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Work - life balance importance
Disadvantages of work life balance
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The Benefits of Workplace Fun to Employees and Employers Would you rather be at a workplace that was boring and quiet or a workplace that was fun and full of positive energy? The answer seems obvious, yet having a fun work environment is usually the exception rather than the norm. People often hear employees complaining about their jobs, yet it is rare to hear someone actually express positive feelings about their job. For most people, it is just a way to pay the bills. However, workplace fun benefits employees by increasing morale, improving productivity, and increasing overall job satisfaction, which results in benefits to employers as well, such as improved quality of customer service, less turnover and lower human resources costs, and …show more content…
Weinstein (1996) states, “if you want your company to provide excellent customer service, you first have to provide that same kind of attention and appreciation to your internal customers—your own employees. You cannot expect your employees to provide ‘service with a smile’ if you don’t give them something to smile about” (p. 31). A good example of this is the experience of Sprint, which incorporated concepts of workplace fun into their call centers, subsequently winning the 2002 “Call Center of the Year” award from Call Center Magazine (Karl & Peluchette, 2006a). The story of Seattle’s Pike Place Fish Market inspired a best-selling book, detailing how employees of the market have fun at work and provide extraordinary customer service, despite working in a grueling job that constantly smells of fish (Lundin, Paul, & Christensen, 2000). They toss fish to their customers and maintain an upbeat environment, thanks to the adoption of the principle of making work fun. This has even caused many healthcare organizations to adopt this fun philosophy with positive results. For example, Banner Thunderbird Medical Center regularly receives high patient satisfaction scores which are above the norm in the healthcare industry. CEO Rob Curry attributes this to the fact that they have a philosophy that incorporates concepts of workplace fun to keep the employees happy (Karl & Peluchette, 2006b). …show more content…
Katherine Hudson, the President and CEO of Brady Corporation, has written an article that shows how active steps to incorporate fun modalities in the workplace has allowed her to transform the culture of her company (Hudson, 2001). When she first took over the company, employees were not even allowed to have a cup of coffee at their desk. Now, the company has revitalized itself, making the company “more flexible and dynamic and our people more creative and enthusiastic” (Hudson, 2001, p. 53). In fact, having a fun workplace has been identified as one of the main factors that identify the top performers in Fortune’s “100 Best Companies to Work For” (Karl & Peluchette,
Her biggest accomplishment is maintaining her clientele. She gets the same customers that she did when she first opened. In chapter four of Organizational Behavior, it explains how managers can influence moods of customers. Ms. Byrd gives great deals to regular customers to keep them coming back. A customer’s mood automatically changes when receiving a good deal.
Boston, MA: Pearson Sivarethinamohan, R. R., & Aranganathan, P. P. (2011). Determinants of employee engagement
The key success to any business transaction is customer satisfaction. A customer always demands the best service and in return offers the company their loyalty. The key to this; great customer service. Smile at the customer, speak to them with a polite tone, and adjust your body language to make it friendly and approachable; all these are related to the concept of emotional labour. Emotional labour proposes that in order to ensure customer satisfaction is achieved, it is vital for “managers or employers to regulate or manage employee’s behaviour or emotional expressions to ensure service quality” (Chu 2002). The concept of emotional labour was first developed by Arlie Hochschild, who was an organizational sociologist. Hochschild stated that if an employee was employed in a service field, then it would be required from the employee to “to display specific sets of emotions (both verbal and non-verbal) with the aim of inducing particular feelings and responses among those for whom the service is being provided”(Hochschild 1983).
Comcast Corporation is a company that specializes in cable networking and high speed internet access for residential and commercial customers. “Comcast Creates More Than 5,500 New Jobs as Part of Multi-Year Customer Experience Transformation” (Comcast.com, 2015). I spent a total of three years working for them in a call center atmosphere before relocating my family. This job was one of my most memorable and enjoyable mainly because they followed the management practices which allowed everyone to function efficiently. Nominally “The primary function for most call centers, also known as ‘inbound’ call centers, is to receive telephone calls initiated by customers. Inbound call centers typically spend 60–80% of their budget on staff members who handle phone calls” (der Horst, et al., 2012, 435). My days were spent with between eight to twelve hours a day attached to a desk and phone system monitoring all aspects of job performance. Comcast “today announced a new, multi-year plan to reinvent the customer experience and to create a culture focused on exceeding customers’ expectations, at all levels of the company. The plan centers on looking at every decision through a customer lens and making measureable changes and improvements across the company” ...
The ingredients or factors that determine happiness on the job are universal in that all workers need a combina...
Even after 9/11 Southwest Airlines has always been the top airlines in the United States. The reason for their unwavering success is based on the simplistic way they execute common values. After extensively reading their value statement, I’ve come to realize the company’s ambition thrives on motivating and taking care of their employees. Southwest’s values revolve around a warrior spirit, a servant’s heart, and a fun-loving attitude. These values transcend the more original ones from other organizations and ultimately represent more than that. For example, a warrior spirit represent the area where Southwest Airlines provides the tools for employees to better serve their customers. A servant heart implies that one is encouraged to treat each other with respect by showing concern for the customer. Lastly, a fun-loving attitude suggests that employees should have fun at work. Value is a strong concept created to guide or direct individuals behavior towards a desired or favorable outcome. For Southwest Airlines, values are not just about what the company believes, it’s about how it sets the culture. Newly hired employees are tested in the company’s three core values and in reward Southwest Airlines provide a recognition program for all employees who are complimented by customers. These values are mentioned in newsletters, staff meetings by the CEO and at special event. Southwest’s
Motivation also derives from the sense of happiness, without the want to accomplish something and have that sense of accomplishment they would not be motivated to do something. At work would be a good example of how happiness plays a role in motivation. If a person is working in an environment that they thoroughly enjoy they would be more motivated to work at an adequate pace than a person who were to dislike their work environment, wishing they weren’t there and be somewhere else instead. The New York times published an article stating that it had been estimated by the Gallup Healthways studies, that approximately $300 billion dollars is lost per year due to lack of production from unhappiness. A bit of research was done over the course of a decade by Teresa Amabile, a professor at Harvard Business School, and Steven Kramer, an independent researcher, they had collected approximately 12,000 live recorded electronic diaries of employees from seven different companies. The results showed that a third of the employees were more often than not unhappy with their work. The reports resulted in a profound impact on workers’ creativity, productivity, commitment and collegiality. Happy employees are more likely to have more ideas and often perform better at their tasks. Happiness in the workplace is also quite contagious as there are three areas that positive
Holiday World and Splashin’ Safari is a seasonal theme and water park located in Santa Claus, Indiana. This is also an organization which I have previously worked at for six seasons. Having a slogan of “Number 1 for Family Fun!,” Holiday World strives to provide for their guests two affordable theme parks with a fun and family oriented environment. They also pride themselves on having world-class rides and entertainment, free soft drinks, friendly employees, immaculately clean grounds, and providing outstanding service. Holiday World offers a variety of full-time and seasonal job opportunities which are broken down into different departments. Some of these departments include admissions, entertainment, food and beverage, grounds, lifeguards and slide attendants, maintenance, security, and rides. This report will focus on the food and beverage department. The work environment for food and beverage employees can often be hectic and stressful. Employees are expected to serve quality food to thousands of guests each day in a timely and efficient manner. At the same time, employees must also maintain Holiday World’s reputation as the friendliest and cleanest park in the world. Effectively being able to work in teams plays a huge role in this department.
Creating a friendly and successful workplace environment ensures employee and customer satisfaction and leads to the company’s efficiency and profitability. Positive organizational environment can be reached through retaining and motivating people based on open communication, proactive leadership, appropriate behavior patterns in line with the mission, vision and values of the organization and work- life flexibility.
Employees should not assume that the cleaning crew has been meticulous in eradicating germs. Phones’ and other items on the desktop are rarely cleaned or disinfected. Encourage employees to use disinfecting wipes in their personal workstation. Make wipes and hand sanitizers readily available for each workstation, especially when shared by different shifts.
First, in relation to the organization’s most important asset, people, Sears has failed to recognize the distinctive competences that lie in the skills and abilities of their own employees. Sears once was a very successful organization in relation to how they treat their employees. Sears was one of the pioneers of measuring employee engagement in the retail industry by creating a set of measures known as Total Performance Indicators. People who enjoy going to work every day, as a result of a high-performing company culture, increases their productivity, giving them a higher return on salary. This model of employee engagement worked very well for Sears in the past, however, in recent years, Sears has strayed away from this core competency.
Based off of the gratification an individual contains towards their work is job satisfaction. The productivity could either be positive or negative while the relationship between the productivity and satisfaction may not be consistent. There are multiple internal and external factors of job satisfaction that can impact the behavior of an employee and engagement over time. The way the worker’s attitude concerning their field effects the performance they perform on a daily basis. One who is satisfied with the job they maintain, succeed at what they do. “It is therefore imperative for a company to understand the attitude of its workers and measure the job satisfaction of its employees, as job satisfaction is essential for productivity” (L. Bradshaw
It is important that employees do not fear for their jobs, are stressed of their tasks and their deadlines, etc. Employee happiness should be one of the most important topics for any organizations. If they are happy, they are more likely to focus on their own tasks, work hard, and create a good environment. If they are stressed they are more likely to make mistakes and influence the environment
Keeping workers motivated in today workplace can be not just a job, but also an adventure. In many organizations this is a challenge because the workplace is made up of a diverse cultural environment. Managers are still the driving force for any business and the responsibility and demand to ac...
Motivation can be one of the greatest and most important aspects inside a workplace, as it enables employees to find their incentive to work harder and achieve different types of goals. Motivation can be identified and accomplished by elaborating a job design that helps keep employees happy considering the different environmental factors of the integrative framework when applying organizational behavior. A formal definition states that job design “refers to any set of activities that involve the alteration of specific jobs or interdependent systems of jobs with the intent of improving the quality of employee job experience and their on-the-job productivity” (Kinicki 168). Job designs help structure jobs and the different tasks needed to accomplish