For Employers
Benefits
“A study conducted in Singapore showed that companies who implemented Work-life solutions for their employees could get a return of $1 investment to a $1.68 return of investment.”
Work-life strategies can help companies to manage HR challenges and enhance company’s competitiveness. Learn how…
Attract, motivate and retain talent
Companies that are willing to address work-life issues for their employees are deemed as more caring and understanding. Employees feel their welfare is taken care of and there is a relationship built up between them and their employers. They are less likely to job hop and are more committed to their companies. Companies can save on staff replacement cost.
Stay competitive
Companies who are more able to retain their talented staff have a competitive advantage as they are strong in tapping on their human capabilities and ensure a sustained workforce to support their corporate strategy.
Increase productivity
Companies can work out certain flexible working arrangement to increase employees’ concentration and work productivity. A company decided to implement flex-start- and-end working hours to cater to different employees’ needs. Those who live far away from the workplace could start later and have more sleep in the morning instead of rushing to work in the midst of all the heavy traffic in the earlier hour.
Reduce stress
Companies can help employees to save time taken to complete their work by providing more flexible working arrangement. They could engage or deploy additional help during peak season to reduce workload.
Improve wellbeing
Companies that provide certain benefits such as counselling services and fitness programmes will help employees to stay healthy and productive at work.
Recruit Gen Y
Gen Y are attracted to companies that have flexible working arrangement supported by the use of technology, work and benefit policies that meet their needs such as studying, travelling, development needs and short-term leave breaks for overseas community volunteering opportunity or exposure.
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Learning from Others- Innovative Work-life practices that enhance your business
Work-life strategies can benefit and be designed to fit in to the needs of different types of companies or organizations. Learn more. Take a look at how some companies of different size use Work-life strategies to face their HR challenges and increase their competitive advantage.
A small company of 10 employees
The challenge faced by a small company of 10 employees is that work might be disrupted when certain employees go on leaves or are absent from work. One professional firm overcomes this by allowing their foreign professional employees to take certain days of annual leave and work remotely through telecommuting from their hometown so that the project is not disrupted. The foreign employee is able to be with his family member without having to take too many days’ leaves.
A company of 100 and less
A company was finding it difficult to retain their technical staff as they have to work on many weekends. The company decides to introduce compressed work week arrangement and remote monitoring technology to reduce the number of weekend work required.
A non-profit organization
A non-profit organization found that their professional staff are burning out due to overloaded work. In order to help them to relieve their workload, the organization combines a few Work life solutions such as flexible working hours and telecommuting to help the staff to cope with stress.
A public organization
With the change to 5-day workweek, the public organization realizes that there is a need to continue to provide good customer service by having longer operation hours on weekdays. It uses flexi-start-and-end working hours and compressed workweek solutions to solve this problem.
A global company
Due to the time zone difference, employees in the global company find that they have to spend many long hours at work till evening with their counterparts across the globe and hence have less time with their family. To enhance their Work life, the global company introduces home-based telecommuting for employees to choose certain days when they could work from home to spend time with their family members.
Work-life strategies can be customized to support business strategy and overcome certain work challenges related to the industries. Learn how Work-life strategies could help.
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Work-life Strategies and Industries
Hospitality
The common challenge faced by the hospitality industry is finding employees who have to work on 24/7 work schedule. One hospitality organization offers their employees a varied number of work-life solutions for different types of appointment and many work-life benefits and programs to help employees felt supported and cared for by their employer. As a customer-service industry, the hospitality organization has adopted the motto to treat their employees as customers so their employees can do the same to their clients or customers.
Logistics
Safety is a top concern for logistics industry. Sometimes, employees have to work overtime very frequently during peak seasons. In order to ensure that their employees do not compromise safety due to long working hours and that employees do have a balance Work life, the organization implements a time management system to introduce flexible scheduling for their employees. They could have the flexibility to swap shift, work shorter or longer hours on certain days to suit their life schedule.
Manufacturing
Manufacturing plant has certain legal workforce policy they have to observe regarding the number of local and foreign employees they have. To maintain and retain the number of local employees, the manufacturing industry has to work out certain shift working schedule based on compressed workweek to increase the local employees’ commitment to the company.
Food and Beverage
Food and beverage industry often have to optimize the number of service staff they employ to manage operation cost. Hence to do so, a company decides to implement a time management system to track and introduce a flexible working scheme such that that the service staff can be deployed to different outlets depending on the business demands for extra help.
Retails
Retails industry tend to hire many young female employees who often leave the workforce when they get married and have children. In order to retain these experienced employees, a company implements customized flexi-working hours for their employees to work on certain suitable working hours that could fit in to their family demands. The company also benefits from these experienced employees who could bring in more business for them when they help out during the peak hours relieving the stress level of the full-time employees.
Work-life strategies can be designed to meet the business and employees’ needs for many other industries such as
- Construction
- Banking
- Financial
- Child care
- Beauty Services
- Entertainment
What that is most important for Work-life strategies to work is for organizations to listen to their employees’ work-life concerns, explore possible work-life options and be committed to champion and build a work-life culture in the organizations. An organization that cares for their employees is more likely to have committed employees. Work-life strategy is an employee engagement strategy.
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Delivering Results (ROI) for Our Clients
How the implementation of Work-life strategies benefited the companies and employees. The name of the companies is not disclosed to protect clients’ interest.
What some Directors, HR managers and employees in companies say. Learn more.
Quotations:
Company 1
A director of a training company on how his company has put in place the E-Concierges system to help employees improved their Work-life balance …
“Our company has put in place in our Intranet the E-Concierges system that allows our employees to communicate with each other, co-ordinate events and works and access information from home. This greatly improves communication and increases productivity. With this system, we have improved our communication among supervisor trainers, manager, trainers and clients. More immediate and accurate information can be accessed from the system. Now, we do not have to call each other to clarify information. Currently, this calling affects work-life balance because trainers may have to contact the trainer supervisors to clarify information, some time even at night.”
Company 2
A director of a design company on how he has benefitted from the Work-life strategy of telecommuting …
In the past, I have to call back several times a day whenever I am out-stationed to check my emails or to obtain certain data. Approval of quotations and purchase orders was impossible whenever I am overseas or out of office. Now with the ability to do remote telecommuting, I could access my emails and the databases in Navision via VPN whenever I am out-stationed. Approval of quotations and purchase order no longer posed as a problem with VPN implemented. We are definitely more responsive to our customers’ needs and be more productive at work. In addition, workflow becomes smoother, easier and more convenient for me and my fellow colleagues. I no longer have to worry if my mobile phone’s battery is flat or I am out of network coverage. I have also reduced the cost of IDD calls which is a good saving for the company.
Company 3
A part-timer waiter at a restaurant who commented on how the flexible working hours Work-life solution has helped him...
Before: I have to inform the manager the days and hours I could do part-time. It is difficult to request change.
After: The manager allows me to take uneven number of working hours now. I could choose to work longer hours on peak days (weekend) and shorter hours on certain days when I have other commitment. This arrangement also helps the restaurant to save money and deploy the staff better.
Company 4
A contract manager in a construction company shared how she could meet her family commitment with the work-life solution.
“Before, I have to work overtime until 8pm on weekdays, giving urgent response to suppliers/sub-contractors via email. Sometimes a lot of time is wasted in waiting for a response from them. I often miss dinner with my family. After my company gives me a laptop, I can go off work early and respond to the urgent email at any places.” A Contract Manager
Company 5
A HR Group Director of a public-listed company on what the company has benefitted from the Work-life strategies implemented…
“Our professional staff turnover has decreased from 70% to 22% saving us a staff replacement cost of $173,305.”
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Get Going
Get started in building Work-life strategies for your company or organization.
Taking the First Step
Determine the goals for Work-life strategies, that is, what you hope Work-life strategies could help to address in your organization challenges. Your goals could be the following:
- Reduce staff turnover
- Reduce average number of MC days/Absenteeism
- Reduce employees’ transportation costs
- To improve employees’ morale, motivation and quality of work
Work-life Business Case
If you are from the HR department, you probably have to lead the project. Before you proceed to drawing out what you want to do to improve your Work-life balance for your employees, gather information to present a business case to persuade your management to obtain their support. Finally, you could even have your management to champion the project.
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