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Chapter 14 communication skills
Conclusion of work life balance
Personal experience about communication skills
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Recommended: Chapter 14 communication skills
“Time is my friend. I choose never to be a prisoner of urgency”. (Jonathan Lockwood Huie, Web) The balancing act of time management and life priorities is an ongoing process. This development can affect communication when improperly managed. The act of communication is like shipping a box full of expensive china. The container is usually marked with big red letters: F R A G I L E. We must treat communication the same way and handle it with care. Individuals become stretched thin, make poor judgment calls, and communicate impulsively. “More than 55 percent of families are dual-income; one in four are headed by a single parent. The U.S. work force is multicultural, multilingual and multi-everything! To handle this diversity, companies need flexibility. Work life, better than anything else, provides that” (Business Journal, Web). Restricting employees from email and intranet access while on PTO will revitalize work-life balance, enhance process efficiency and promote team cohesiveness.
The conditions of this communication issue are related to resource capacity constraints and process improvement needs. Resource scarcity encourages employees to work longer hours at home after leaving the office. PTO balances pile up because individuals are not scheduling time away from work. A sense of finesse and precision is required to communicate with each other effectively. The load of normal daily tasks in the workplace and personal matters at home carry enough weight. This communication change will help level the load, and create a better working environment by limiting virtual access to work while employees are on PTO.
The restriction of email access and intranet surfing will revitalize work life balance. The ongoing tasks and office work...
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...by Jonathan Lockwood Huie”. N.p., n.d. Web. 16 Feb. 2012 < http://www.jonathanlockwoodhuie.com/quotes/>.
"Management Help...” Work-Life Balance -- Balancing Your Work and Personal Life”. N.p., n.d. Web. 16 Feb. 2012 .
"Portland Business Journal...” Balance Work, Family Issues to Boost Productivity”. N.p., n.d. Web. 19 Feb. 2012 .
"Portland Business Journal...” Put Aside Bullish Thoughts and Act Like the Matador”. N.p., n.d. Web. 20 Feb. 2012 .
"Portland Business Journal...” United Healthcare Employees Take Wellness Seriously”. N.p., n.d. Web. 19 Feb. 2012 .
Teamwork has become increasingly important as workers no longer focus on just getting their own tasks or the specific tasks of their department done but with working together with their teammates and other departments in achieving corporate goals. As the textbook states, while interactions occur between a manager and their subordinate, interactions occur between a manager and other teams and groups (Landy & Conte, 2013, p. 502). Telecommuting is a way to offer a work-life balance while keeping key people. However, the leader is challenged with keeping track of these employees in regard to monitoring what they are doing and communicating with them (Landy & Conte, 2013, p. 502). Telecommuting is difficult as the manager has difficulty building a relationship with these employees as well as balancing how to keep them engaged in what is going on in the company. They should be in the office periodically in order to keep grounded with the company. Temporary workers are a way of filling a void when additional resources are needed. Temporary resources are used when a company has fluctuating production needs. The challenge is that they may not have the same level of commitment to or have the same values as employees that are full time (Landy & Conte, 2013, p. 504).
Through life, one must make choices in their personal and professional lives in order to maintain a healthy work-life balance. Through the plays Bull, Waste, Little Eyolf, The Homecoming, and the musical Kinky Boots, it is evident that creating a distinction between one’s personal and one’s professional life is essential to living a healthy life. When one’s personal life and professional life overlap completely, trouble ensues.
The inability to achieve “work-life balance” has become a major focus for workplace equality activists. When this topic is brought about it is primarily used to describe how woman cannot have a work and home life but instead are forced to choose. Richard Dorment took on this point of interest from a different perspective in his article “Why Men Still Can’t Have It All” published with esquire. Going against the normal trend he describes how women are not the only ones put into the same sacrificial situations, but instead that men and women alike struggle to balance work and home. Dorment opens up by saying “And the truth is as shocking as it is obvious: No one can have it all.” In doing so Richard Dorment throws out the notion that one
This source explains the relationship between working overtime and the work-family conflict. With this source, they “investigated whether work-family conflict is prospectively related to adjustments in work schedules… in this relation”. (Jansen) They also wanted to prevent work- family conflict. They also know that balancing work and family is a challenge in today’s society for individuals. Consequences associated with work and family “job burnouts, psychological distress, depression, life dissatisfaction, elevated need for recovery from work, prolonged fatigue, and increased sickness absence”. (Jansen) The companies are starting to notices that employees are looking for other jobs that support them balance their work and family. Jansen used questionnaires to figure out the work-family conflict investigation. Each questionnaire was use with different types of working people. For example, the part-time and full-time workers. The results for the work-family conflict, “employees might adjust their working time arrangement to better reconcile work and family life…” (Jansen) They are considering their next research on the adjustments to “result in an improved work-family balance, improved health outcomes, and ultimately whether these adjustments prevent workers from leaving the labor force early.” (Jansen)
When the U.S. is compared to the conditions of other workers in other countries the numbers come as quite a shock. According to the magazine Psychology Today, “The United States—one of the richest countries in the world--ranks 28th among advanced nations in the category of work-life balance, 9th from the bottom” (Cummins 1). This stressful imbalance of home life with excessive work hours has left us in desperate need of more time and is becoming a strong identifier of American culture in the world. As Cummins explains, “We log long hours at work with the fear of losing our jobs through downsizing hanging over our heads. Then we fight rush hour traffic to get home in time to be super-parents, putting dinner on the table, helping our kids with their homework, and checking in with friends and family members we feel we have neglected because we are so overwhelmed” (Cummins 1). This well pa...
Work and family signify two important components in the lives of most people. Interestingly, work and family roles can produce significant impact on life satisfaction [Kossek, E. & Ozeki,C. 1998). In fact, managing the intersection between work and family is one of the critical issues for both management practitioners and academics [Rothbard, Nancy.P & Dumas, Tracy L, 2006). Presently, research in the work-family area has shifted to the enhancement hypothesis, researchers are beginning to explore ways in which work and family domains enhance or enrich each other. As mentioned earlier, researchers have used various terms to explore this concept including; work-family enrichment, positive work-family spillover, work-family enhancement,
Telecommuting Telecommuting starts with the lower level of the working class workers but with the success it has had it’s rapidly moving towards the executive level. There are two forms of telecommuting the employers use today, one is home telecommuting which is a work arrangement the most people do this is working from home with a computer terminal utilizing today’s current technology by transmitting data and documents while working from home and maintaining a close contact with co-workers, managers, through the use of email, internet (instant messenger), and telephone and fax machines as well. Video conferencing using web cameras can also be an effective tool for telecommuting in order to help enhance the productivity of its employees and executives. The other form of telecommuting is center-based telecommuting that involves the use of office space close to home where employees work without direct supervision, commute travel is still reduced and some of the disadvantages of home offices are removed.
Pitt-Catsouphes et al, 2006, ‘The work and family handbook: multi-disciplinary perspectives and approaches’ Published by: Lawrence Elbourn Associates 2006, (p.365)
I work at Geneva Ace Hardware. My most important job, among my many duties, is to help customers. Usually everything goes ok, but there are always a few customers that can be hard to deal with. I’ve had to deal with Mexicans who can barely speak English. I’ve had to deal with Mexicans who use their 5 year old children/grandchildren as translators. I once had to deal with a Canadian couple whose accent was so rich; I would have about a 30 second delayed response to try to convert their English into my English. Then there are the people who just won’t accept my help because I’m only a kid. None of these people compare to the dude that was deaf.
Telecommuting may be the movement of the future, which will allow more people to work away from the office. Many people see telecommuting as a way to be close to home or allow them to be connected to their organization while working abroad. While telecommuting might work for some people, telecommuting is not for everyone. There are many disadvantages; as well advantages to telecommuting which most people do not take into account. When considering telecommuting, the advantages fall for both employer and employee. The same can be said about the disadvantages of telecommuting.
Cyber loafing is using personal internet during working hours (Liberman, Seidman, Mckenna & Buffardi 2011, pp. 2192). Cyber loafing is one of the issues that employees need to deal with at work. Websen (cited in Vitak et.al 2011, p. 1751) claims that there is a huge loses in work productivity in the US that cost the companies milli...
During the past decade, the internet has revolutionized and changed the way organizations do business by offering rapid communication systems and enhanced information access and innovation of technological advancements have created a brave new workplace. Further, the internet enables organizations to decrease expenses, reduce product life cycle time, market goods and services more efficiently (Anandarajan et al, 2000). However, with these kinds of benefits, the internet provides employees with a technique
Moreover, the importance of work, study, and family roles of women and how they combine them all to get a thorough understanding of their expectations are discussed. Data from prior research concerning the challenging task of women being able to balance work and family. The article discusses how these efforts to balance the competing demands of both family and work frequently result in work-family conflict, and how several studies have shown that women experience more work-family conflict than men (Markle, Seward, Spencer, & Yeatts,
Ivarsson, Lars Larsson, Patrik. "Personal Internet Usage At Work: A Source Of Recovery." Journal Of Workplace Rights 16.1 (2011): 63. Advanced Placement Source. Web. 19 Apr. 2014.
In Today’s world, the composition and how work is done has massively changed and is still continuing to change. Work is now more complex, more team base, depends greatly on technological and social skills and lastly more mobile and does not depend on geography. Companies are also opting for ways to help their employees perform their duties effectively so that huge profits are realized in the long term .The changes in the workplaces include Reduction in the structure of the hierarchy ,breakdown in the organization boundaries , improved and better management tactics and perspectives and lastly better workplace condition and health to the employees. (Frank Ackerman, Neva R. Goodwin, Laurie Dougherty, Kevin Gallagher, 2001)