Monday, April 8, 2013

Work-Life Balance in My Workplace

Moral , motivation, incentive, and satisfaction are all but many words used to help gauge a workers existence within a company. Companies with low moral, little incentive, or no room for growth create little satisfaction and end up with very low retention rates and very high turnover. So what is it that provides the feeling of satisfaction? Well according to McGregor's theory X and theory Y, for me and my current work situation, theory Y makes a little more sense. Theory Y pertains to the idea that a worker will grow and learn the skills necessary in that given environment to become successful. That's how getting a job after college is. Many jobs you learn more from the actual job training than you did in your 4 years getting that degree.

Currently I am a supervisor at the OSU Foundation Telefund and we apply much in line with the Human Relations approach and that we try to provide a comfortable and enjoyable work environment. Again it's different for every job. Some jobs require different needs and the nature of the job can provide limitations on the available incentives and perks. For my job since we are a call center we have 6 different calling shifts and 3 are required each week for our callers. With many shifts available we hope that allows for a flexible schedule and will result in higher retention. Higher retention means keeping workers longer and they will be even better at the job given more experience. During call shifts we play music and provide incentives for pledges and for making nightly goals. These incentives range from leaving shifts early, to gift cards. Especially since this is a student job, little incentives go a long ways in creating a relaxed and enjoyable work environment.

We try to incorporate the Human Resources approach as well which is just allowing all employees to be heard. As a student who supervises other students it can be a bit testy given our same age and personal relationships. We have to make sure the hierarchy is concrete, but we take in the callers opinions as much as possible to ensure they are happy and we continue that successful work and personal relationship without losing productivity.

I am a huge supporter of having fun in the work place while maintaining a get down to business attitude. If a workplace can do this successfully and create that so called work-life balance, then the company will have extremely satisfied employees.

2 comments:

  1. I like that you brought your personal experience to your discussion. Be careful to edit your writing - there are a lot of typos and mistakes, which diminishes the professionalism. You did a nice job relating your workplace to the theories discussed in the chapter.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I will definitely make sure to check that next time. I will make some changes right now.

    ReplyDelete