Family-Friendly policies are programs that we would sponsor that are designed to help employees balance family and work (Grandey, 2001). I propose that we put three policies into place: allowing our employees to work from home when necessary, the creation of flex-time schedules, and the implementation of job sharing.
Being able to work from home is a key family-friendly policy that would be fairly simple to implement due to the small size of our company. Employees could simply take their work home with them, design and program the software at home, and then bring it back in when they come back. I do not believe that we should allow full-time work-from-home scenarios, as that can decrease the collaboration and innovation of our employees by isolating them from others. Also, we would need to train the employees on best practices, and put tight controls in place around this policy (Federal Computer Week, 2007). Some controls that I envision for this policy include:
- Scenarios in which working from home is allowable should be defined and communicated to employees. Some example scenarios:
- A child is home sick
- Work is being done at the house (electrician, cable, etc)
- The family vehicle is in the repair shop
- Employees would need to gain manager approval 24 hours in advance in order to be able to work from home. Exceptions can be made on a case-by-case basis.
- Any employee that wants to work from home needs to take some form of training. An educational video on this subject would suffice. Any employee that does not perform well at home would have these privileges revoked.
When the work-from-home solution does not work for an employee (not approved in time, the reasoning does not match the defined scenarios, etc), the flex-time solution would be the next best thing. Flex-Time means allowing our employees to work non-standard hours (other than 8am-5pm) with the goal of retaining the valuable skills of existing employees that may not be able to work the normal schedule (Ross). For this policy, approval is not necessarily required. The main point of the flex-time is that employees still work an eight hour day (or a 40 hour week), and are present during peak hours. There are three different kinds of flex-times (Ross), and we can use a combination of them all:
- Peak-Hour Flex-Time – employees still work an eight hour day, and are present during peak times, but instead of 8am-5pm, employees could work different times, such as 7am-4pm, or 9am-6pm. Basically this kind of flex-time is just shifting the schedule ahead or back by some amount of time. So, if an employee got to work at 7am, they would be justified in leaving at 4pm, since that is an eight hour day.
- Adjusted Lunch Period – allowing employees to adjust their lunch period, while still working an eight hour day. For example, if an employee came in at 7am, and only took a 30 minute lunch, they could leave at 3:30pm. Conversely, if an employee had an errand to run during lunch, they could lengthen the time they are away and leave later to make up the time.
- Compressed Work Week – employees work a full 40 hour week in less than five days. For example, an employee works four 10 hour days, so they get the fifth day off. Or an employee works four 9 hour days, and one 4 hour day.
Making use of these flex-time schedules has the potential to greatly increase job satisfaction and retention rates, because being flexible with hours means that parents can pick their kids up from school, or attend a recital that they would have otherwise missed.
My final (and most drastic) recommendation is that a job sharing policy should be implemented. Job sharing means that we employ two people part time to do a job that is normally done by one full time person with the goal of retaining employees that cannot work full time schedules (Ross). Job sharing situations would either be initiated by a full time employee or by management when a position becomes available. The hours worked would be agreed upon by the two people sharing the position. If no agreement is reached, the job is not shared. I say that this is the most drastic recommendation because it will be the most difficult to implement and manage. However, I believe that this approach could yield some high results, and would enable approved employees to work the hours that best suits them. Like working from home, tight controls and training would need to be in place for this. Also, the job position would need to be conducive to sharing because some design and engineering jobs should not be shared. This will be up to managers to determine. Some controls that would need to be in place for this policy are:
- Hours worked by the two sharing individuals should never exceed the number of hours that one person could/would work.
- Communication practices would need to be clearly defined in order to facilitate the sharing of the role.
- Employees would need to take training in order to be approved for a job sharing situation.
- Managers would have to carefully monitor performance throughout the sharing process in order to ensure high output. If the quality/quantity of work goes down with two people working the job, the job should not be shared.
There are a lot of other controls that would need to be put in place, but they can be fleshed out later. The important thing here is that this would enable employees who do not want/need full time jobs to work only in the mornings, or only in the afternoons, so that they would be able to maintain a home life as well.
The three policies that I have recommended are working from home, flex-time, and job sharing. I believe that a combination of all of these policies will ensure that we retain our valuable workforce and promote a healthy work-life balance. Since the majority of our software engineers are women (many with small children), these policies should be specifically tailored towards family life and making sure that our employees have the resources they need to be able to take care of their homes and families. If we do all of these things, our turnover rate will not go up, and we will retain our biggest asset. In the beginning stages of this organization, I believe that this is the most important thing we can do.
Works Cited
Federal Computer Week. (2007, February 12). Retrieved from Managersfret over telework issues: http://fcw.com/Articles/2007/02/12/Managers-fret-over-telework-issues.aspx?Page=2
Boushey, H. (2009, March 3). Center for American Progress Action Fund. Retrieved from Encouraging Family-Friendly Workplace Policies: http://www.americanprogressaction.org/issues/2009/03/boushey_workplace.html
Grandey, A. (2001). Work and Family Researchers Network. Retrieved from Family-Friendly Policies, Definition(s) of: https://workfamily.sas.upenn.edu/glossary/f/family-friendly-policies-definitions
Hitt, M. J., Miller, C. C., & Colella, A. (2009). Organizational Behavior: A Strategic Approach, Second Edition. Hoboken, NJ: John wiley & Sons, INc.
Ross, K. E. (n.d.). Womans-Work.com. Retrieved from Sample Flex-Time Policy: http://www.womans-work.com/flex-time_policy.htm
by
dotbolt (student)
