Marketing Plan

CAREERS AND WORK LIFE BALANCE AT COMPUCAN

Student No. 2482529

Ausrimas Zlabys

Tutor: Stephanie Gharner

1.1 INTRODUCTION

Life has become more and more challenging and a rise in working families, people are finding that the needs between work and outside work-life are conflicting. The labour market are looking for more flexible working hours due to working famillies, which have lead to employees working shorter shifts, day shifts, night shifts and have time off for maternity leave and other family related reasons. Furthermore, by identyfying these factors they are able to balance between home and work tasks. At the same time as societies need change such as lifestyle, internet shopping, 24 hour banking and etc, these services should be provided to achieve a better flexible working environment. They need to change according to the business's requirements, so that they are able to make available to every segment of their market. With the rapid changes in technology, more and more services are on offer for 24 hours 7 days a week. Therefore, this had lead businesses to expand their working hours to compete and retain a competitive advantage within their industry. Under these cirstumcances within today's society has lead to a Human Resource department of a business to implement new strategies to achieve flexibility and work-life balance.

'' The development of concern of achieving a better balance between work and non-work systems from recognition that the structure of the work force has changed significantly throughout the latter half of the 20th century in the UK, due to the impact on technology and employers''. Human Resource Strategies (Hogarth, Haluck, Pieere, Winterbotham, Vivian)

1.2 COMPUCAN

Compucan is a multi-national, blue-chip IT company, which is working hard to create a family-friendly work environment in which its employees can achieve and maintain a healthy work-life balance. This is due to problems identified by doing company-wide surveys, asking employees about their experiences, their wants and their needs. It was found that some employees can take up flexible working options more than others. Furthermore, women, for example, are able to work part-time for two years when they come back from maternity leave. If they choose to come back to work full-time, new mothers get a salary raise for childcare expenses for two years, whereas, men are not entitled to these benefits, nor are the people who care for other dependants. However, the company does allow the employees to apply for 12 month sabbatical. The company gives an opportunity to work from home via phone, only to let employees to spend more time with their family. Unfortunately, the case study provided does show many difficulties that must be discussed.

1.3 THEORETICAL ANALYSIS (COMPUCAN)

CompucanÐ'ÐŽÐ'¦s main focus towards work-life balance is maternity leave, new mothers and new fathers. Therefore, company has offered a few flexible choices to employees:

Ð'„X Home working

Ð'„X Tele-working

Ð'„X Part time

Ð'„X Full time with higher salary for two years

The options above are in the category of Numerical Flexibility which can be defined where a firmÐ'ÐŽÐ'¦s ability to adjust the level of labor input to meet the fluctuations in input. Under numerical flexibility, there are four types of choices for compucan:

Ð'„X Part time contracts

Ð'„X Temporary contracts

Ð'„X Subcontracts

Ð'„X Home working

Compucan chose two options out of the four above. Home working and part-time contracts that will help towards work life balance. Numerical flexibility enables employees to adjust rapidly to changing level of demand by increasing or decreasing their hours or by using subcontracts to undertake work to suit labor market situation Ð'ÐŽÐ'¦Ð'ÐŽÐ'¦John Bratton and Jeffrey Gold (Human Resource Management 3rd Edition)Ð'ÐŽÐ'¦Ð'ÐŽÐ'¦. Work life balance also let the company save financially as home working reduces overheads and eases demand, and also would increase the job satisfaction and individuals can enjoy autonomy. Furthermore, the most helpful technique is to let women work part time after maternity leave. Most of the employed women are happy to come back to work part time, because there is a possibility to keep a job and spend more time with a child. This works very well towards work-life balance. On the other hand, they feel that their career has ended, because they do not get promotions any more and they are not treated by their colleagues as they have a career any more. There is no point of going back full time for same reasons. It is thought that new parents in a company do not work as hard as childless employees, because they do not spend all the time working.

1.4 FUNCTIONAL FLEXIBILITY

Compucan has also used a method called functional flexibility. Functional Flexibility is where employees are able to carry out multi skills through out the company and can turn their hand to most or all of the different roles within the organisation this leading to reduced segregation. Ð'ÐŽÐ'§John Bratton and Jeffrey Gold (Human Resource Management 3rd Edition)Ð'ÐŽÐ'Ё

Functional Flexibility had benefited the firm in many ways. In this method there is less demarcation between jobs. Which means that employees are allowed to work any number of hours; however every employee is must work a certain number of hours that is set by the firm for a given period of time. There is also the facility of job rotation and itÐ'ÐŽÐ'¦s a flatter hierarchies. According to the case study, Molly is very happy with the options that were given by the company; Ð'ÐŽÐ'ҐÐ'ÐŽÐ'¦I am in a very, very good position. In terms of having the option of going back part-time and having flexible hours and flexible days...As a part time job for a working mother, it is an extremely good one, it really isÐ'ÐŽÐ'¦Ð'ÐŽÐ'¦(Case Study).

1.5 WAGE FLEXIBILITY

Compucan let women come back after maternity to work