MGGGC 2430 Human Resource Management

Introduction

Human Resources department is considered as the most valuable asset in today’s organizations. With the constantly changing business environment the business processes are getting more complex and hence require attracting and retaining talented employees who can provide the organization competitive advantage. One of the attributes of the job, which attracts the employees the most, is work-life balance. There is increasing importance of work-life balance among today’s employees since it enables them to balance their personal life and the increasing workload effectively and efficiently. The report discusses the importance of work-life balance in attracting and retaining talent in the organization.

Attraction and Retention

Human Resource Management is one of the important areas of every business since it is responsible to establish effective human resource practices, which includes various activities right from recruitment to training to promotion and retention. According to many scholars, one of the important factors, which can lead to organizational competitiveness is attracting and retaining high quality employees (Grieves, 2003, p.24). In strategic HRM there is a strong link between practices and the performance and effectiveness of the organization.   In today’s global business environment attracting and retaining and employee is difficult since employee look for several factors, which has been increasing due to the organizational strategy of creating high performance work environment to attract and retain the employees (Bussin, 2014, p.27). The main attraction drivers include competitive salaries, challenging work, work-life balance, career advancement opportunities, training and development and reputation of organization (Grieves, 2003, p.37). The retention drivers include the top management interest and support in employee well-being, opportunities to learn and develop new skills, supervisor encouragement, recognizing, decision-making authority, autonomy and opportunity to grow at the desired level in the area of interest (Dibble, 2008, p.43).

Work-Life Balance as an important factor in Attracting and Retaining Employees

Work-life balance is the top-priority for the employees today. With rapid advancement in technology the organizations are able to automate several processes, which though have eased certain processes but are putting extra pressure on the employees to manage the increased integration of the different systems. Longer working hours and erratic work schedules has led to increased stress and health issues among the employees across the globe, which not only affects the employee’s health but also their performance, which directly influences organizational performance (Bussin, 2014, p.34). According to Hay Group’s global employee opinion database, more than half of the employees reported that the key factor for sustaining in an organization is sufficient work-life balance support (Regis, 2012, p.51). According to Frazee (2005), helping employees achieve a reasonable work-life balance is not just about creating attractive work environment but is also a critical consideration for sustaining performance over the period (Dibble, 2008, p.59).  Work-life balance also helps in retaining the employees since it is a priority for many in today’s complex work environment. Many organizations have included work-life balance as one of the factors to attract and retain the talent.

Organizations have emphasized on practices such as flexible work schedules, compressed work weeks and telecommuting options. Researchers suggest that only these options in not sufficient to achieve work-life balance instead organizations have to respond differently by structuring the work effectively (Grieves, 2003, p.43).  The leaders of the organization should ensure that employees are given clear direction regarding the work priorities, which helps employees focus on the highest-value tasks, the policies and practice are to be constantly assessed and changed to ensure that work is fairly distributed among the respective employees (Truss et al., 2012, p.68). Another best practice implemented by the organizations to provide work-life balance is that of high levels of teamwork with the different units of the organization, which enables employees to get support from their co-workers as and when required and if necessary (Regis, 2012, p.67).

Increased empowerment and effective training and development programs enable employees to be highly responsive and carry out maximum work in shorter period. The organizations by giving decision-making and strategy planning authority can help the employees make faster and effective decisions and finish their tasks in a shorter period (Truss et al., 2012, p.51). Adequate supply of resources is another important factor, which enables employees to finish their tasks effectively in a shorter period of time and from various locations (Dibble, 2008, p.72). According to a research carried out by Hay’s Group, one in four employees working in the organizations, which do not have work-life balance support plan to leave the organizations within two-years (Royal, 2013).  Employees and organizations are aware that the pressure of carrying out increasing work pressure in a finite time should be addressed by finding effective and permanent solutions to work-life balance issues. This can be achieved by making employees work smarter, effectively and efficiently.

Work-life balance tanks as one of the important attributes in the workplace and is next only to compensation. According to research conducted by Corporate Executive Board  among the global workers it was found that employees having better work-life balance tend to work 21% harder and half of them wish to stick to the organization (Royal, 2013). The work-life balance as an attribute attracts talent since they get an opportunity to carry out their tasks with increased flexibility and have greater scope to explore their ideas (Martocchio, 2015, p.46). Work-life balance is found to provide the employees greater control of their work and schedules. One of the surveys carried out by Eagle Hill, carried out in Washington DC across different industries, age groups and job tenure highlighted that around 64% of the participants agreed that work-life balance is the most important factor for overall job satisfaction and sustaining the job (Truss et al., 2012, p.73). Human resource management can include several practices, which would provide the employees with work-life balance such as flexible hours, relaxed environment, flexibility of location from which the employees can work . But the practices preferred by employees differed from person to person and region to region.

If the human resource strategy fails to provide the right kind of work-life balance practices it might not attract and retain the employee. For example, by providing relaxed environment, which includes gym and spa at workplace might not be very attractive to employees who look forward to spend more time at home rather than in the office gym (Truss et al., 2012, p.64). Flexible location might not work well with all employees since they might prefer working in the office with flexi working hours (Martocchio, 2015, p.41). Human resource management thus, need to identify the different areas of work in which employees need flexibility and which can help them gain time for their personal lives. In one of the polls it was found that 60% of the human resource executives felt that the work-life balance provided by their organization is satisfactory but only 16% of the employees working in it felt that work-life balance was satisfactory (Routray & Mohanty, 2012, p.69). This shows that there is an increased gap between the understandings of work-life balance attributes between the human resource management and the employees.

Work-life balance enables employees to focus in other areas of their lives, which would make them more efficient and effective and also allow them to build a relationship with the organization and be highly committed towards their tasks. Some of the important work-life attributes, which the organizations can adopt, include telecommuting, which allows employees to work from home. Several studies have shown that employees who are telecommuters are 30% more productive (Martocchio, 2015, p.63).

 Job sharing is another important practice, which can help provide work-life balance. In this employees share the workload and work part-time and are able to be more productive and help each other in achieving the desired task (Royal, 2013). Flexible starting and ending hours of one’s work is another effective option for work-life balance wherein employees carry out their tasks anytime of the day when they think they are more productive (Routray & Mohanty, 2012, p.42). Flexible schedules allow the employees to work according to their schedules and help them achieve tasks in a flexible time and also balance their personal life. Work life balance thus, is an attractive attribute, which can also be the main reason for employee retention. Attraction and retention of the talent enables organization to gain competitive advantage by retaining employees whose competencies are almost inimitable leading to long-term sustainability of the organization.

Conclusion

In today’s competitive business environment attracting and retaining the employees is very essential for sustained growth.  By attracting and retaining the right talent can provide organizations a competitive advantage and there are several factors, which can attract and retain employees. Work-life balance is one such attribute, which enables the organization to attract and retain the employees since employees today look for good balance of work and life as it has become rare in today’s busy work schedules. Work-life balance as per the above discussion has been attracting several employees and it is considered as one of the important reason for employees to continue with the same organization. But it is essential for the human resource management to identify the appropriate practices, which can help the employees in their organization to experience work-life balance. Some of the best practices include flexible time and location, job sharing and telecommuting.

References

Bussin, M (2014), Remuneration and Talent Management: Strategic compensation approaches for attracting, retaining and engaging talent, Knowres Publishing

Dibble, S (2008), Keeping Your Valuable Employees: Retention Strategies for Your Organization’s Most Important Resource, Wiley; 1 edition

Grieves, J (2003), Strategic Human Resource Development, SAGE Publications Ltd

Martocchio, J (2015), Strategic Compensation: A Human Resource Management Approach, Pearson; 8 edition

Regis, R (2012), Strategic Human Resource Management and Development, Excel Books; First edition

Routray, P & Mohanty, K (2012), Human Resource Development and Organisational Effectiveness, Excel Books; First edition

Royal, M (2013), Everybody Wins With a Healthy Work-Life Balance, viewed 22 August, 2015

http://www.cnbc.com/id/100720414

Truss, C, Mankin, D & Kelliher, C (2012), Strategic Human Resource Management, OUP Oxford; 1 edition