The Importance Of Flexible Working Hours For Men And Women In Human Resource Planning

Role of Human Resource Planning in Organizations

The parenting thing is a shared responsibility and every human has the right to be able to spend time with his/her children, live up their child’s childhood. It accepted that the primary parent has to be the mother and the father just need to work for the living. The flexible working hours for men could actually help the women to grow on their career parts. It is mostly found that on having a child, the mother is the one to give up her career and take care of the child and home, but this could be changed as advised by Niki Vincent, the South Australia’s Commissioner. “A lot of workplaces think it’s acceptable for women to work flexibly, but they have a problem with men, so even though they might have policies in place that are not just about women, there’s a stigma associated with men working flexibly”, as said by Dr. Vincent (Eacott, 2018). The report would reveal several theories and policies that could help in the concerted action to be taken by the organizations.

The concerned article has shown the real picture of accepting the fact of flexible working hours for both men and women should be applied.

1. The psychology of the human is not set to accept the fact that even men can opt for flexible working hours, even if they have an option of doing so. This mentality needs to be changed and this could be done by making the people aware of the policies and also the feasibility and reality that man and woman could stand on the same ground. As stated by Dr Vincet, has stated that there is the number of workplaces where the flexible work of woman is acceptable.   Providing the same opportunity to the men is counted as a problem. But the organisational policies are applicable for both the men and women, and it does not associate only with the women.  The stigma of the society and business process is associated with men working flexibly. This statement represents the mentality and the status of women in the society.
2. The second issue is that when even a single man tries to help out his wife and follows the rule of flexible working hours so that he can contribute his time in the well-being of his family, it’s surprising for others. The surprising behaviour of the society and the public is also somehow indicated towards the orthodox mentality. Most of the person thinks that he is taking his day off. This contribution of a man towards the family and children is appreciating. This is the initiative of fathers to give respect and love to their family and towards his wife. But most of the surprising statement comes that people directly call it as time off or day off without thinking about the actual primary caregiver role played by a father for their children. The main issue arises where the contribution of the father did not count as primary caregiver.
3. The third issue mentioned in the article is that maximum of the employee remains unaware about the policies of paternity leaves as they are not used very often. According to the article, the HR manager is not aware of parental leave for a father, and she also replied with no one ever applied for the leave before. The activities of Human Resource Management need to undertake this parental leave policy and flexible work hours for the fathers. They have to understand that equal opportunity of working is essential for both men and women and the parenting role is a shared role not only associated with the woman, but the role of a father is significant.

Human Resource Planning is an integral part of an organization and its planning ensures the success or the failure of the achieving the goals and objectives of the organization (Miyake). The strategic planning is the planning of the goals and objectives of the organization and the HR planning plays a significant role in it, because the human resource is the resource which helps the organization in transforming and taking out the best results from all the other resources available to the organization (Stone, 2017).

The inclusion of the paternity leaves should be made part of the strategic planning of the human resource management plan. This would include all the terms and policies for taking a paternity leave. The human resource management plan should be revealed to the employees thoroughly and all the policies should be stated with clarity. This would help in making aware about the benefits which are applicable for both the genders and this could help in changing the thinking process of the society too. The human resource management constitutes the main part of the organisation but it should be kept in mind that the people working even have a personal life and the women and men should be treated equally under all the circumstances (O’Reilly et al. 2015). The men should take a step forward and try to demand and make up certain plans in the working area so that others get motivated and try to follow it. In the strategic plan a section of the plan should be contributed towards acknowledging the people about the importance and viability of equality. Even some of the women get surprised on seeing a dad taking care of his child, this mentality should be attacked and sessions should be provided by the office heads. The strategic planning and HR planning are related to each other because the strategic plan is associated with the organisational goals and the HR planning is done for the human resource management. It is the responsibility of the organisation to understand the necessity of the employees or of the men workers who have to play the crucial sharing role with their wife for taking care of their children. Therefore for identifying this necessity and taking appropriate action a strategic human resource planning is essential (Stone, 2017). This human resource planning must include proper analysis and activities for the best outcomes. The multi generalisation workforce and the trend of globalisation have to undertake within the HR planning because the women workforce has more potential than taking care of their children. In the process of maintaining gender equality within the workplace, the best initiatives can be started with providing flexible working hours to the men for the better childhood for the future generation.

Need for Paternity Leaves in Human Resource Planning

                                                      

                                                                   Figure 1: The wage gap based on gender inequality

                                                                               (Source:Armstrong & Taylor, 2014)

It has been seen that the college graduates irrelevant of their gender earn an almost the same amount in a specified industry. But as they move down the line, the gap in between the pay scale of two gender types keeps broadening. The main and generally seen reason for this rising gap is because women make up strong preferences for their families, children and other like incidents. The men do not care about these factors at any point in their career (Hadfield, 2017).

The human resource management procedure is associated with providing the best quality of Management within the organisation, and some basic principles which are part of the policies of Human Resource Management are anti-discrimination, equal opportunity, etc. But the most important area of providing equal opportunity is not maintained by most of the organisations (Stone, 2017). This process can easily be identified from the amount of pay for both genders. According to the national pay gap, there is a difference of 14.6% between the earning of different genders. The average earning of a man is counted as 244.80 $ extra than women in Australia. Because of the major role of providing primary care to the children the opportunity of flexible working hours is only available for women. But the opportunity of being a primary caregiver to a father is neglected by the human resource management of any organisation. The parental leaves are available for both the women and men but most of the time when the men want to use those leaves it will be counted as taking a day off. However, there are 17 companies in South Australia which become part of the gender equality group and providing paid time off to the male parent is become part of the human resource planning (Wang& Degol, 2017).

Equal Opportunity for Men and Women in Human Resource Planning

The women get a “temporal flexibility” in their workings but the men are not given that flexibility in their workplace (Gatewoodet al. 2015). This depends on the companies’ policies and rules concerning the HR department. The industries should opt for flexible hours of working for both men and women as this would help in balancing the workings or the careers of the two genders. The effect of inflexible working hours for men actually leads to a creation of a problematic area in the career path of the women (Agarwal, 2017). 

Conclusion:

On exploring one of the most important and the most avoided topic on human resource, it has revealed that the equality could take place in every sense if the people are treated as just on one ground and that is human beings. The existence of different laws for men and women makes it more difficult for the people to operate and it creates a sense of discrimination in the country or the organization. The article provided “Concerns inflexible working hours for men could be damaging women’s careers”, this has rightly brought up the simplicity of how the policy of equality could be applied in every organization. The importance of strategic planning of human resource would keep in mind that the men and women are equal. This would provide the base for the plantings. The side effects of inflexible working hours of men on the gender gap have rightly revealed every detail of it and it has shown the effects which the inflexible working hours of men have on the career of the women.

The analysis of the inflexibility in the working hours of men has come up with some hidden facts and has revealed how badly it impacts the careers of the women. The recommendations are:

• The policy of developing a workplace gender equality, if taken seriously and be implied in all the organizations then the women could grow equally.
• This could also be done by applying to treat the employees just as employees and not as men employee and women employee.
• The resent generation is taught the importance of equality as this would bring up a generation which would be against discrimination on any grounds.
• Proper structure of the policy needs to be prepared for the workplace and human resource management needs to facilitate the prior knowledge to every employee about these policies.
• In work place proper working environment needs to be established and human resource management should need to take the responsibilities to facilitate the just environment where men and women both can enjoy the flexible work hour without any harassment by co-workers or any offensive words.
• Human resource department should have to know or must have knowledge about all the policies of the organisation like paternity leave, maternity leave and other so that they can facilitate the proper information to the employees.

References:

Agarwal, B. (2017). Gender, Property, and Land Rights: Bridging a critical gap in economic analysis and policy 1. In Gender and Rights (pp. 119-149). Routledge.

Armstrong, M., & Taylor, S. (2014). Armstrong’s handbook of human resource management practice. Kogan Page Publishers.

Baum, T. (Ed.). (2016). Human resource issues in international tourism. Elsevier

Bratton, J., & Gold, J. (2017). Human resource management: theory and practice. Palgrave.

Eacott, A. (2018). Could men’s inflexible working arrangements be damaging the career prospect of their wives?. Retrieved from https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-08-31/calls-for-better-working-hours-for-men/10184968?section=business

Gatewood, R., Feild, H. S., & Barrick, M. (2015). Human resource selection. Nelson Education.

Hadfield, G. K. (2017). Households at work: beyond labor market policies to remedy the gender gap. Geo. LJ, 82, 89.

Huffman, M. L., King, J., & Reichelt, M. (2017). Equality for whom? Organizational policies and the gender gap across the German earnings distribution. ILR Review, 70(1), 16-41.

Huffman, M. L., King, J., & Reichelt, M. (2017). Equality for whom? Organizational policies and the gender gap across the German earnings distribution. ILR Review, 70(1), 16-41.

Miyake, A., Kost-Smith, L. E., Finkelstein, N. D., Pollock, S. J., Cohen, G. L., & Ito, T. A. (2010). Reducing the gender achievement gap in college science: A classroom study of values affirmation. Science, 330(6008), 1234-1237.

Muralidharan, K., & Sheth, K. (2016). Bridging education gender gaps in developing countries: The role of female teachers. Journal of Human Resources, 51(2), 269-297.

O’Reilly, J., Smith, M., Deakin, S., & Burchell, B. (2015). Equal pay as a moving target: International perspectives on forty-years of addressing the gender pay gap. Cambridge Journal of Economics, 39(2), 299-317.

Stone, R. J. (2017). Human Resource Management (2017). Milton Qld: John Wiley & Sons Australia, Ltd, 355-372.

Wang, M. T., & Degol, J. L. (2017). Gender gap in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM): Current knowledge, implications for practice, policy, and future directions. Educational Psychology Review, 29(1), 119-140.