Human Resource Management and Paternity Leave - Essay Example

Human Resource Management and Peternity Leave Lecturer: Assignment Number: Due Number: Executive Summary This report aims to identify the relevance of establishing a peternity leave policy for the company. Peternity leave is generally defined as taking a very short period of absence from the workplace in the event of the loss or illness of a beloved family dog or cat. However, there are risks to peternity leave, including the opportunity to abuse this HR policy as well as the existence of limited research data which shows whether it has been an effective motivator in different workplaces across the globe. This is due to the contemporary, innovative nature of peternity leave in today’s companies. There are some who argue against peternity leave as being a valid HR benefit, however despite these criticisms, there is enough evidence available which illustrates that peternity benefits could be used to reduce turnover and satisfy employees’ needs both psychological and sociological. This report offers considerably more advantages to peternity leave policy implementation than disadvantages. The following recommendations have been made: Establish clear guidelines on the volume of days allowed in the event of either illness or death of the pet as well as clear policies regarding which varieties of pets qualify for peternity leave. Utilise low-cost, print retention literature to build positive internal and external stakeholder views of the company and its innovative approach to flexible, extended benefits offerings. Reward employees for accomplishing organisational objectives, as part of a performance management package, by offering additional peternity leave days-off in the event of future issues with qualifying pets. Table of Contents Pg Title Page Executive Summary i List of Figures ii 1.0 Introduction 1.1 Background 1.2 Aims 1.3 Scope 2.0 Peternity Leave and Rewards Management 2.1 Policy Strengths 2.2 Benefits of Peternity Leave to the Company 2.3 Critical Commentary on Peternity Leave 3.0 Comparisons to Existing Extended Benefits Policies 3.1 Maternity or Paternity Leave Issues 4.0 Peternity as Competitive Advantage in HR 4.1 The Strategic Decision 5.0 Development of Retention Strategies using Peternity Leave 5.1 Lifestyle Retention Package 5.2 The Peternity Contest 6.0 Conclusion and Recommendations 6.1 Recognising Trends 6.2 Recommended Courses of Action Reference List Lists of Figures Figure 1: Graphic Representation of Current Employee Attitudes Toward Job Defection 1.0 Introduction 1.1 Background A contemporary trend in human resources management is the introduction of a new type of employee leave known as peternity leave, involving the ability to take a specified period of time away from job role responsibilities to care for the household pet in the event of pet illness or death. Virgin Mobile Australia has recently introduced this special type of leave in an effort to improve retention and also enhance the public reputation of the company while also satisfying a variety of stakeholder interests. This has made peternity leave a potential topic of interest for improving the business’ human resources policies regarding employee benefits. 1.2 Aims The purpose of this report is to identify the viability of establishing a similar peternity leave policy at the company in an effort to enhance business reputation and employee retention. The impact of establishing such a new benefits policy on total organisational performance is the main focus of this report. 1.3 Scope The report consulted with a wide variety of case studies and secondary literature in the domain of human resources management and psychology to uncover whether establishing a new peternity policy would be of long-term value to the company. 2.0 Peternity Leave and Rewards Management 2.1 Policy Strengths Virgin Mobile Australia has established its own version of peternity leave to include specific criteria for being able to take advantage of this policy. First, it is only available to employees when they are introducing a new puppy or kitten to the family household and the pet must not be older than 10 weeks (Moran, 2009). Additionally, this leave does not apply to rats, fish or other pets such as snakes and iguanas (Moran). It is apparent that Virgin Mobile Australia recognises the potential difficulties of allowing employees to use peternity leave options to care for a goldfish, as employees would likely take advantage of these benefits in a manner which abuses the policy. One human resources professional acknowledges, “Suppose you don’t have any pets but you find a spider in your house. And the spider doesn’t look too well. Yippee!! An excuse to take time off work” (Weinreb, 2007, p.2). This would be a likely problem in the event that this new policy were implemented in this company and did not maintain specific and clear guidelines to ensure that the policy is not abused by the employee population. Research indicates that more than one-third of employees across the world actually end up taking time off of work to care for sick pets (Roche, 2007). This is a significant margin of employees, thus this represents a tremendous opportunity to enhance the retention (and perhaps recruitment) efforts of the business. The household which needs to care for sick animals is much more than just a niche marketing opportunity, it represents a significant volume of employee needs and interests. Since the household pet is often considered to be much like a human family member in terms of overall value to the household, establishing this policy should attract a wide demographic and secure the interests of existing employees in the process. Research further indicates that pet owners, as a collective, international whole, use over eight million sick days in an effort to bereave the deaths of their beloved animals (Martin, 2007). By using internal promotion to the employee populations of this new policy, it will offer the incentive to avoid the use of sick days in the event of problems with pets and create a more flexible employee leave model. The goal of human resources is to establish a positive organisational climate in which employees are motivated to excel and to meet organisational goals (Mathis and Jackson, 2005). Under most HR models, this involves some form of performance management system, which links specific organisational performance with specific organisational goals and objectives. If the employee, through various evaluation formats, is found to be a positive contributor, the rewards are generally congruent with the level of their individual efforts (Parasnis, 2004). Thus, there are opportunities to link peternity leave with the existing performance management system at the company, in which employees earn peternity rights through outstanding performance, seniority at the company, or any other specific criteria identified by senior HR leadership. Again, internal promotion of this new policy and its linkage to rewards management would make peternity leave only achievable through superior job performance. Using an existing 360 degree feedback system, contact with customers, divisional managers, and even peers could be used as a template for measuring employee performance. 2.2 Benefits of Peternity Leave to the Company Using paternity leave as a relevant example, in which the male employee takes a specified period of time off of work to manage a new child, research identifies that paternity leave trends are on the increase. In Britain, only 50 percent of male employees had access to paternity leave in 2003, while today over 80 percent of fathers have this benefit in the workplace (Stubbs, 2004). In just six years, instances of paternity leave availability have increased by over 30 percent, representing that businesses today are establishing more flexible benefits policies. This company, also, must get on board with social trends toward more unique varieties of job leave in order to make the company appear more suitable for contemporary lifestyle needs. For the most part, these paternity policies are mandated by governmental law and are imposed on the HR system. However, pet-ernity leave maintains the ability to utilise clever, in-house promotion which illustrates the growth of paternity leave and illustrates the company’s flexibility and contemporary business style as a revolutionary model for employee benefits. Abraham Maslow, a famous 20th Century psychologist, developed his Hierarchy of Needs which identifies that employees in the workplace require a sense of belonging and a sense of security as fundamental needs (Weiten and Lloyd, 2005). The goal of a performance management system is to identify employee strengths and weaknesses in their pursuit of achieving organisational goals and desired corporate outcomes. Maslow’s hierarchy suggests that in order for an employee to reach the fullest of their potential, self-actualisation, it is necessary for the workplace to ensure that belonging and security are part of the job environment (Morris and Maisto, 2005). Establishing peternity leave appeals to the need for security by allowing employees to recognise that even the household pet is considered a valid concern for the workforce and that the company cares about the stability and health of the household pet. At the same time, a sense of belonging is established by allowing the employee to more openly discuss elements of their personal life (their pets) while the company consistently reinforces its commitment to the employee and their lifestyle needs. These values can be promoted in both internal and external recruitment or retention literature as a means of appealing to the sociological and psychological needs of employees. Much to the advantage of the company, only five percent of today’s companies offer flexible, extended benefits such as childcare arrangements or non-standard working hours (Dex and Scheibl, 1999). Should the company consider peternity leave to be a viable option for improving retention, internal literature can reinforce that this benefit is not widely found in other companies, thus making the business appear a more attractive place to work. This could also be expressed in various external recruitment literature (such as the hiring website) to reinforce the company’s commitment to being innovative in human resources practices and employee relations. 2.3 Critical Commentary on Peternity Leave Journalist Arthur Weinreb attacks peternity leave, calling it “patently absurd” and “further proof of the low value that too many people place on their employment and of the notion of personal responsibility” (Gettler, 2007, p.2). What Weinreb is attempting to express is that workers tend to take advantage of these extended benefits policies and would look to actively exploit it. The journalist is suggesting that peternity leave would actually detract from the human resources model at the company, raising employee accountability issues when absences continue to grow from abuse of the peternity policy. Family leave policies are only successful when they “respect the rights of workers to combine work and family responsibilities” (Duxbury, 2003, p.1). Calling peternity leave patently absurd seems to be a narrow-minded view of this benefits policy as it only reinforces the aforementioned sense of belonging in the employee population and illustrates that the company remains committed to ensuring family stability in worker groups. However, it should, at minimum, be recognised that there are critics of this policy in the field of human resources management, thus from a public relations perspective, the company must tread carefully in all promotional literature and clearly identify the policy’s criteria and specific benefits included. Improving the reputation of the company is one of the main goals of implementing a new peternity policy, thus public perception of the steps the company is taking to offer more flexible and innovative benefits must be considered in this process. 3.0 Comparisons to Existing Extended Benefits Policies 3.1 Maternity or Paternity Leave Issues Many companies are receiving poor public relations because of how they choose to manage family leave scenarios. In one recent situation, a childcare worker informed the company that she would be taking maternity leave in upcoming months, thus she was victimised by a letter which highlighted 17 different instances of poor job performance as a means of retaliating against her desire to take a family-related leave of absence (Martin, 2005). The employee was dismissed without further discussion of the letter. Why should this be a concern to the company? In Australia, paid maternity leave is “a contentious issue as there is no statutory requirement for paid maternity leave” (Barrett and Mayson, 2007, p.277). What this means is that, should the business implement the new peternity leave policy, it is not regulated by the government, opening the opportunity for a great deal of legal problems if there is inconsistency with its administration or development. The whole intention of the new peternity policy would be to create a more rewarding, positive public image for the business, thus the language of the agreement and how it will be enforced must be considered to avoid similar negative publicity such as in the case of the childcare company, who was awarded $15,175 compensation for being harassed for taking maternity leave (Martin). Also in today’s businesses, research has identified that even when men are given paternity leave, “subtle or direct employer actions may discourage men from taking advantage of the leave” (Levit, 1998, p.37). There may be internal critics (peers or managers) who will lean unfavourably toward peternity leave, considering it to be an unnecessary or even absurd type of benefit. In this case, it must be identified through internal promotional literature that the company stands by the peternity leave benefits and finds significant value in the policies. If employees are discouraged to take advantage of these benefits, for fear of social rejection, the end result could be employees who do not seek longevity with the company, thus impacting turnover ratios. Before implementing a new peternity policy, all areas of socialisation and ensuring that the entire organisational culture is unified about the importance of this new benefit must be considered, analysed and addressed subtly in various organisational literature. 4.0 Peternity as Competitive Advantage in HR 4.1 The Strategic Decision Surprisingly, research identifies that most turnover situations occur when employees do not feel connected (or somehow isolated) from the social environment which exists as part of the business’ organisational culture (Cook, 2007). Further, when employees perceive their relationship with superiors to be more of a partnership than a subordinate relationship, turnover can be improved (Cook). This represents an opportunity for the company to use peternity leave as a means to not only create competitive advantage by improving turnover ratios, but also create a sense of organisational unity about employee benefits. Pets are generally one common, universal value for most employees and their managers, thus with innovative internal promotion, such as making use of the company Intranet as an information medium, this new peternity benefit can create the manager/subordinate relationship connections which only serve to enhance total organisational performance. Sheng, Lu, Kiong, Ong and Loh (2006) identify that recruitment and retention issues are the largest obstacles in many businesses today. However, this business will maintain a better competitive edge by having a more socially-focused workforce with common family and household values. There is one tangible cost to most businesses, also, which creates problems in relation to turnover which is often underlooked from the financial perspective. This cost is pre-departure cost involving reduced productivity from employees who are actively looking for other work while still employed with another organisation (IPC, 2008). Additionally, when some employees exit the job due to being dissatisfied, they often leave the company with key information, such as a specific information technology code or other specialised area of knowledge which could take months to teach/train for another employee (IPC). This is another area where peternity leave, as an extended HR benefit, can improve financial costs as well, by offering more flexible benefits which satisfy employees’ sociological and psychological needs. The financial costs of turnover and employee dissatisfaction must be considered as part of any quality HR model (Barney and Wright, 1998), thus peternity leave as an innovation for the company can, in the long-term, save significantly on the overall costs of turnover simply by offering a more attractive benefits package which outperforms that of other companies in similar marketplaces. 5.0 Development of Retention Strategies using Peternity Leave 5.1 Lifestyle Retention Package Figure 1 illustrates that eighty-three percent of a large sampling of employees surveyed by the Society of Human Resource Management identified that they would likely defect to another company if the opportunity presented itself or would be willing to step up efforts to find other employment (highretention.com, 2007). These are rather alarming statistics for today’s HR professionals in areas of retention. As part of a total internal marketing package, the development of a Lifestyle Retention Package can be implemented to reduce the high risk of job defection which exists in many different employee markets today. This Lifestyle Retention Package would illustrate how the company is active in pursuing different methods to adapt to changing household lifestyles and beliefs, perhaps by spotlighting various employee pets and their histories related to specific employees. This would create the sense of social belonging, once again, which is required to keep employees psychologically-satisfied while also creating tangible, in-house literature which reinforces how the company values its employees and their family lifestyles. Printed and updated quarterly, this retention publication would be designed to keep employees thinking about peternity as well as the company’s strict commitment to offering flexible benefits. Figure 1: Graphic Representation of Current Employee Attitudes Toward Job Defection 5.2 The Peternity Contest Again, in order to improve employee relationships, the development of a peternity contest can be implemented in which the winner receives an extra day of bereavement in the event of pet illness or death. This might, at first glance, appear to be a rather unorthodox method of improving retention, however such contests would accomplish improved social relationships between peers and their managers. In most Westernised cultures, the need for incentives are present in many areas of consumerism and even in the workplace (Valassis, 2005), thus this trend provides excellent opportunities for the implementation of the new peternity policies. Such contests could be coordinated rather inexpensively and be conducted as a reward strategy for specific group project contribution or individual task achievements. Much like the stock market raises interest in investors through stock futures, peternity rewards as contest outcomes would be banking higher volumes of bereavement days for success at multiple job role tasks. Unfortunately, peternity benefits are too new and innovative to attain quality research which identifies how it has successfully been implemented in different organisations across the world. The goal of peternity leave is to reduce turnover by improving retention and to improve the image of the company for all stakeholders, both internal and external. There are no other HR models for retention, other than those identified in this report, which would be practical or likely effective for improving total organisational performance and reducing employee intention to defect. When examining the tangible costs of handling high turnover rates due to dissatisfied employees, low-cost methods of marketing peternity should be of primary concern to the business in all areas of retention. Contests and a quarterly publication which spotlights specific employee pets (among other HR-related concepts and issues) are the most practical methods for enhancing retention by using peternity leave options. 6.0 Conclusion and Recommendations 6.1 Recognising Trends Clearly, there are a high volume of employees in today’s international workplaces with the intention to move onto other career opportunities and accelerate the pace by which they seek other employment. This is a tremendous risk to the business and must be considered prior to implementing a successful peternity leave policy. Additionally, this report highlighted that employees will tend to take advantage of new leave benefits when they are offered, thus the risk of abusing these policies exists. 6.2 Recommended Courses of Action The impact on total organisational performance is a strong consideration prior to launching a new peternity leave policy, thus the timeframe in which an employee is allowed bereavement of family pets or to handle pet illness must be clearly defined. To avoid abuses of this new policy, when implemented, it is recommended to highlight: Employees are allowed no more than two days leave in the event of a pet emergency or illness. All problems must be documented with the appropriate veterinary documentation or other acceptable proof as mandated by senior leadership. Employees are allowed no more than two days bereavement for loss of a family pet. Setting limitations on the timeframe allowed for each pet-related circumstance removes the risks of abusing the policy and there should also be a clearly-defined disciplinary system in the event of employees’ using more leave than what is allowed by policy. This will avoid having to have other employees take on their peers’ job role responsibilities and should not be noticeable in areas of performance. It is also recommended that all printed literature used for recruitment purposes should again reinforce how innovative and modern peternity leave is in relation to other companies in this marketplace or similar industries. The goal is to create the incentive to choose the company over another competing business, thus use of newspaper advertisements and recruitment websites should illustrate this flexible-minded benefits structure. Illustrating various employee case studies which spotlight their favourite pets would also appeal to the sense of belonging which is shared, generically, with most individuals in global society as pointed out by Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. This is low-cost advertising which could improve the long-term reputation of the company as a competitive leader in reduced turnover and higher recruitment success. Employees must also understand that these peternity policies only apply to dogs and cats to avoid any misconceptions about the scope and expectations of the new peternity policies. One author argues: “It’s hard to see how a policy like (peternity) could ever be restricted to dogs and cats while ignoring the plight of those who have birds, hamsters, white mice, and other assorted animals, fish and insects as pets” (Weinreb, 2007, p.2). Weinreb’s argument tends to suggest that there is a risk of causing animosity with certain employees in the event that their beloved family pet does not fit the norm (dogs or cats). However, despite this argument, such employees would represent a very niche group of employees and, perhaps in extenuating circumstances, accommodations could be made for employees who can justify the loss or illness of unusual pets. Large Japanese Koi, as one example, can live for upwards of 75 years, thus this type of loss (or something similar) would need to be decided by the HR manager on an individual basis. This flexibility in policy, however, should not be highlighted in any retention or recruitment material to avoid excessive inquiries about exotic pets or give the impression that the policy creates the opportunity for abuse. It is further recommended to seriously consider the importance of using additional peternity leave, as a reward for performance, as a means to boost motivation and morale in multiple employee populations. Those employees with several dogs or several cats may well find that this gives them a strong sense of security, again as pointed out by Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, giving them more incentive to remain with the company. When included into the aforementioned 360 degree feedback system for total performance management, additional peternity leave days as a reward is a quality method for avoiding high turnover related to dissatisfaction with employee benefits. Reference List Barney, J and Wright, P 1998, On becoming a strategic partner: the role of human resources in gaining competitive advantage Human Resource Management, vol.37 pp.31-46. 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