Alternative Work Arrangements and Work-Family Balance Essay

In the employment sector, individuals face several challenges the most common being work-family balance. This has affected employees in the workplace leading to loss of morale and absenteeism. Companies have to come up with alternative work arrangements to help achieve the elusive balance between work and family.

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Workplace mobility is one of the highly embraced strategies employed by companies on balancing employees' work and family time. It gives room for employees to be in a position to work from home thus causing the much-needed balance (Anderson et al. 789). Working from home eliminates the problem because it ensures that employees perform their job duties and still create ample time to spend with family. The strategy works well for the individuals whose work is accomplished via the use of computers. Computers allow seamless exchange of information and provide an access point to a company's central computer network through logging in. Such employees can log in while at home and perform their assigned duties with ease as they interact with family members.

Another strategy that brings a balance employee's work and family time is job sharing. Job sharing creates flexible working hours where two or more employees hold one position and perform the work in shifts (Anderson et al. 806). This strategy is mostly applied in manufacturing companies where individuals work in shifts to reduce work stress and create ample free time for rest and personal activities. For example, through job sharing, an employee can work in the morning hours and let another employee take over in the afternoon. Such shifts allow employee flexibility and ample time for personal business.

One of the strategies that the company can use to deal with this issue is the introduction of a compressed work week strategy. This is a work-based strategy that has become very popular in the contemporary work industry. It mainly focuses on compressing work to fit a specific time frame thus allowing employees to get home early (Facer et al. 173). An example of this strategy is the Sunshine Wednesday adopted by Vodafone Inc. The company has an incorporated approach that allows workers to go home earlier every second and third Wednesday in a month (Facer et al. 175). The strategy will enable workers to spend more time with their families without neglecting their jobs. It has also been seen to enhance employee morale thus improving the quality of products and services offered.

Among the strategies discussed virtual mobility is the best option as it allows workers to spend time with the family as well as perform all their duties on time. This strategy is also preferred because it builds employee morale. Morale refers to the level of job satisfaction among employees, attitude, and outlook towards their work. Morale has been seen to have a direct impact on productivity thus the need for its improvement (Facer et al. 169). This is based on the fact that employee working from home have been seen to provide better output concerning quality and quantity (Facer et al. 169). Allowing employees to regulate their work hours nurtures responsibility and leads to working more efficiently while at home than while in the office. This is based on the fact that working from home breaks the monotony of an office environment and eliminates boredom.

Diversity

Diversity is a condition where elements with different characteristics are included in a group to create variety. In companies, the human resource department is tasked with recruitment of employees where they are expected to provide variety concerning skills, origin, beliefs, among others. Diversity at the workplace looks at numerous aspects rather than race and ethnicity. Some of the main elements used to determine diversity include geographic location, political beliefs, social status, and sexual orientation among others. For a company to be identified with diversity, it has to have an employee population made up of people from different religious backgrounds, race, ethnicity, gender as well as political orientations (Guillaume et al. 280). Based on a company's view and employees' attitude on diversity, it can be either a competitive advantage or an overhead cost on the company.

Diversity is seen to be a competitive advantage for an organization based on the fact that it allows companies to reap the benefits of talents and abilities of its diverse human resource. Companies embrace diversity in a bid to reap the benefits accrued to it and gain a competitive advantage in the market. The fact that diversity opens up the business to a wide range of skills portrays its ability to give a company competitive advantage in the market (Guillaume et al. 283). These skills provided by a diverse workforce assists in the performance of daily operations and decision making. Therefore, companies can use diversity to help in the marketing of products and enhancement of quality.

Diversity opens up a company to a broader market. This is based on the fact that people with diverse cultures can reach different groups of potential customers thus attaining a wider market. Through diverse workforces, organizations can identify with the needs and preferences of various groups and thus able to provide products and services that are satisfactory to the specific target groups (Guillaume et al. 289). Market access applies to both employees and customers to a company. The human resource department can get individuals with the right skillsets by considering a broader group during selection and recruitment. The human resource department interviews people from a vast pool of applicants to select the individuals who are most appropriate for a job position.

However, diversity also leads to increased costs in the company. An increment of the expenses about diversity is caused by the need to get a wider pool of recruits from where they can hire employees. A company has to go an extra mile in advertising for positions to incorporate variety in the human resource (Guillaume et al. 291). Organizations, therefore, spend more time recruiting workers and end up incurring additional costs because they are pursuing diversity.

Diversity can cause interpersonal conflicts in an organization. Interpersonal conflicts adversely affect performance and lead to increased overhead costs. Different opinions and beliefs may cause disputes about various matters. In extreme cases, companies have incurred additional costs due to lawsuits caused by employee conflicts (Guillaume et al. 295). These are additional costs that the organization has to bear due to a diversified workforce thus making diversity an organizational cost.

Conclusion

In conclusion, it's evident that diversity can be either a competitive advantage or an overhead cost on the company. As the discussion above shows, the determining factor is employee attitude and human resource management. Through proper management of human resources, an organization can use diversity to increase profits. The article also shows that a lack of adequate management can turn the benefits accrued to diversity into additional costs. It is therefore essential to ensure proper management of human resource and training of workers on communication and coexistence to prevent conflict.

Works Cited

Anderson, Stella E., Betty S. Coffey, and Robin T. Byerly. Formal organizational initiatives and informal workplace practices: Links to work-family conflict and job-related outcomes. Journal of Management 28.6 (2002): 787-810.

Facer, Rex L., and Lori Wadsworth. Alternative work schedules and work-family balance: A research note. Review of Public Personnel Administration 28.2 (2008): 166-177.

Guillaume, Yves RF, et al. Harnessing demographic differences in organizations: What moderates the effects of workplace diversity? Journal of Organizational Behavior 38.2 (2017): 276-303.