₦airaland Forum

Work-Life Balance- Akeem Gbadamosi

What is the rate of labour turnover in your organization?

How often your staff ask for sick leave?

Do you experience this conflicting role (s) in your daily life?

Are you looking for ways to gain work/life balance?

If you answered, yes; this article may be the "missing link" you have been looking for.

People around us are trying their best to work a career, run a house, be a decent family member, participate in their community, and simply find more time to just live. All this, while trying not to feel guilty about what they feel they should be doing, instead of what they doing.

At Ryan LLC, a Dallas-based tax preparation company, employees were expected to put in 50-hour workweeks as well as frequent weekend time. And they couldn’t schedule work for when it convenience for them: If an employee put in 16 hours on a Thursday and six on Friday, for example, he still had to use hours from his paid time-off bank to make up for not having worked a full day on Friday, says Delta Emerson, SHRM-SCP, the company’s president of global shared services.

Face time was king, and performance evaluations were weighted heavily toward the number of hours people worked. The company’s leaders were proud of their work ethic and believed their 2,100 employees were doing what was best for their clients. That is, until 2008, when a rising young star marched into the CEO’s office and handed him her resignation. “I love this place, but it is not conducive to having a life,” Emerson recalls the worker saying. CEO G. Brint Ryan asked her to reconsider, and she agreed to stay on one condition: that he make Ryan a place where people enjoyed their jobs and could have a life outside the office (Story from an article: “My Job ate my Vacation” in HR Magazine April 2016).

The story above gave us an insight about Work/Life Balance which affect people in the daily lives either being an employee or employer of labour


What is the meaning of work/life balance?
The Work Foundation defined the concept of Work-Life balance as “about employees achieving a satisfactory equilibrium between work and non-work activities (i.e parental responsibilities and wider caring duties, as well as other activities and interest)”.

The work Foundation recommends that practical day-to-day business and related needs should be considered when organization set about selecting range of work-life options that should be made available to staff, whether on collective basis (as for example flexitime arrangement) or on an individual level (say, allowing individual flexibility to change hours of work during term time.

Work-Life balance employment practice are concerned with providing scope for employee to balance what they do at work with the responsibilities and interest they have outside work.

The failure to achieve real work/life balance means that your personal life can suffer, affecting your physical, emotional, and mental health. The huge increases in illness such as chronic backache, clinical depression, heart disease, blood pressure, type 2 diabetes, and obesity indicate that the current work/ life balance is a way out of whack.

The following are the ways to cope with the challenges of Work/Life Balance:
*Set manageable goals each day
*Be efficient with your time at work
*Ask for flexibility
*Take five break
*Tune in.
*Communicate effectively
*Give yourself a break

Rotarian. TM Akeem Gbadamosi, M.Sc. Industrial Relations and Human Resource Management. Managing Partner, First-Goldmine Consulting (An Human Resource Management and Development Services Firm) and Convener, Centre for Human Resource Emancipation (C4HRE)

As a professional, can you rate yourself in a scale of 1-10 in the area of networking with other professionals?

When last do you network with others both online and offline?

Do you feel BIG to network with upcoming professionals?

Can you survive as a professional without others?
Do you perceived networking as an art or an accident?
Why all these questions? Good.

What is Networking itself?
Networking is the practice of meeting other people involved in the same kind of work, field, or profession, to share information, support each other.

Networking is the deliberate process of exchanging information, resources, support, and access in such a way as to create mutually beneficial relationship for personal and professional success.

Networking in a clearer and louder definition: Establish enduring, inclusive relations within (the company) with our customers, employees, teammates, and community. Enable mutually beneficial partnership that full advantage of internal and external synergies.
In recent time, hardly can pickup a business school journal without seeing an article on networking. University research is exploring such topic as social capital communities of practice and horizontal integration.

Anne Baber and Lynne Waymon in their book, Make Your Contact Count: Networking Know-How for Business and Career Success. They both co-authored the finest 21st century networking workbook through their thorough research, written about and spoken on the subject-matter.

According to them, the following are the importance of networking in todays business environment:

Networking is now the essential professional competency for employees at all levels. They need to develop strategic networking skills and practices to excel at creating, cultivating, and capitalizing on the cross-functional relationship that get things done and affect the bottom line.

Networking is now the most important tool for intelligence gathering. In business setting, such as conferences, trade shows, meeting, and even golf outing, people need leading- edge networking skills to find the latest information on resources, trend, and best practices.

Networking is now the antidote to the coming brain as veteran retires. Experienced employees need networking expertise so they can pass on their valuable organizational and technical knowledge to newer, younger staff members.

Networking is now the critical strategy for business development. Professional and entrepreneurs needs to know how to gain visibility and credibility in the target markets, and how to build and maintain relationship for long-term growth.

Networking is now a must-have capability professional association members. Members need networking skills to take advantage of great connections at professional association meetings and conferences and to bring back new ideas and practice into their place of business.

Networking is the know-how for doing business in the world. International businesspeople and students need to get comfortable with and competent in the cultural ground rules for building relationships.

Networking is the method for personnel retention because it creates feeling of inclusion and helps people from diverse back-grounds feel listened to and valued at work.

Networking remains the primary technique that people use to find new jobs, change careers, or land on their feet after a layoff, merger, or reorganization. People who are looking for career advancement need practical networking strategies to become the natural and only choice in the job market.

I also wrote an article some years ago about the: 5 ways to gain experience in HR:  http:///nuur3zn where networking is one of the ways to grow.

Networking is about trust. I wrote an article on Trust
Do you know the trust building is the most important networking activity? Even if you realize its importance, you may not know how to do it. What do you know about trust?

The biggest mistake networkers make is not being strategic. To be strategic, you must understand and use two underlying concepts: How trust develops and how relationships develop.

What is your own understanding on the concept, networking?

Akeem Gbadamosi, M.Sc. Industrial Relations and Human Resources Management.

Workplace communication or Corporate communication means through which tasks and resources needed to carry out an assignment, the roles and duties and the expected results are made known to the subordinates.
According to Robert Kneitner and Angelo Kinicki, defines Communication as the “exchange of information between a sender and a receiver and the influence (perception) of between the individuals involved.
Communication is a vital part of managerial function and unless we communicate with each other; we cannot plan, organize, control, or lead i.e Communication is the life-blood that hold the organization together.
Of what importance is Communication to the workplace? The benefit cannot be over emphasized because it is germane to the progress of organization.
Ken Lawson in his book, ‘Successful Communication’ itemized the benefits of communication:
Good communication in business is vital to ensure that everyone knows how the company is performing.
Employees have a vested interest in the overall company business but often see only a small part. Managers, especially senior ones, should provide regular briefing.
Managers are often quick to point out failing in staff and to criticize the lack of action or bad practice. It is important to praise staff when things have gone well and targets have been achieved. This can be done in the departmental briefing or individual conversation.
Managers should hold regular briefing on the progress of projects, focusing on timing and achievement and to communicate programme changes.
The company’s success depends upon an efficient workplace and efficiency can be improved by good communication.
Good managers will always be ready to receive information that will improve performance and discuss there with staff of convenient time.
As an HR professional, one of the rules of communicating new ideas is that they should not be dismissed out of hand. Even if they appear unworkable or have been dismissed already, they should be received, and the employee should be thanked.
The way we speak with our customers and the credibility of the message will influence their willingness to place further business. Your communication with them, by whatever means, could be the determining factor in their decision. This makes effective communication vital.
As an HR professional, employees need some way of knowing the mission and strategy of the organization of which they are a part. In this way they see how their personal work fit with the overall. They need to know whether the organization is making progress towards its commitments. To avoid becoming in grown, they need to know what is happening in similar organization, what competitors are doing and how customers feel about their products.
Some old-generation HR professional believed vital information concerning the organization should not be shared with the employees, forgetting they are both partners-in-progress.
As an HR professional, you need to know how work is progressing overall, what barrier or hurdle need to be overcome, where resources are deficient, and, in general, how employees feel about themselves and their work. Is morale high or low? Is there an overall sense of urgency, resignation or indifference?
To meet these needs, plan a systematic series of communication vehicle-employee group meeting, bulletin, letters, and so forth. How many of each and how formal they should be depends, of course, on the size of the organization, the geographic location (all in one place or scattered), the continuity of the work, and similar factors?
In a nutshell, Communication has been described as the glue that holds the organization together.

Leave your comment(s)

Akeem Gbadamosi, M.Sc Industrial Relations and Human Resource Management

We all experience stress in one way or the other in our day-to-day activities either knowingly or unknowingly. Our relationship with our spouses, supervisors, bosses,co-workers, subordinates, friends, and the likes, most time get us stressed.

Stress is regarded as the outcome of the adaptation of man’s body and mind to change that require physical, psychological, emotional, and / or behaviour efforts.

The term” Workplace stress”, “Work stress”, or “Job stress” (Often used interchangeably and synomymous) have been described as ” the harmful physical and emotional responses that can happen when the requirement of the job do not match the capabilities, resources, or need of the employee”. It occurs when there is a conflict between the job demands on the employee and the amount of control an employee has over meeting these demands. In general, the combination of high demands in a job and a low amount of control of control over the situation can lead to stress.

Disorder related to work stress encompass a broad array of conditions, including psychological disorders ( e.g., depression, anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder) and other types of emotional strain (e.g., dissatisfaction, fatigue, boredon, tension, e.t.c.), maladaptive behaviours (e.g., aggression, substance abuse), and cognitive impairment (e.g., concentration and memory problems). In turn, these conditions may lead to poor work performance or even accident and injury. Job stress is also associated with various biological reactions that may lead ultimately to compromised health, such as cardiovascular disease, diabetes, or in extreme case untimely death.

The workplace stress can have many origins or come from one single event. It can impact on both employees and employers alike. For Example, fear of job redundancy, layoffs due to an uncertain economy, increased demands for overtimes due to staff cutbacks act as negative stressors. Employees who start to feel the “pressure to perfom” can also get caught in a downward spiral of increasing effort to meet rising expectations with no increase job satisfaction. The relentless requirement to work at optimum performance often takes its toll in job dissatisfaction, employee turnover, reduced efficiency, illness, and even death. Absenteeism, illness, alcoholic, “petty internal politics”, bad or snap decisions, indifference and apathy, lack of motivation or creativity are all by-products of an over stressed workplace. All is not evil as a little stress is good for every worker and desirable for his optimal performance and health.

Watch out for: Is stress good or evil?

Akeem Gbadamosi, M.Sc Industrial Relations and Human Resource Management

omenka:
Wow!! This guy just made a huge name for himself. Wish Baba was there to receive him.

When is the trek to Ot**ke beginning??

I salute Hamisu Abubakar's COURAGE. A truly Nigerian!