Although in recent years companies have sought creative solutions to ensure a better performance of their employees and at the same time a better balance between their work and their personal life, it is almost impossible to achieve that human resources policies manage to solve the situations in which face work and personal life
With the greatest boom that progressive organizational theories have been having in regard to the work-life relationship, companies have developed guidelines to ensure the well-being of their employees, always having the purpose of attracting and keeping the best human talent. These policies and strategies range from flexible hours, through long paid paternity and maternity leave, to family health insurance, among other benefits.
Adopting these plans and programs is good, it is sure to be a motivating factor, but it is also certainly not in all cases.
Typically, when companies design these plans, they focus benefits on specific situations that rarely involve all staff. For example, when you develop a flexible schedule for parents who have young children, you are inadvertently giving preferential treatment to employees in this situation, without thinking that this plan can send the wrong signals to other employees.
If an executive secretary has a baby that requires her time and therefore receives preferences in her arrival and departure times, what can another secretary of the same level think who has a couple of teenage children and to whom the flexible schedule does not blanket?
Surely you are not going to be very satisfied with the treatment you are receiving, you may think that the work that the other secretary is stopping doing will be delegated to her and her other colleagues, which will not make her very happy, she may feel demotivated and start to present low returns or you can appear in human resources and demand the same treatment since you have children who are at an age where they also require a lot of attention.
Bearing in mind this simple example, it is noted that a decision that could be understood as a great policy, flexible and progressive, which seeks the well-being of the staff, becomes a problem that can have serious consequences for the firm's work environment.
For this reason, when it comes to developing wellness programs that seek to find work-life balance, all personnel and all situations must be taken into account, although it seems an almost impossible task given the social diversity that can be found in a company, creative solutions must be developed to achieve this.
These programs must be flexible and have to start from recruitment and selection tasks if the best human talent is to be counted on
When plans of this type are drawn up, all staff must be informed about what they are looking for so that everyone understands that they do not have preferences and that there are no first, second or third class employees, in addition, these programs must be sufficiently flexible to accommodate different situations. The company must be able to offer the same benefits to the two secretaries in the example.
Another basic factor is to make it clear that even if benefits are granted, the quality of the work of the person who receives them must continue to be the same or better than before having them, that is, the secretary with the baby must comply with her obligations to the same way as the other executive secretaries.
Creative solutions must be sought, with technological advances it is possible that people work longer from home using the internet. It may not be necessary for a sales group coordinator to be present at 7:00 each morning for the daily meeting, if there is a possibility that she can get ahead by using a chat room, an electronic instant messaging service, or a video conference.
It is also important to know people's expectations, the plan must be built based on two-way information, otherwise it will fall short. For this reason, staff should be encouraged to express what they want and what solutions they can come up with to meet those expectations.
Properly designed and applied benefit plans are highly motivating elements and factors that attract talented people
In conclusion, when creating benefit plans, equity must be sought rather than equality, leaving the rules of the game sufficiently clear to all employees.
