Why Employees Value Workplace Flexibility - Coursework Example

Work design challenges Student’s Name: Instructor’s Name: Course Code: Date of Submission: Introduction Workplace flexibility is a management practice which has been implemented by many organizations. The main reason why organizations practicing workplace flexibility is the need to satisfy the changing demands of the employees as well as the needs of the company. It involves scheduling working hours of employees so that they can be comfortable with their working time by balancing the work and family obligations. This helps to improve the satisfaction of the employees (Colvin 2003). One of the companies which have successfully applied this policy is Probuild Construction Company. The main aim of this essay was to find out the impacts of workplace flexibility on the performance of employees. In turn, the performance of the employees was affected the performance of the organization. There have been arguments that work-life balance has enabled an organization to create a competitive advantage while others argue that work-life balance strategy cannot improve the performance of an organization instead it can lower the performance of the company. Those who argue that work-life balance can improve the performance of an organization argue that it helps to improve the morale of the employees and also attract and retain more competent skills (Colvin 2003). Those who are against the policy of work-life balance argue that it may be complicated to implement and may not match the policy of the organization with those of the employees leading to low productivity of the employees. This essay therefore presented both arguments. Why employees value workplace flexibility Probuild construction is a construction company which has managed to maintain its competitive advantage in the market due to effective strategies it applies. Due to the reputation of the company and its quality of work, the company has managed to be awarded major construction projects such as Victoria Gardens Shopping Centre project (Rerrich 1996). In May the year 2005 the company applied for work and family balance grant which went successfully. Since then the company is applying the work-life balance policy. The employees value workplace flexibility because of many reasons. The first reason is that the employees enjoy working in environment with flexibility. The employees will have time to manage their families and conduct other private life affairs (Rerrich 1996). They will also feel respected since they are granted their freedom although they are needed to be committed in order for the programme to be successful. In this regard, workplace flexibility helps the employees to fit their personal life into the work life. Another important reason as to why employees value workplace flexibility is that it enables them to be satisfied with their work. This is in the context that the employees get time for their families and private life. They will be satisfied to work the expected and have some time for their private life (Liu et al 2007). This will help to improve their work satisfaction as they don’t work under pressure since there is nothing which is imposed on them. This will reduce the employee turnover rate and absenteeism as they will be enjoying doing their work. In addition, workplace flexibility helps to improve the wellbeing of the employees. Since the employees of the company will have time for their own businesses and private affairs, they will be working with no stress. Despite working for income, the employees need time for leisure activities which will improve their life (Liu et al 2007). Working under pressure will lead to stressful work which will in turn lead to lifestyle diseases like hypertension. Therefore, workplace flexibility helps to improve the welling of employees. There are those scholars who argue that this strategy can be applied in all organizations. They argue that since the policy is simple to design, it can be easy for the organizations to implement according to flexibility theory. They further argue that the policy of workplace flexibility can be implemented successfully since the employees are part of the stakeholders when implementing it (Farnham & Horton 1999). The most beneficiaries are the employees thus they will be delighted to implement it which implies that there will be less resistance to change, thus it can work in all organizations. Since the objectives of the strategy include attracting and retaining better human skills, each organization will want to create a competitive environment by implementing the workplace flexibility policy. All organizations will be encouraged to implement the strategy so that they can gain competitive advantage in the market by improving their performance (Farnham & Horton 1999). Organizations which have applied the policy have improved their reputation thus encouraging many other organizations to implement the flexibility workplace policy. However, there are those who argue that this strategy cannot work in all organizations and industries. According to the cognitive theory, workplace situations depend on the changing demands or the situational demands. Depending on the changing demands of various organizations, the policy may not be applicable in all sectors (Bowling & Beehr 2006). To start with, an industry which provides medical services may not have flexible working schedules since there could be emergencies which require immediate medical services. Lets say if a medical expert is out of work and there is an emergency case, the medical expert has to be called back immediately to save life. In this regard, the workplace flexibility policy could not work in such organizations. Moreover, they argue that workplace flexibility cannot work in small organizations. This is because it maybe costly to implement the strategy in terms of training the experts to implement the strategy and the information technology systems installation may be costly. On the other hand, they argue that this strategy cannot be applied in organizations with authoritative style of leadership. The group which is most affected by these policy are the employees. They should be consulted when developing such policies so that each employee can give a schedule which is convenient to him or her although there could be negotiations to agree on the best schedule (Bowling & Beehr 2006). If the management goes a head and develops the schedule alone, the policy may not work as it could not reflect the exact needs of the employees thus they will resist change as they were not consulted. Possibility of companies being competitive and creating workplace flexibility and work-family balance There are those scholars who argue that it is possible for an organization to be competitive and at the same time practice workplace flexibility and work-life balance. There are also those who argue against this phenomenal. To start with, those who support the argument say that competitive advantage can be achieved by applying various strategies in the organization. One of the strategies applied by organizations is by implementing effective hiring and selection of the employees (Bowling & Beehr 2006). This is the strategy which enables an organization to select the most qualified employees with required skills who will help to improve the productivity of the organization. This enables the company to differentiate its products and services from those of the competitors in terms of quality thus improving the competitiveness of the company. Another theory which can be implemented to improve competitiveness of the company is the total reward theory. This is the theory which recognizes the efforts of the employees and rewards them accordingly (Rerrich 1996). According to this theory, once the organization has performed well in the market it rewards its employees. All the employees are rewarded in teamwork as they enabled the company to gain competitive advantage. This will improve the morale of the employees thus they will offer their best skills to improve the quality of their work and the organization as a whole leading to competitive advantage of the company. This is one way of motivating the employees not only through workplace flexibility and work-life balance. Further, according to the theory of practice, an organization can create competitive advantage by developing the skills of the employees. In this practice, an organization can improve the productivity of the employees by developing their skills. This can be done through training and development of the employees. After training the employees, they will increase their productivity with limited time. The employees can have time to spend in their private affairs, but they can improve their productivity despite the time lost for their personal life (Aryee & Luk 1996). Therefore, workplace flexibility can be applicable at the same time improve the productivity of the company. Moreover, competitiveness of an organization can be achieved through better remunerations. This is the strategy whereby the employees are compensated well in terms of salaries and wages. This will motivate the employees and improve their productivity despite their work schedule. The employees might be spending much of their time away from their workplaces but they can measure their productivity up to standard by working from home (Aryee & Luk 1996). The need for competitive remuneration is to motivate the employees to be committed when executing their tasks. Therefore the employees can have flexible work schedule and work-life balance but still improve the productivity of the company. In this regard, therefore, an organization can create competitive advantage and at the same time practice workplace flexibility and work-life balance. However, on the other hand, there are those who argue that an organization cannot gain competitiveness and at the same apply workplace flexibility and work-life balance. They argue that workplace flexibility and work-life balance will consume most of the top management’s time in monitoring the performance of the employees and abandon other important management issues (Franklin 2002). The management will not have time to concentrate on the core business and develop strategies to improve the performance of the company like conducting market research and conducting internal organizational audit. Therefore, it is not possible to implement workplace flexibility policy and at the same time remain competitive in the market. The resource allocation theory on the other hand indicates that, the resources will not be used effectively when an organization is applying workplace flexibility policy. In the first place, time will not be effectively used since the employees will spend a lot of time for their private life. This indicates that there will be poor time management, thus their productivity will be low thus lowering the competitiveness of the company (Amundson 2001). In addition, there will be much financial resources spent on managing the workplace flexibility policy. These issues imply that the production of the employees will be low which will also affect the productivity of the company thus lowering its competitiveness. In this effect therefore, an organization cannot be able to be competitive and at the same time implement the workplace flexibility and work-life balance policy since there will be ineffective utilization of resources. Considering the above arguments, it can be concluded that it is possible for an organization to be competitive and at the same time implement workplace flexibility policy. This is because there are many strategies which can be applied by organizations to remain competitive. These strategies include effective hiring and selection procedures, employee training and development and rewarding strategy which can help to improve the morale of the employees (Amundson 2001). This can improve the productivity of the employees due to commitment. Other workplace flexibility and work-life balance strategies Probuild could have adopted Probuild Company could have applied various strategies to improve its performance. One of the strategies which it could have adopted is career advancement programs. These are the programs which could enable employees to improve their skills and careers (Allen 2001). There could have been a policy which could allow the employees to take day offs to attend lectures on their areas of specializations. This will help to improve the performance of the employees and also motivate them. Moreover, the company could have changed the culture of the organizations. This is the policy which could have changed the ways things are done in the organizations. For instance, the employees could work from home or anywhere as long as they are connected to the organizational network (Allen 2001). Further, the management could have changed the ways in which employees work in terms of time and days of work as well as the reporting time to the office. This implies that the employees could have managed to utilize available time effectively and the rest of their time they can do their own affairs. In addition, the organization could have done job restructuring at the workplace. The jobs could have been allocated to each employee effectively. The aim of job restructuring at the workplace is to ensure that the employees are assigned jobs where they can best fit (Alam et al 2009). Jobs can also be shared by more than one employee. When an employee leaves the office for personal issues according to the schedule, the organization will find other employees to replace him or her the time he is away. This is more or less the same as working in shifts. Job restructuring ensures that employees have skills in different fields thus they can supplement one another. Further, the organization could have introduced part time working. This is the working policy where an employee can work for the company in part time basis. The employee can have the opportunity to choose the most appropriate time with which to work with the organization (Alam et al 2009). In this effect, the organization can be less concerned how the employee spends the rest of his time. This is one way in which the company could have promoted workplace flexibility and work-life balance. The benefits of workplace flexibility and work-life balance include improving the employee wellbeing. The employees will work under less pressure according to the organizational schedule unlike when there is full-time working. This eliminates stress among employees since they will also have time for their personal issues (Bosch 1999). This policy will further improve the performance of the employees. This policy will improve the morale of the employees, thus they will be committed to their work. This will help to improve the performance of the employees as they enjoy their jobs. Moreover, workplace flexibility helps to improve the satisfaction of the employees with their jobs (Bosch 1999). This is because this policy will spell out the time for work and time for private affairs. This will enable the employees to enjoy their work as it does not interfere with a personal life of the employees thus promoting employee satisfaction. Workplace flexibility and work-life policy enables an organization to attract and retain competitive human resource skills. Many employees would like to work in an environment where there is some flexibility in terms of working hours (Federica & Laura 2008). This helps to improve the reputation in global market, thus attracting most competent skills to the company as it meets their needs. It will also maintain the existing employees from seeking for other jobs elsewhere. This will help to improve the performance of the company. This policy also helps to reduce the employee turnover and absenteeism. This is because there is effective schedule on how time between personal life and work-life is spent. The employees will have time for their personal issues, thus they will not be absent from their work to attend to their personal affairs (Federica & Laura 2008). However, there are also some drawbacks of the workplace flexibility. The first one is that it may lower the productivity of the company. This is in the sense that the employees will be spending much of their time in private affairs and not in their work. This will lower the productivity of the organizations. It is also costly to implement the policy since it requires constant monitoring which consumes time and financial resources (Federica & Laura 2008). This will instead lower the productivity of the company. Conclusion Workplace flexibility is a strategy where an organization balances the time spent on work and personal affairs. This strategy has been applied by many organizations to create a competitive advantage. The reasons why employee value workplace flexibility are that it improves their morale, wellbeing and they will have time for their individual life. However, there is an argument that not all organizations can implement this strategy successfully depending on the size and nature of the organization. The other strategies which an organization can implement to be competitive include effective employee hiring and selection, rewarding strategies and effective remuneration which improves the morale of the employees. The other strategies which Probuild could have adopted include changing the organizational culture and restructuring the jobs at the workplace. Finally, the benefits of workplace and work-life policy includes improved employee wellbeing, improved employee performance, satisfy the employees and enables an organization attract and retain competent human skills. 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