (2011). Changing Workplaces to Reduce Work-Family Conflict. American Sociological Review, 76(2), 265-290. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0003122411400056Miller, B. (2016). How to Improve Work/Life Balance for Employees. HR Daily Advisor. Retrieved from http://hrdailyadvisor.blr.com/2016/02/10/how-to-improve-worklife-balance-for-employees/Simons, R. (2011). Human Resource Management. Ontario: Apple Academic Press.

Sims, R. (2007). Human Resource Management: Contemporary Issues, Challenges, and Opportunities. Charlotte, North Carolina: Information Age Publishing.