Importance of work life balance in an organization
Work life balance basically means having a balance between work and personal life hence improving employee’s productivity. Work-life balance helps in creating working environments that are supportive and healthy. A balanced work- life leads to improvement of an organization performance.
Importance
One of the benefits of work –life balance is that it leads to less susceptible burnouts. Burnout has a negative impact on both employee work and personal life. Therefore it is important to ensure that all employees in an organization maintain a balance in work and personal life. Ensuring that stress associated with personal life does not impact negatively on an employee work is key and contributes positively in an organization.
Secondly, maintaining a work life balance helps an employee to remain focused depending on the environment. Focused employees help an organization achieve its objective and goals. On the other hand, maintain a work life balance helps an employee to also concentrate on his personal life when he is at home and helps in avoiding taking work related stress at home (Cegarra-Leiva, Sánchez-Vidal, & Cegarra-Navarro, 2012).
Maintaining a work-life balance helps in avoiding health problems which may develop as a result of being stressed. A work life balance helps in avoiding work and personal related stress, thus enabling one to look after himself by relaxing and healthy eating.
At Charities organization we recognize the importance of work-life balance on our employees. Due to the maintenance of work-life balance our employees have remained focused, motivated and we have received few cases of employee health problems.
Legislation influence on work-life balance
At Charities organization the legislations provides the employees with rest breaks from the work place, it also outlines the allowed working hours and days. More importantly, at Charities organization, our legislations recognize the needs and health requirements for our employees. In addition, our legislation enable our employees to have a work-life balance hence allowing them participate in personal activities.
Four areas of legal support given to the employee as a family member:
Charities organizations offer legal support to employees who have families, firstly it offers maternity and parental leave. This aims at allowing our female employees to have time to attend to anti-natal care and ensures that they do not lose their work. On the other hand parental leave allows employees with children to attend to emergency and the welfare of their children.
Secondly, we allow our employees to request for flexible working this ensures that employees work-life balance is maintained. Thirdly, our organization recognizes the fact that our employees have dependents outside the work place, hence we give them time -off to allow them cater to the needs and emergencies of their dependents.
At Charities organization, offers unpaid leave to employees who request for leave, this helps them to take a break from their work and come to work when they are ready. As an organization it helps us to retain our employees.
Importance of fairly compensating employees:
Employers should offer her employers a competitive wage, this helps an organization its maximizing their operations through the help of the employers. An organization that offers its employers a competitive wage manages to retain the employers as they do not feel the need to seek jobs elsewhere (Armstrong& Taylor, 2014). Hence, the organization retains their highly skilled personnel which lead to achieving organization goals and objectives.
The employees in an organization should be equitably paid, in order to create motivation among them and ensure that they do not have to deal with underpayment and overpayment issues. Motivating employees enables them become more efficient in their work.
At Charities organization all the employees are equitably paid and the wage is quite competitive. It ensures that employees are not discriminated in terms of compensation and are paid equitably depending on the job description.
Areas of discrimination legislation:
Direct discrimination:
Direct discrimination occurs when the employer discriminates an employee based on age, disability, religion, race and sex. One of our goals at Charities organization is to see to it that employees are not discriminated and ensure they are fairly treated.
Indirect discrimination:
Discriminating indirectly is less obvious as opposed to direct discrimination. It has a negative impact on the work-life balance and has a disadvantage on an individual personal life. Indirect discrimination has occurred in Charities organization due to change of shifts where female workers are put in night shift; this resulted to them claiming they were being discriminated indirectly.
Victimization:
The employer may tend to treat an employee in unfavorable manner due to one reason or another. At Charities organization there has been few case of victimization where some workers claim that some of the supervisors are victimizing them. However we resolve this issue as soon as they arise.
Harassment:
Harassment involves violating ones dignity and creating uncomfortable environment. At Charities organization we have had no reported cases of harassments.
Good practice that support organizational policies and the psychological contract:
Psychological contract is the employer-employee relationship and consists of inputs and outcomes. It gives the employees with an influence feeling on how things are run in the organization (Brewerton & Millward, 2015). It is essential to maintain a psychological contract that is positive to boost the organization performance. For instance at Charities organization, one of the managers promised to oversee an employee project but failed to deliver this led to psychological contract breaking.
Charities organization conducts fair dismissal of employees; an employee can only be dismissed if he is unable to perform the task given or is involved in misconduct. The employee is given a notice and reason for dismissal is outlined. We also conduct exit interviews seeking to know why the employee is opting to quit working in our organization, this helps understand and identify the areas that need improvement.
To conclude, Charities organization recognizes the importance of work-life balance to employees. Above all Charities organization fully supports legal support to employees. Lastly, our organization condemns any type of discrimination of an employee; in case of discrimination occurrence the necessary action is taken
References
Armstrong, M., & Taylor, S. (2014). Armstrong’s handbook of human resource management practice. Kogan Page Publishers.
Cegarra-Leiva, D., Sánchez-Vidal, M. E., & Cegarra-Navarro, G. J. (2012). Understanding the link between work life balance practices and organisational outcomes in SMEs: The mediating effect of a supportive culture. Personnel Review, 41(3), 359-379.
Millward, L. J., & Brewerton, P. M. (2015). Psychological Contracts: Employee Relations for the. Personnel Psychology and Human Resources Management: A Reader for Students and Practitioners, 377.
