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Work-Life Balance and Workforce Management
By : Lucy Caudle
Individuals face demands on their time from work and life requirements. If they cannot balance the requirements, it could mean an unhealthy life or unemployment. Work-life balance has become an important topic of study and discussion because of its impact on public health and business results.
Business results are affected because stressed employees are poor performers and unhealthy life choices lead to greater incidence of sickness absences.
WWith both governments and businesses interested in the issue, work-life balance has indeed become a center of considerable attention.
How Work Can Affect Life
A healthy life requires attention to important life areas such as family, children, friends and hobbies. A high-pressure work situation and time spent on commuting can eat into the time available for workers to attend to these areas. As a result, these important areas tend to be neglected.
Job security has also suffered with changing trends in industry. Information technology and competitive pressures have led to the practical disappearance of the earlier phenomenon of lifetime employment with one employer.
Employees are generally looking for better opportunities while employers might be seeking ways to reduce costs by replacing employees. Both these lead to frequent job changes and even to re-locations, adding to the stress and pressures faced by employees.
Add to these the stress of constant technological changes and the need to learn new things, and you get a future-shocked generation.
Results of Unbalanced Work-Life Situations
Rise in workplace violence, increase in levels of absenteeism and rising trend of workmen's compensation claims have made employers keenly aware of the need to attend more to the work-life balance of their employees.
In the personal lives of employees, inadequate time for family life and parenting lead to marriage problems and a generation of children increasingly addicted to harmful substances and ways of life.
Pressures created by the work situation are also affecting health and sexual lives.
Achieving Better Work Life Balance
Personal ambitions, a consumerist culture, an emphasis on "work-ethic" to the neglect of personal lives and the time squeeze caused by the demands of work, commuting and personal affairs are all contributing to the upset work life balance.
Remedial measures need to focus on certain key areas, including in particular:
- Personal training to focus employee attention on the important things for a healthy life of fulfilling relationships
- Employers realizing the benefits of helping their employees find a work-life balance, through training programs, flexible working hours, and other measures
Studies have indicated that by allowing some degree of control for employees to choose when, where and how they work, employers can realize significant business benefits.
Conclusion
When demands of work leaves little time for important areas of life like family, children, friends and hobbies, work-life balance gets upset. The result can be felt in employee health, levels of stress, marriage, problem children, low work performance, absenteeism and so on.
Achieving better work life balance requires both employee training and employer orientation changes.
Today Business Management Is Important For Online Businesses
By : dhimanbhavna
I have been many years working for offline hi-tech and software companies and I have been really amazed about the number of businesses which are claiming to make a lot of money online. I am really scared for many of them because they seem to focus on one product or one business with no further improvement. In details many businesses promote a product that is very good for the current market needs but after months or years you see the same product or maybe they have moved to another product.
Most of them then fail because if you go deep inside you discover that they have no idea of what they are selling or promoting, they just follow the trend of the moment. At the end I really believe I am right when I think that you have to think to your business as well as many other companies do offline. You need to start with a business idea and create a business around it. You must create a business plan to see if you can afford it and how long it can sustain your business. I did not see people making risk assessment, long term plans and roadmaps. You need to project your business from here to the next 3 years at least. If you have an idea, try to figure out for how long you can profit from it creating products which are each time an enhancement of the previous ones. Focus on provide your customer a complete service.
Do not stop in providing a product. You need to find a way to constantly have your customers come back to you, because they know they find with you all they need for your business. Try to ally with other businesses which can provide a service or a product that is complementary to yours. You can really create a network of services and have your customers come back to you all the time. If you have a roadmap this means you have your business under control because in this way you have created a vision. You have a catalogue of product to promote in the next months or years even before you launch your first one. People will realize that they need to keep in touch with you also in the future. Many software companies do like this. You can do the same if you are a writer and provide "How to" documentation. You can really create a roadmap of information products and your customers will really believe you are an expert, a person who knows what is doing. Vision, long term planning, roadmap, business plan and expertise are the really key to success of serious businesses and business people in general.
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