Essay On Changing Work Patterns

Do women belong in the workplace? Should employers treat them differently because of their responsibilities in the home? The article “Female Company President: ‘I’m Sorry to all the Mothers I Worked With’” by Kathrine Zaleski, president and co-founder of PowerToFly, argues that women can be both successful mothers and employees if employers take the initiative to accommodate them. She believes that women have the ability and skills to become both valuable employees and involved mothers, but employers need to make adjustments in several common work practices in order to build women up to their full potential.

Going back into America’s history, the expectations of a woman from the late 1800’s and early 1900s, were to be a good homemaker and wife. Now into the late 1900’s and 2000’s, this role has added on much more responsibility and expectations of today’s woman, such as returning to school and working a full time job, while continuing to take care of home. Though the type of work a woman can execute has changed, it also brings along societal issues. Issues such as: unequal pay wages differentiations between men and women and between different races amongst women, the concern of maternity leave and of course, the struggle of balancing work and a family.

Working mothers are a regular target for statistical discrimination and motherhood, linked with a per-child wage penalty of approximately 5%, (Correll, Benard, & Paik, 2007), is widely understood to be “one of the worst career moves a woman can make” (Miller, 2014). Mothers are frequently perceived as less competent employees, are thought to be less committed to their jobs, and are more likely to receive wage, hiring, and promotional penalties for having children (Correll, Benard, & Paik, 2007). Contemporary norms only worsen the current situation: as women are socialised to prioritise caregiving and childrearing over their careers, employers become more and more hesitant to hire them, since they predict that they will be less likely to honour workplace commitments and more prone to leaving their jobs in the future (Schneebaum, 2013). The opposite is true for men: most fathers are perceived as stable, reliable, and dedicated employees – largely because employers expect them to be less “flaky” (Miller, 2014)

Heavy care responsibilities limit or reduce women’s career advancement, personal leisure and productivity that require them to develop work efficient habit. Baker (2012) suggests that men’s career is granted priority and employed mothers are typically penalized in the labor market. An additional factor is the re-entry of women into workforce with a small salary offer or lower ranking jobs, including part-time or temporary jobs.

Thompson, a business writer for the Atlantic, wrote an article about economic paper from Harvard. Mr. Thompson believes the paper wrote by Claudia Goldin holds the key to eliminating the rest of the gender wage gap. Mrs. Goldin’s simple solution doesn’t ask for men to stay home and watch the kids or even ask the government to fix the problem. Goldin ask companies to explore the benefits of flexibility hours. Goldin believe that companies have been disproportional rewarding their employees based on the particular hours they have worked. When women leave their workforce for an extended amount of time for paternity leave or family reasons they come back with less opportunities then if they had not left. They can be discourage to move up the corporate ladder or enroll for promotions, because they also take on the job of being a mother at home. If women in the workplace had the opportunity to work more flexible hours they could take on better positions in

The characteristics of an “ideal worker” are long, inflexible hours. Business’ claim to have family values and employers pride themselves on being “family-friendly” however, those who seek part time work face penalties. Mothers cannot live up to the “ideal worker” model, because there employers are not fully accommodating to the family ideals. All of these things are a factor behind why women quit their jobs and do not reach their full job

Flexible working arrangements can improve the ability of employers to attract skilled and motivated employees, reduce stress levels and improve morale and commitment, reduce absenteeism and staff turnover.

The article entitled “The impact of shift work on nurses' job stress, sleep quality and self-perceived health status” authors Lin, Liao, Chen, & Fan, (2014) explains there is a great concern about the potential negative impact of shift work on a nurses personal health and performance, and hence on the quality of patient care. Authors’ state how nurses must be able to work various shifts in orders to provide 24 hour care for patients. In order for patients to receive the care needed, nurses must have flexible work schedules. Shift work is the solution to provide for this flexibility. This article also explains that twenty percent of shift workers are unable to work, at some point, due to maladaptation syndrome. A condition involves sleep deprivation and fatigue due to

While the concepts of telecommuting and telework are by no means new – these were initially explored in-depth beginning in 1973 at the University of Southern California [13] – it quickly becomes clear why organizations now increasingly wish to capitalize on these concepts. First, the technology is there. Computers are powerful and flexible enough and networks are generally fast enough. Second, much of the populace is computer-savvy enough. Generation Y grew up alongside computers, and the so-called Generation Z has never known a world without a mobile phone by their side. Third, costs in certain areas are skyrocketing, allowing organizations to source skilled workers from

In recent years there has been a drastic increase in the number of women entering and participating in the labor force (Hepburn & Simon, 2006). Since early history and the ancient civilization of man, women have played a secondary role, in which women were and still are viewed as less adequate than a man. A women’s traditional role in society is that of raising children, fulfilling duties around the house, and being the primary nurturer of the family. Many women in today’s society want and desire careers and a place in this Country. They want to stand on their own two feet, to become self sustaining individuals and to possess the feeling of independence and freedom. Issues that have and still plagued women in the workplace are many. Women

Options for flexible work schedules--once nonexistent--have become a reality, with benefits for workers and employees alike. Job sharing, compressed work weeks, reduced hours, work at home, and flextime have provided employees with the means to realize a better balance between work and family and an opportunity to engage simultaneously in more than one endeavor, e.g., school and work, two careers, and work and leisure. They can also lead to economic and emotional stress and to limited opportunities for professional growth. This Digest examines flexible work options, including the characteristics of workers who select them, the organizations that offer them, and the influence they have on worker

Changes in the workplace due to the economy, technology, and globalization have affected many lives in modern day society. In addition, managerial approaches have influenced changes organizations have faced throughout the years, which tend to affect an organization’s workforce. For example, some of the changes organizations have had to encounter have been around the following, but are not limited to employee productivity, employee and organizational inefficiency, employee’s personal and professional value, and organizational structure to name a few. Furthermore, managerial approaches going back centuries have molded certain expectations people and organizations have of each other. For example, many individuals during the industrial era had an expectation to contribute to his or her household at a young age. The feeling of this type of obligation at times in today’s society are seen, but are not as prevalent. Instead of young people focusing on their studies, and skill set, they often have to find employment that he or she initially do not want to do, which often times leads to entry-level positions that are typically left. Allowing managers to often alienate and exploit the employee.

If this balance is actively pursued by the organization, changes and implementations can be made to align it with its balance goals. Elissa Tucker (2012) performed an analysis on companies considered benchmarks for work-life balance. Tucker found that best practices offer support for dual-career families, work-at-home policies and practices, and flexible hours. These common proceedings among industry standards are aligned with one common theme: flexibility. An organization with flexibility in regards to employees’ personal lives has an advantage in retaining and satisfying top talent. It is with flexibility that organizations are able to accommodate the requests and concerns generated by work-life balance conflicts. Organizations that are able to serve effectively the requests of its employees do not always resort to protocols. Finding a solution to an employee’s needs may come from not having a policy as much as having one. Flexibility is, in essence, the ability to find solutions. Today’s work environments are becoming more varied by the task and setting than ever before. An organization structured in a way that provides alternative and flexible work schedules can have an extreme impact on its employees’ work-life balances. Life comes with many uncertainties. Employees have many responsibilities and perform many roles. Flexible work

-5qualified women are not in that pool, is because there are not visible to companies. Therefore companies and also women need to take actions like: 1. Develop and introduce mentoring programs (pairing senior women with company chairmen as mentors) 2. Build up systematically contacts (networking inside and outside the company) 3. Women have to inform company bosses of the progress in their developments 4. Chief executives have to promote women to their executive committees Regulatory back-up, like quotas, are required, because some men over 60 think that suitable females don’t exist because they have never had women as their peers, and they think women can’t take the pressure involved in serving on a board. Furthermore, these quotas forces companies to develop strategies and programs to retain, attract and develop high qualified women, who can enter the boardroom. But there is also a down side of quotas. Companies have to avoid pushing too low qualified women into boardrooms only to meet these quotas. This will harm the qualified women more than the quotas will help. Work – life Balance With women now making up almost half of the labor force in the Unit States and Europe, they are increasingly juggling work with care giving responsibilities at home. The solution for this dilemma is work flexibility and scheduling. There are several solutions and possibilities to increase the work-life balance: 1. Employees working at home. This can be

In the American society, there is a popular belief implying that working more, rather than working smarter in a healthy amount of time, is the most effective way to get work done. Working too much has become an epidemic in the American society. People have lost families, developed health disorders, and several other problems due to working too much, a disease sometimes referred to as workaholism. Some minor examples of people working too much however include, but aren’t limited to: pulling all-nighters and pushing one’s self to extreme limits of exhaustion. In comparison to the human body, the computer even has a difficult time processing too much information. In the human body, this may be referred