Economic Benefits Of Work-Life Balance And Social Media Policies In The Workplace

Reduced Turnover Costs through Work-Life Balance

The Economic Benefits that Justify the Offered by the two Companies

One biggest economic benefit of work-life balance id reduced turnover costs .Employees are always looking for organizations that offer better and friendly services that allow them to meet their personal and social needs without compromising their work (Reece & Reece, 2017). The Herzberg’stwo-factor theory emphasizes motivation through creating conditions that make the employee comfortable with their work (Ruppanner, 2013). Further, it attracts a diverse workforce since employees prefer the organization that meets their problems. Reece & Reece (2017) argue that American Express works on the health of its employees by supporting training, therapy and treatment programs to ensure that they are fit to work thus reducing turnover and ensuring that employees are available at all times.

Work-life balance initiatives benefit both the employee and at the organization thus increasing job satisfaction, work engagement and productivity. This leads to monetary losses that the organization can avoid through ensuring that employees carry out their responsibilities well and meet the required targets (Yuile, Chang, Gudmundsson, & Sawang, 2012). When family- friendly policies are implemented in organizations as seen in Bain and Company reduce absenteeism at work since employees are given the freedom to organize their work and balance it with other needs that they have

Further, the strategy improves employee wellbeing by reducing health problems and increasing attention. Stress and rundowns lead to stress that can cause other challenges that can cause other health challenges. A work-life balance allows employee’s time to attend to other personal issues that they feel are important to them (Ruppanner, 2013). Employees will therefore, benefit more and transfer the benefits to improved attention that meets organizational needs.

Advantages and disadvantages of work/life programs that focus primarily on employees who have children

American express is ranked number 26 on Working Mothers.com as one of the leading companies in America that recognizes the need to protect mothers by creating work and life balance opportunities. The company offers back up childcare, on-site vacations, pays full 10 weeks off for new moms, 2 for new dads, 6 fully paid weeks for adaptive mothers of leave (Work ingMother, 2018). On the other hand, Bain & Company is ranked number 10 on working mothers because of its ability to integrate work and life balance for working mothers through supporting women in their careers. The company offers back up childcare, on-site vacations, pays full 16 weeks off for new moms, 8 for new dads, 8 fully paid weeks for adaptive mothers of leave (WorkingMother,  2018). It has been realized that women are more interested in improving their careers as compared to males (Bief, 2017). Further, the company offers career guidance to assist women propel in their career.

Benefits and Drawbacks of Work-Life Balance Policies that Target Employees with Children

Employees are normal human beings who either come from families or have families. At one point in life, the family requires the physical presence or help from such employees.Thus some organizations like Bain & Company accommodate such employeeslike mothers by giving them flexible work-life balances and other benefits to enable them to attend to family situations (Cieri, Holmes, Abbott, & Pettit, 2005). Such organizations report higher performance standards based on employee commitment to the organization.

Reece & Reece (2017) suggest that eemployees look for organizations that meet their needs and once such needs are met, such employees concentrate more on their work since they have to balance between the work and other elements. This leads to increased efficiency, high productivity and concentration that are replicated in outcomes realized by the organization. For example, in the case of Bain & Company women who are paid fully in their maternity leave work better to recover for the time lost when they resume their duties.

On the other hand, Skinner & Pocock (2008) suggest that work-life balances reduce psychological and emotional pressures from employees who are faced with personal situations thus increasing their health and ability to work. It is worth recognizing that even the senior most members in the organization are parents, husbands and wives who have other responsibilities that they have to.

However, such policies have several disadvantages that they present to the organization. One such element is the cost of running such programs in the organization. The programs require resources to be run thus impacting the profit the organization may have received. Further, some of these policies are abused by rogue employees who may take advantages to stay away from work thus reducing outcomes (Yuile, Chang, Gudmundsson, & Sawang 2012). Such policies may be seen as discriminative focusing on a segment of employees like women. Therefore, it may fail to lead to intended challenges.

Question one a) Social Media Policies that Can be Put in Place to Regulate Social Media Use

Social media is a tool that can be used to increase organizational performance and at the same time lead to business reputation challenges. This is the reason why employees need policies to regulate the use of the tool through work-place social media policy. The policies need to differentiate the difference between personal and organizational challenges (Kirby & Raphan, 2014; Reece & Reece, 2017). The fact that employees are engaged with the organization, it means that anything they do in public relates to the organization. Such policies should be based on ensuring that any post made by an individual reveals the organizational context rather than personal. The policies should cover the following areas

Advantages of Effective Work-Life Balance Initiatives on Employee Wellbeing and Productivity

How to manage privacy settings to reduce infringement by third parties.

1. Refraining from anonymity.
2. Guide on how to be polite and responsible and posts and responses to posts.
3. Accountability and correcting of mistakes on social media.
4. Use of disclaimer in personal posts to protect the employer.
5. What to post on social media and what to report management.

One advantage of regulating employee use of social media based on the above policy areas is ensuring that the posts and comments that they make on social media are regulated and reflect the policy of the organization. Further, Pontefract, (2014) states that these policies will guide employees on the timing of social media use to ensure that any posts made is not reflected or interpreted differently. Further, employees need to be responsible to anything that they do and should always protect the organization by determining which post can be posted and which one cannot. Another con is ensuring that employees take responsibility of the problem that the organization faces through social media by protecting themselves, other employees, stakeholders and the employer at large.

Organizations need to establish social media policies that guide the way employees use social media and how it affects the organization.  Every employee has to understand there is a personal and organizational level when making any comment. Once employees understand the policies and consent to them, then they should be prepared to take responsibility of their actions based on the disciplinary mechanisms established by the organization. As such, the action may not be necessarily firing an employee but rather it will be guided by relevant by the magnitude of the issue and what the policy requires as the most appropriate mode of action.

My alert analysis was based on politics where I picked alerts for the US President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin. On average I was receiving over twenty alerts per day from each individual that I had subscribed to receive alerts from. These came from different sources, like popular periodicals, blogs and even posts from different groups. Each search term had several comments that depended on the nature of the post that had been made. However, in most cases, positive comments were around 60% while negative comments were 40%. The number of alerts received indicate that social media is an active tool that people engage with every time.  

Bief, B. (2017, December). Intergrating Work and Life Balance. Retrieved from Bain & Company: https://www.bain.com/publications/articles/integrating-work-and-life.aspx

Cieri, H. D., Holmes, B., Abbott, J., & Pettit, T. (2005). Achievements and challenges for work/life balance strategies in Australian organizations. The International Journal of Human Resource Management , 16 (1), 90-103.

Kirby, S. J., & Raphan, E. (2014). The NLRB’s Continued Regulation of Social Media in the Workplace. Journal of Internet Law , 18 (2), 1-7.

Pontefract, D. (2014, May). Social Media in the Workplace is Going Backwards. Huffington Post 

Reece, B. L., & Reece, M. (2017). Effective Human Relations: Interpersonal And Organizational Applications (13th ed.). Virginia: Cengage Learning.

Ruppanner, L. (2013). Conflict Between Work and Family: An Investigation of Four Policy Measures. Social Indicators Research , 106 (1), 327-347.

Skinner, N., & Pocock, B. (2008). Work–life conflict: Is work time or work overload more important? Asia Pacific Journal of Human Resources , 46 (3), 303-315.

WorkingMother. (2018, March 6). American Express. Retrieved from WorkingMother : https://www.workingmother.com/best-companies-american-express

WorkingMother. (2018, March 6). Bain & Company. Retrieved from WorkingMother.

Yuile, C., Chang, A., Gudmundsson, A., & Sawang, S. (2012). The role of life friendly policies on employees work-life balance. Journal of Management and Organisation , 1, 53-63.