Unit – 2

RECRUITMENT AND
RETENTION STRATEGIES
 POINTS TO BE DISCUSSED:
Online recruitment;
Employee referrals;
Recruitment process outsourcing;
Head hunting;
Executive education;
Flexi timing;
Telecommuting,
Quality of work life;
Work – life balance;
Employee empowerment,
Employee involvement;
Autonomous work teams.
ONLINE RECRUITMENT
 Online Recruitment - Introduction

■ Recruitment (hiring) is a core function of human

resource management.
■ It is the first step of appointment.
■ Recruitment refers to the overall process of attracting,
shortlisting, selecting and appointing suitable
candidates for jobs (either permanent or temporary)
within an organization.
■ Recruitment can also refer to processes involved in
choosing individuals for unpaid positions, such as
voluntary roles or unpaid trainee roles.
■ Managers, human resource generalists and
recruitment specialists may be tasked with carrying
out recruitment, but in some cases public-sector
employment agencies, commercial recruitment
agencies, or specialist search consultancies are used
to undertake parts of the process.
■ Internet-based technologies to support all aspects of
recruitment have become widespread.
■ Online recruiting has revolutionized traditional
recruiting in the business world.
■ It is no wonder, since it increases time-to-hire,
delivers a better candidate pool and is more
cost effective than any other means of
reaching potential job candidates.
■ With shorter employment tenures, shrinking
labor pools and the growing demand for
diverse talents in the market, the need for
effective recruiting strategies is greater than
ever!
■ Online Recruitment or Internet Recruitment is the act of
scouring the Internet to locate both actively searching
job seekers and also individuals who are content in their
current position (these are called "passive candidates").
■ It is a field of dramatic growth and constant change that
has given birth to a dynamic multibillion-dollar
industry.
■ Organizations often adopt online systems because they
believe e-recruiting is more likely than traditional
recruitment sources to uncover individuals with unique
talents and skills.
■ Traditionally, recruiters use large job boards, niche job
boards, as well as social and business networking to
locate these individuals.
■ The immediate goal of Internet recruiting is to find
individuals that a recruiter or company can present to
hiring managers for the purpose of employment.
■ Quite often, Internet recruiters have very short-term
goals when it comes to recruiting online.
■ The recruiter scans his or her database to see if
anyone's resumes match the requirements. If not, they
proceed to search on the Internet.
■ The process of finding and hiring the best-qualified
candidate (from within or outside of an organization)
for a job opening, in a timely and cost effective manner.
■ The recruitment process includes:
○ analyzing the requirements of a job,
○ attracting employees to that job,
○ screening and selecting applicants,
○ hiring, and integrating the new employee to the
organization.
■ The E-Recruitment software and systems are
available, through which the entire recruitment
process becomes automated.
■ One of the systems is the Recruitment
Management System, which is a portal that
involves hiring the candidates online and each step
involved in the recruitment process is automatized.
 Main Elements Of E-recruitment

■ Applicant Tracking: Status of candidate with respect to the

jobs applied by him/her.
■ Employer’s Website: Communicate details of job
opportunities and collect data for the same
■ Job Boards: Just like recruitment advertising section of a
newspaper or magazine, will carry job advertisements from
employers and agencies.
■ Online Testing: Some kind of evaluation of candidates over
internet.
 Features of Online Recruitment

■ User-friendly for all administrative needs

■ Ability to post jobs that are available on websites
and other job boards/bank
■ Ability to house all data needed for recruitment
purposes
■ Assess and rank all applicants
■ Job and applicant tracking
■ Offers a schedule to help with interviewing
■ Report generator
 E-RECRUITMENT PROCESS

■ Identify current needs of employment in the

organizations.
■ Posting the advertisement of job vacancy on job board
(Online).
■ Managing the response i.e. Applicant database.
■ Short-listing of Applicant according to job specification.
■ Arranging and conducting online interviews (By
chatting, video conferencing etc) and
■ Decision making regarding further process.
 E-RECRUITMENT PROCESS

Identifying
Managing
current Job Posting
the response
needs

Conducting
Decision Short-listing
online
making of Applicant
interviews
 Advantages of E-Recruitment

■ Low cost per candidate, as compared to the physical

recruitment process.
■ Wide geographical coverage, i.e. the candidates can
be hired from any part of the world.
■ Beneficial for both the employer and the job seeker,
the corporations can find the prospective candidates
through their CVs attached to world wide web, and
similarly, the candidates can search the employer
through their job vacancy advertisement posted on
the internet.
■ Less time required in hiring the potential candidate
for the firm.
■ Right people for the right job can be easily found
through E-Recruitment, by matching the
candidate’s CVs with the job profile.
■ The recruitment process becomes more efficient
and easy to record details of the applicant.
 Factors Influencing E-recruitment:

■ Size of the Enterprise

■ Employment Conditions. (employment opportunities,
suitable candidates, availability)
■ Salary Structure and Working Conditions
■ Rate of Growth
 DESIRE FROM E-RECRUITMENTSYSTEM

■ There are two key areas where minimum

requirements of the service and functionality are
essential to the success of the E-recruitment
system.
○ From the viewpoint of candidate
○ From the viewpoint of recruiters
 From the viewpoint of candidates:

 Build and maintain their Profile or CV.

 Personalized to their requirements or interests.
 Apply for online vacancies or openings.
 Attach resumes, cover letters, and academic
documentation.
 Get informed for automated job alerts.
 Accept and Decline invitations to interviews.
 View saved copies of all correspondence from the
prospective employer in a personalized mail section.
 From the viewpoint of recruiters:

 Handle and manage an online or email based application

approval process.
 Co-ordinate all advertising and workflow of vacancies.
between relevant attraction points – corporate job board,
intranet, external job boards and agencies.
 Acknowledge at any stage of the recruitment process .
 Filter, Screen and Score candidates according to
application responses.
 Adapt their application processes for any type of
recruitment – contract, permanent, full or part time, etc.
 Handle and manage a ‘real’ talent pool – not just a
database full of previous applicants.
 Handle and manage all interviews online, with the
ability for candidates to self schedule.
 Handle and manage all communications e.g. offers of
Joining.
 Report on all aspects of the recruitment process easily.
 E-RECRUITMENT IN INDIA

■ Job Advertisement are posted regularly on online

communities like Forums, Blogs, and other websites.
■ Recruiters are aggressively using social networking sites
like Linkedin, Whatsapp, Facebook, Yahoo-360,
Google+, etc. for sourcing qualified candidates.
■ Interview process
○ Initial discussion- Telephone/mobile.
○ Final discussion- Video Conference.
■ Online Career events, Virtual job fairs have been
adopted by Indian recruiters rapidly.
 Conclusion

■ In India, E-Recruitment has shown its escalation in term

of commercial values and also in adoption by
recruitment agencies and jobseekers (applicants).
■ Most of the Indian companies are also beginning to use
their own Web sites as well as some third party vendors
(agencies) as part of the solution for recruitment.
■ Indian recruitment agencies are finding online
recruitment as the most efficient and effective approach
to finding candidates, and one that is targeted to their
needs and cost efficient.
EMPLOYEE REFERRAL
■ Employee referral is an internal recruitment method
employed by organizations to identify potential
candidates from their existing employees' social
networks.
■ An employee referral scheme encourages a
company's existing employees to select and recruit
the suitable candidates from their social networks.
■ As a reward, the employer typically pays the
referring employee a referral bonus.
■ Recruiting candidates using employee referral is widely
acknowledged as being the most cost effective and
efficient recruitment method to recruit candidates and
as such, employers of all sizes, across all industries are
trying to increase the volume of recruits through this
channel.
■ As per the Global Employee Referral Index 2013 Survey,
92% of the participants reported employee referrals as
one of the top recruiting sources for recruiting as well as
the #1 source to see a significant rise in investment in
2014.
 Features

■ Improved candidate quality, 'fit', and retention

■ Reduction in recruitment expenditure
■ Social network referral
■ Benefits
 Benefits of Employee Referral

■ A referred candidate is faster to hire than a

traditional candidate
■ A referred candidate is cheaper to hire than a
traditional candidate
■ A referred hire will stay at their job longer than a
traditional hire
■ An employee who successfully referred a candidate
will stay at their company longer than a traditional
employee
■ Improved retention
■ Quicker on-boarding
■ Wider candidate pool
■ Appreciation for recruitment
■ Speed to hire
■ Better candidate quality
 Disadvantages of Employee Referral

■ Risks of getting alienated from other staffs

■ Lack of ideas
■ Might lead to charges of discrimination
■ The disillusionment of the referral program
RECRUITMENT PROCESS
OUTSOURCING
 Recruitment Process Outsourcing

■ Recruitment process outsourcing (RPO) is only

about ten years old; the descendants of human
resource outsourcing as corporations found that
recruiting posed a significant cost to their staffing
needs.
■ However, RPO has evolved into much more than
outsourcing recruiting to an outside provider,
although that’s two-thirds of the name.
■ RPO is a partnership between a company with
recruiting needs (RPO buyer) and a company with
recruiting services (RPO provider) in which the RPO
buyer’s brand is being promoted instead of the
provider’s.
 Recruitment Process Outsourcing Definition

■ The Recruitment Process Outsourcing Association

(RPOA) defines RPO as “a form of business process
outsourcing (BPO) where an employer transfers all
or part of its recruitment processes to an external
provider.
■ Recruitment Process Outsourcing providers can
manage the entire recruiting/hiring process, or can
manage one or two aspects of the process,
essentially serving as an extension of the company’s
human resources department”.
■ This definition illustrates that RPO services are not
outsourcing in the traditional sense, as working
with an RPO provider is much more consultative
and customizable than normal recruiting.
 What Do RPO Services Entail?

■ In most cases, RPO providers offer specific services that are

designed to improve what the client is already doing for
recruiting, or work with a company’s recruiters to do more
and to do better.
■ Here’s a list of some of the services an RPO provider might
do for a client:
○ Candidate research
○ Reporting and Audits
○ Hiring Manager Training
○ Process Mapping
○ Technology Consulting
○ Third Party Vendor Management
HEAD HUNTING
 Head Hunting

■ Head hunting is a process of recruitment of a

prospective employee, who is working elsewhere
and who has a relevant work experience for a
particular job profile.
■ Head hunting is carried out by the HR of a company
or is outsourced to an agency or job consultant.
■ Head hunting is one of the most effective methods
for sourcing & getting candidates for top positions,
who might not necessarily look for a job change.
■ Organizations in many cases look for people with good
amount of experience or professional competency to
join the organization.
■ They may not be able to post the job vacancy directly
due to maintenance of confidentiality.
■ Further, they may not want to be dependent on the job
boards, or on people seeking out for employment.
Headhunting is suitable in these cases.
■ Thus, we see that Headhunting works on a certain time
frame to find the top management executives as the
organization demands.
 Recruiters resort to headhunting when they find:

■ Certain position/designations lying vacant and

nobody interesting applied, when they are looking for
certain niche skills(competencies) and don’t want to
waste their time placing ads where unworthy
candidates would apply for,
■ When a certain position is rather confidential and they
don’t want to list it publicly on the market.
■ Example, certain strategic roles, position that
requires making tactical decisions.
 There are 3 types of Headhunting:

■ Direct: It is a method of calling the candidates directly,

either by calling on his/her number, or else meeting
them at their homes or at their office.
○ This is done after entire research has been done upon
that person, and the role he is being hired for.

■ Indirect: Leaving a reference for the person to be

headhunted, so that he may contact, in case he is
willing.
■ Third Party: This is where the Executive search firms
come in. The process of headhunting is outsourced.
 The Headhunting procedure

Understand Mapping the

Profile Hunting,
client Target
screening &
requirements/ companies to
short listing
business headhunt

Manage
Regular follow interviews,
up after joining completion of
formalities
 Justify

■ “All headhunting is recruitment, but all

recruitment is not headhunting”

CAN YOU JUSTIFY THE STATEMENT??

EXECUTIVE EDUCATION
 Executive education

■ Executive education (ExEd or Exec. Ed) refers to academic

programs at graduate-level business schools worldwide
for executives, business leaders and functional managers.
■ These programs are generally non-credit and non-degree-
granting, but sometimes lead to certificates and some
offer continuing education units accepted by professional
bodies and institutes.
■ In most cases, executive education does not lead to a
formal degree (except for an Executive MBA). Some
institutions, however, will offer professional certifications
or "certificates of completion."
■ Estimates by Business Week magazine suggest that
executive education in the United States is
approximately an $800 million annual business with
approximately 80 percent provided by university-
based business schools.
■ Key players in university-based executive education
span elite universities, as well as many regional and
mid-sized universities and business schools around
the world.
■ Customized programs help organizations increase
management capability by combining the science of
business and performance management into
specialized programs that enable executives to
develop new knowledge, skills and attitudes.
■ Knowledge translates into the capability an
organization applies to the products and services it
brings to the marketplace.
■ Open enrollment programs also are available as
part of university-based executive education
offerings, which occur throughout the year on
selected dates, and are available to participants
from different companies and organizations.
■ Shorter executive education programs tend to focus
on specific roles or industries, or on improving
specific leadership skills, such as persuasion,
negotiation, teambuilding or communication.
■ Some executive education providers offer more
comprehensive management training options, such
as the modular "Advanced Management Program"
(AMP) offered independently by several business
schools.
■ It has been noted that “executive education is the toughest
classroom” (besides other academic fields such as the hard
sciences or engineering) because time-pressed and
demanding executives challenge each other in the classroom
as much or more as their professors.

■ The programs are credited with offering unique networking

and personal career development opportunities for
participants, as well as opportunities for universities to build
stronger alumni networks that also benefit younger,
traditional MBA program graduates through networking,
internships and job opportunities.
 History

■ The genesis of executive education can be traced

to Frederick Taylor and his 1911 treatise Principles
of Scientific Management.
■ This book described how the application of the
scientific method to the management of workers
could improve productivity.
■ Taylor's ideas, also known as "Taylorism" would
become the standard for businesses worldwide.
■ On the heels of Taylorism came The Alfred P.
Sloan School of Management, which in 1914 began
offering Course XV, Engineering Administration, at
the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).
■ At that time, the concept of providing business training
in the academic environment was gaining popularity,
thus MIT created a program “specially designed to train
men to be competent managers of businesses that have
much to do with engineering problems.”
■ Harvard also began offering short five-week selections
of standard MBA material in the late 1920s.
■ Executive Education in the United States developed
critical mass after World War II.
■ Throughout the 1970s university-based executive
education continued to evolve as an industry.
■ Several on-campus residential facilities were
constructed at several universities, demonstrating
the value of a standalone facility dedicated to
executive education programs.
■ Executive education further developed in the 1980s
and 1990s as the increasing pace and scope of
global business demanded higher levels of
education among employees.
■ The dot-com boom further changed the scope of
the business landscape by favoring employees and
organizations that were quick to adapt to change.
 Current situation:

■ Ongoing business challenges and opportunities – a

dynamic economy, developing technologies, new
business models and globalization – has made the
emphasis on learning new concepts throughout
ones career a necessity.
■ Despite the growing popularity of university-based
executive education around the world, the global
economic recession has slowed the industry’s
growth during the past few years.
■ According to a 2011 study conducted by
the Manchester Business School in partnership
with Dubai International Academic City and Dubai
Knowledge Village, the global economic downturn
has had a negative impact on learning and
development spending within the Middle East.
 Rankings

■ Executive education rankings are carried out

annually by the Financial Times and by Bloomberg
Business Week.
■ Ranking may be based on aims achieved, % of
women, average rank, country, course design,
diversity, facilities, faculty, follow-up, food, growth,
intl. location, intl. participants, revenues,
participants, partner schools, preparation, skills,
teaching, and other criteria.
FLEXI TIMING
 Flexi time?

■ Flexi time is a scheme where an organization gives its

employees the opportunity of a flexible working hours
arrangement.
■ Under flexi time, there is normally a core period of the
day when employees must be at work (e.g. between 10
am and 4pm), whilst the rest of the working day is "flexi
time", in which staff can choose when they work,
subject to achieving total daily, weekly or monthly
hours.
■ An employee must work between the basic core hours
and has the flexibility to clock in / out between the other
hours.
 WHAT IS FLEX??

■ A series of arrangements that enable your

employees to work when, where & how they need to
work.
■ A performance tool that encourages your
organization to become more result based, more
transparent .
■ A retention tool that enables employees to continue
to deliver value to organization.
■ An attitude that embodies trust & communication.
 Flexible Work Arrangement (FWA)

■ Flexible Work Arrangement (FWA) is a provision

given to an employee to work in a schedule
different from the normal one.
■ This is provided to help employees to balance
between their personal life & professional life.
■ It aims to attract & retain the employees, reduce
absenteeism and improve morale.
 COMMON FLEXIBLE WORK ARRANGEMENTS

■ Compressed work week:

○ In this type, the working hours per day in a typical 5 day week
is increased. For example four 10-hour days, three 12-hour
days etc
■ Flextime:
○ Here the employee is given a minimum number of hours
he/she is expected to work along with ‘core hours’ where the
employee must be in office.
○ The employee within this stipulated schedule can alter the
start & finish times.
○ For example if the company requires an employee to work for
40 hrs a week and ‘core hours’ from 10am to 3pm.
○ The employee can choose to come at 8am and leave at 3pm or
come at 10am and leave at 6pm
 COMMON FLEXIBLE WORK ARRANGEMENTS

■ Flexplace – The employee can work from home or

any other alternate location
■ Job sharing: An arrangement in which 2 or more
part time employees share the responsibilities of
full time job and accordingly the salary is also
decided
■ Part time work
■ Retirement: Employees who approach their
retirement period are gradually reduced with their
work load
 FWA

Advantages Disadvantages

Helps to retain high performers in Cannot be applied to all types of

the job jobs

Can help in improving the job

satisfaction & productivity of Seriousness of the job might get lost
employees

FWA can help in small offices where Monitoring & evaluation of job
space is a constraint performance might be difficult
 TECHNOLOGY FOR FLEXTIME

■ IM (Instant Messenger) like MSN, yahoo, g-talk, skype)

■ Email
■ Basecamp
○ Basecamp's ( web-based project management tool) primary features
are to-do lists, forum-like messaging, file sharing, and time tracking.)
■ File sharing (Google docs, Google calendar)
■ WIKIs : a website or database developed collaboratively by a
community of users, allowing any user to add and edit
content.
■ Virtual meeting software
■ Teleconferencing
 BENEFITS OF FLEXI TIME

■ Benefits to organization
■ Benefits to employees
 Benefits to organization

■ Greater staff morale and job satisfaction.

■ Reduces stress and fatigue and unfocussed employees
■ Increases employee satisfaction and production
■ Greater staff retention and increased ability to attract
new staff. Recruitment costs are thus reduced.
■ Ability to attract a higher level of skills because the
business is able to attract and retain a skilled and more
diverse workforce.
■ Measures employee’s attendance – you only pay or time
in attendance (delayed arrival caused by traffic
congestion, delayed trains etc. are at employees
expense)
■ An incentive to complete tasks instead of being
carried forward to the next day as extra hours
worked count towards the final target
■ Provides greater coverage in a 24/7 global economy
■ Increased customer satisfaction and loyalty as a
result of the above.
■ Combating/Fighting The Downturn - Pay matters
can now be weighed against now offering flexible
working hours and arrangements.
■ Allows you bank time to be used for
leisure/personal activities
■ Avoid the stress of commuting at peak times if their
start and finish times are staggered or if they work
from home
■ Personal matters can be sorted without having to
take time off
■ Helpful for people caring for children or other
dependants, but others may find flexible working
helpful too
 Benefits to employees

■ Improves productivity & performance

■ Increased opportunity to fit other commitments
and activities in with work, and make better use of
their free time.
■ Lowers stress & employees are more in control of
their workloads, and manage a better balance
between life and work.
■ Allows you to schedule your travel; time to avoid
congestion
 GENERAL OBSTACLES TO IMPLEMENTATION

■ Nature of work
■ Managers perceptions & abilities
■ Culture of workplace & how work is done
■ Employee concerns
 WHEN TO OPT FOR FLEXTIME??

■ Must meet business needs

■ More common among professional staff
■ Must achieve performance expectation
■ Where managers & co-workers are trained about
how flexibility can help them achieve their business
goals
■ Where employees are self-disciplined, self
motivated & have strong work ethic
■ Flexi Timings or Fixed Timings - Which is
better at Work?
TELECOMMUTING
 Telecommuting

■ Regularly work at home or at an alternative

worksite during part or all of a work schedule.
■ Telework or telecommuting occurs when paid
workers reduce their commute by carrying out all or
part of, their work away from normal places of
business, usually home.
■ Terms used to refer to the work done outside of the
traditional office work environment.
○ Virtual teams
○ Teleworking
○ Telecommuting
 Statistics on Telecommuting

■ 1.5% of the US population worked from home in

2005.
■ In 2009 this percentage boosted to 2.3%
■ Over 75% of work-at-home employees earn over
$65,000 per year.
■ Fifty million U.S. employees hold jobs that are
telecommute compatible.
■ Only 2.9 million consider home their primary place
of work.
■ 82% of Fortune Magazine’s annual “100 Best
Companies to Work For” list allow employees to
telecommute at least 20% of the time (February
2011).
■ Remote work will continue to grow as a result of a
number of factors.
○ Improving communications and high-speed broadband
technologies
○ Increasing knowledge about how to manage and work
with distributed workers and groups of workers.
■ Term was coined by Jack Nilles in 1973.
■ Telecommuting is moving the work to the workers
instead of the workers moving to work
■ Cisco Systems classifies telecommuters in three
types:
○ Day extender
○ Part-time teleworker
○ Full-time teleworker
 Benefits to Employers

■ Able to recruit and retain the best people

■ Save in real estate and related costs
■ Decrease in absenteeism and turnover
■ Improve continuity of operations
■ Recruitment- makes the company more attractive
by offering new and flexible work arrangements and
expands the applicant pool beyond geographic
boundaries
■ Productivity- decreases stress level, improves
morale, decreases travel time
 Benefits to Employees

■ Achieve a better work-life balance

■ Decreased transportation and commuting costs
■ Suffer fewer illnesses
■ More flexibility in scheduling work time
■ Increased job satisfaction
■ More comfortable work environment
 So, what’s the hold up?

• Worker isolation
• Data security
• Concerns about career impact
• Type of job
• Lack of assistance
• The biggest barrier to telecommuting remains management
fear and mistrust.
• Difficulties drawing a line between work and home
• Household distractions
• Management resistance and skepticism
• Culture change (shift from managing attendance to
managing performance)
 Building a telecommuting and virtual team

■ A telecommuter should
○ Be able to work independently and a strong sense of
initiative.
○ should be able to focus on what he or she can do to
complete the task successfully and on time.
○ Be disciplined, motivated and able to ignore distractions
and focus on the work.
○ Be able to communicate effectively with in-office and
other work-at-home team members.
○ must be skilled at using the resources at their disposal to
solve the problems.
■ A remote manager should have
○ the ability to develop trusting relationships
○ the ability to develop and maintain a global team.
○ excellent verbal and written communication skills.
○ the ability to clearly define the roles and responsibilities
of each team member.
○ the ability to bring together all necessary tools and
resources for the team to get their job done on time.
 How to manage a telecommuting team?

■ Spell out your expectations

• Focus on the end deliverable and not how it was
accomplished.
• spell out your expectations in detail.
• Hold the employee accountable for the quality
deliverables.

■ Schedule regular 1-1

• frequent contact with telecommuters is beneficial.
• use the same management style to manage both home
based and office based employees.
■A centralized online location for work files
• A central document system to allow multiple users to
view and edit documents simultaneously from remote
locations, so that the manager can check on employees'
work.
■Encourage the use of an instant messaging
program
• make sure you log on every day.
• It is less intrusive than frequent phone conversations.
■Encourage team work
• It's far easier to procrastinate when working on your
own.
• As a manager, asking your employees to work as a team
provides a buffer between them to watch each others
work.
■Maintain trust
• the key way to build high performance across the team is
to maintain trust.
• always react on an assumption of trust, not distrust.
 Set telecommuting guidelines

■ Before granting telecommuting status to

employees, supervisors need to set telecommuting
guidelines.
○ try it out part-time for a few weeks.
○ agree in advance on a specific work schedule.
○ Telecommuting Staff must maintain a standard
workload similar to in-office staff.
○ Must use sick leave if they are unable to work.
○ Must be willing to be on-site as necessary.
○ Must use vacation or personal leave.
 Provide tools

■ Telecommuting teams depend almost exclusively

on technology and software tools to communicate.
○ E-mail
○ Instant messaging software
○ Telephone
○ Teleconferencing system
○ Fax/scan
○ Office supplies
 CONCLUSION

■ Telecommuting is a privileged work arrangement.

○ Build trust
○ Be reliable
■ A manager must always react on an assumption of
trust, not distrust.
■ Treat all team members fairly and equally.
■ Provide the necessary tools.
QUALITY OF WORK LIFE
■ Quality of working deals with various aspects of
work environment, which facilitates the human
resource development efficiently.
■ A multi-faceted concept
■ It means having a work-environment where an
employee’s activities become more important by
implementing procedures or policies that make the
work less routine and more rewarding for the
employee.
■ There exists a relationship between Q.W.L and
productivity.
■ Quality of work life emphasizes improving the
human dimension of work.
■ HR should try to improve QWL “by:
○ introducing participative problem solving,
○ restructuring work,
○ introducing innovative reward systems,
○ improving the work environment.”
 QWL Issues:

■ “Successful work/life programs can have a

tremendous bottom-line business impact by:
○ Reducing turnover.
○ Enhancing recruitment.
○ Reducing absenteeism.
○ Improving retention.
○ Improving productivity.
○ improving morale.
○ Strengthening employee commitment.
 Origin of the concept

■ After Industrial Revolution, the importance of

human factor reduced because of the vast
mechanization. Various problems like job
dissatisfaction, boredom, absenteeism, lack of
commitment etc came up.
■ Most management theories gave emphasis on
production, manipulating the skills of the
employees.
■ Tavi Stock Institute of Human Relations, London
conducted some research on “workers’ problems in
Industrial world.”
■ They produced a study approach called Socio-
technical system in which they gave great
importance to “Job Design” to satisfy human needs
adequately and the need for Q.W.L in an
Organization was emphasized.
 Meaning and definition of QWL

■ Q.W.L is any conscious effort for improving working

conditions, work content, and its safety, security,
wages and benefits, etc.
■ Q.W.L can be said to be all the original inputs which
aim at improving the employees’ satisfaction and
enhancing organizational effectiveness.
■ Q.W.L is a concern not only to improve life at work,
but also life outside work.
■ It is nothing but having a work environment where
an employees activities become more important.
■ This means implementing procedures or policies
that make the work less routine and more
rewarding for the employee.
■ These procedures or policies include autonomy,
recognition, belongingness, development and
external rewards.
■ Simply speaking, through Q.W.L the people involved
get a sense of satisfaction in their work.
■ Work then becomes not a burden but a means by
which the abilities of a person can find expression
■ Q.W.L is just humanizing the work
■ Q.W.L = The sum total of physical (working
conditions), psychological and economic factors
which affect the job.
 Objectives of Q.W.L

■ To improve the standard of living of the employees

■ To increase the productivity
■ To create a positive attitude in the minds of the
employees
■ To increase the effectiveness of the organization
(Profitability, goal accomplishment etc.)
 Factors affecting Quality of Work Life

■ Some people consider Q.W.L as the existence of a

certain set of original conditions and practices.
■ They agree that high Q.W.L exists when:
■ Democratic management practices are prevalent in
the organization
■ When employees’ jobs are enriching
■ They are treated with dignity and safe working
conditions are present
■ Others equate Q.W.L with the impact of working
conditions on the employees well-being
■ Countries that practiced Q.W.L initially
○ Sweden
○ Denmark
○ Holland
○ Switzerland
○ Australia
○ USA
■ Companies practicing Quality of Work Life
○ General Motors
○ Ford Motors
○ XEROX
○ IBM
○ BHEL
○ TISCO
 Measuring of Q.W.L

■ Questionnaires and interviews are relevant here.

■ In General Motors the management gives a
questionnaire of 16 critical dimensions of Q.W.L to
its employees each year.
■ The responses are then used to measure the
employees’ perception of their work life.
 Implementation of Q.W.L

■ Management and Employees’ co-operation- A

worker-Mgt committee on work improvement can
function effectively to increase co-operation
■ Action plans developed must be followed to
completion
■ Support of middle-managers by top management
and bottom-level employees to implement the
programme
■ The objectives of Q.W.L should be a joint one, i.e.,
for workers it is to improve Q.W.L; for management
it is to improve organizational efficiency
 Barriers to Q.W.L

■ Resistance to change both by mgt and employees

■ There is a general perception that Q.W.L
implementation will cost much to the organization
■ Continuous increase in Q.W.L may result in less
productivity, i.e., after a certain level the
productivity will not increase in proportion to the
increase in Q.W.L
 Barriers to Q.W.L in India

■ (According to Dr. S.K. Chakraborty of IIM-C)

○ Widespread unhappiness due to comparison with
colleagues
○ Skepticism about the performance appraisal system and
promotion criteria
○ Division into camps and cliques hampering fruitful
communication
○ Frequent fits of anger of top level officials
○ Regional prejudice
○ Glorification of speed and excitement as against serenity
○ Unreasonable personal expectation
○ Limitless addiction to lower-order material needs
WORK LIFE BALANCE
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■ Work–life balance is a concept including the proper
prioritization between work (career and ambition)
and lifestyle (health, pleasure, leisure, family and
spiritual development/ meditation).
■ The work–leisure dichotomy/division was invented
in the mid-1800s.
■ Paul Krassner remarked that anthropologists use a
definition of happiness that is to have as little
separation as possible "between your work and
your play”.
■ The expression "work–life balance" was first used in
the United Kingdom in the late 1970s to describe
the balance between an individual's work and
personal life.
■ In the United States, this phrase was first used in
1986.
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 Work-Life Balance

■ Does not mean an equal balance. Trying to

schedule an equal number of hours for each of your
various work and personal activities is usually
unrewarding and unrealistic.
■ Will vary over time, often on a daily basis. The right
balance for you today will probably be different for
you tomorrow. The right balance for you when you
are single will be different when you marry.
■ There is no perfect, one-size fits all, balance you
should be striving for.
■ The best work-life balance is different for each of us
because we all have different priorities and different
lives.
■ An effective work-life balance definition has two key
everyday concepts that are relevant to each of us.
They are daily Achievement and Enjoyment
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 Some best practices towards WLB

■ Simplify
■ De-stress
■ Be a child
■ Share the load
■ Slow down
■ Take care of your health
■ Don’t postpone
■ Have a positive approach
■ Take charge (Plan ahead)
 The Six Components of Work-Life Balance

■ Self-Management
■ Time Management
■ Stress Management
■ Change Management
■ Technology Management
■ Leisure Management
■ According to one school of thought, differences in
individual characteristics such as personality and
coping style are most important in predicting
whether certain job conditions will result in stress -
in other words, what is stressful for one person may
not be a problem for someone else.
■ This viewpoint leads to prevention strategies that
focus on workers and ways to help them cope with
demanding job conditions.
■ Signs and symptoms of stress:
■ Mental
■ Emotional
■ Physical
■ Behavioural

■ Stress and work pressure are main contributors to

work life imbalance.
■ Causes of stress External causes of stress:
○ Major life changes
○ Work
○ Relationship difficulties
○ Financial problems
○ Being too busy
○ Children and family
■ Internal causes of stress (self-generated)
○ Inability to accept uncertainty
○ Doubt
○ Negative self-talk
○ Unrealistic expectations
○ Perfectionism
○ Lack of assertiveness
 IMBALANCE OF WORK

■ An im-balance is fundamentally a lack of clearly

defined and consistently enforced boundaries
between work life and personal life.
■ When we fail to have a healthy work life balance,
people end up experiencing emotional stress,
anxiety and depression.
■ Employees who have the tools to balance their
professional and personal lives are happier,
healthier, and more productive.
 FACTORS OF WORK LIFE IM-BALANCE

■ Social Support
■ Organizational Factor: International business
■ Stress Factor
■ Work Issue Factor: Long working hours, Individual
career ambitions, Competition
■ Family Issues Factor
■ Individual Factor: Individual career ambitions
■ Global economy
 Consequences of WLB

■ Health risks: Obesity, exhaustion, emotional

problems
■ Absenteeism
■ Burnout: Work overload
■ Stress
■ Less family participation
■ Limited social networks
■ Decreased level of refreshment
 Responsibilities of Employers

■ To find the right balance for your lifestyle, review

ways in which your prospective employers can
accommodate these issues:
○ Scheduling: Telecommuting, job sharing,
compressed work weeks.
○ Health and wellness
○ Child care
○ Personal development and growth
 Strategies to Implement Work-Life Balance

■ PUT THE BEST WORK, FIRST:

○ To have more time for a personal life, we have to
clear out blocks of time in our day to focus on the
best (most important) work first.
○ We tend to get wrapped up in time-wasting
activities—about 69% of employees confess to
wasting time each time, according to Salary.com.
○ Obsessing over unimportant emails or
procrastinating on menial tasks is just some
examples.
■ Putting the most important tasks first doesn’t mean
less work.
■ Furthermore, managers need to get away from the
concept that working more means being better
than the next person.
■ A better strategy to consider is how to work
smarter.
■ PREVENT BURNOUT:
○ Job burnout is caused by a very real type of
physical, mental and emotional stress. We’re
humans, not machines—and even those will break
eventually.
○ Burnout can come from extremes of a single
activity such as staring at spreadsheets and
getting tunnel vision.
○ You have to identify when you or your team needs
to slow down or when to just stop.
○ Once you practice what you preach, the team will
follow your lead.
■ GET FURTHER ENGAGEMENT
■ Being a manager that encourages the best work first
and to make your employees pause for rest periods
will make you revered among your team.
■ When you walk, the walk of work-life balance, you
provide your team a great measure of transparency,
which will directly engage your employees.
■ They will commit to performing better and are less
likely to leave your organization, according to The
Corporate Leadership Council.
EMPLOYEE EMPOWERMENT
EMPLOYEE INVOLVEMENT
 Employee involvement

■ A participative process that uses the input of

employees to increase their commitment to the
organization’s success.
■ The direct participation of staff to help an
organization fulfill its mission and meet its objectives
by applying their own ideas, expertise, and efforts
towards solving problems and making decisions.
■ Regular participation of employee in deciding how
work is done, making suggestion for improvement,
goal setting, planning and monitoring of their
performance.
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AUTONOMOUS WORK
TEAMS
■ A autonomous work teams/ self-managed team is a
team in which the members take collective
responsibility for ensuring that the team operates
effectively and meets its targets.
■ Typically, members of self-managed teams are
employees within an organization who work
together, within a broad framework of aims and
objectives, to reach a common goal.
■ When setting up the team, two of the parameters
that have to be defined are the levels of
responsibility and autonomy that are given to the
self-managed team.
■ So teams can have varying degrees of autonomy,
from teams who have considerable control over
their work, and the boundaries within which they
operate, to self-managed teams that are set
boundaries by team leaders.
■ In general, AWT have considerable discretion over:
○ the work done and setting team goals
○ how work is achieved – which processes are used
and how work is scheduled
○ internal performance issues – distributing the
work and the contribution made by each
member of the team
○ decision making and problem solving.
 Leading a self-managed team

■ The leadership role in a self-managed team is very

different from that of a team leader in a traditional
hierarchical team such as a functional team.
■ In a hierarchical team the team leader allocates
work.
■ In contrast, in a self-managed team, the leadership
role involves taking on more of a supporting role,
which includes identifying the long-term career and
personal development needs of the team within the
context of the overall organisation.
 Table 2 compares the roles of a team leader in these two
types of team.

■O
 Benefits of self-managed teams

■ Cost savings
■ Innovation
■ Effective decision making
■ Increased productivity
■ Improved customer satisfaction
■ Commitment
■ Motivation
■ Increased compatibility between employers and
employees
 Potential problems with self-managed teams

■ Difficult to set up such teams

■ Teams will be anxious, if given extra responsibility.
■ Additional training cost
THANK YOU