Inflexibility in Working Hours and its Impact on Women's Career

This report discusses the impact of inflexible working hours of men on women's career and suggests policies for creating a discriminating free organization based on gender. It also highlights the importance of strategic human resource planning and workplace gender equality policy.

Human Resource Management

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EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
The report would deal with the issues and the effects the inflexibility in the working
hours of men has impacted the women's career. This report would deal with the
impacts and the solution to the given problem. The report would begin with placing
the purpose and the role that is the importance of the topic concerned being discussed
in the introduction part. This would be followed by the importance of strategic human
resource planning in creating a discriminating free organization, on the basis of
gender. The side effects of inflexible working hours on the gender gap that has been
increasing in the recent years would be discussed. This would end up with the policy
which would support the flexible working hours for both men and women. This would
provide the main discussion of the report and towards the end, the conclusion and a
recommendation would be provided which would act as a helping tool for the
improvement in the concerned status of the women in the organizations.
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Contents
1.0 Introduction.........................................................................................................................1
2.0 Importance of Strategic Human Resource Management Planning.............................1
3.0 Side-Effects of Inflexible working Hours on the Gender Gap......................................1
4.0 Importance of developing a workplace gender equality policy....................................3
4.1 Benefits..............................................................................................................................3
4.2 Features............................................................................................................................4
5.0 Conclusion.........................................................................................................................4
6.0 Recommendations.............................................................................................................5
7.0 References..........................................................................................................................6
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1.0 Introduction
The parenting thing is a shared responsibility and every human has the right to be able to
spend time with his/her children, live up their child's childhood. It accepted that the primary
parent has to be the mother and the father just need to work for the living. The flexible
working hours for men could actually help the women to grow on their career parts. It is
mostly found that on having a child, the mother is the one to give up her career and take care
of the child and home, but this could be changed as advised by Niki Vincent, the South
Australia's Commissioner. "A lot of workplaces think it's acceptable for women to work
flexibly, but they have a problem with men, so even though they might have policies in place
that are not just about women, there's a stigma associated with men working flexibly", as said
by Dr. Vincent (Eacott, 2018). The report would reveal several theories and policies that
could help in the concerted action to be taken by the organizations.
2.0 Issues of the Article
The concerned article has shown the real picture of accepting the fact of flexible working
hours for both men and women should be applied.
1. The psychology of the human is not set to accept the fact that even men can opt for
flexible working hours, even if they have an option of doing so. This mentality needs
to be changed and this could be done by making the people aware of the policies and
also the feasibility and reality that man and woman could stand on the same ground.
As stated by Dr Vincet, has stated that there is the number of workplaces where the
flexible work of woman is acceptable. Providing the same opportunity to the men is
counted as a problem. But the organisational policies are applicable for both the men
and women, and it does not associate only with the women. The stigma of the society
and business process is associated with men working flexibly. This statement
represents the mentality and the status of women in the society.
2. The second issue is that when even a single man tries to help out his wife and follows
the rule of flexible working hours so that he can contribute his time in the well-being
of his family, it’s surprising for others. The surprising behaviour of the society and the
public is also somehow indicated towards the orthodox mentality. Most of the person
thinks that he is taking his day off. This contribution of a man towards the family and
children is appreciating. This is the initiative of fathers to give respect and love to their
family and towards his wife. But most of the surprising statement comes that people
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directly call it as time off or day off without thinking about the actual primary
caregiver role played by a father for their children. The main issue arises where the
contribution of the father did not count as primary caregiver.
3. The third issue mentioned in the article is that maximum of the employee remains
unaware about the policies of paternity leaves as they are not used very often.
According to the article, the HR manager is not aware of parental leave for a father,
and she also replied with no one ever applied for the leave before. The activities of
Human Resource Management need to undertake this parental leave policy and
flexible work hours for the fathers. They have to understand that equal opportunity of
working is essential for both men and women and the parenting role is a shared role
not only associated with the woman, but the role of a father is significant.
3.0 Importance of Strategic Human Resource Management Planning
Human Resource Planning is an integral part of an organization and its planning ensures the
success or the failure of the achieving the goals and objectives of the organization (Miyake).
The strategic planning is the planning of the goals and objectives of the organization and the
HR planning plays a significant role in it, because the human resource is the resource which
helps the organization in transforming and taking out the best results from all the other
resources available to the organization (Stone, 2017).
The inclusion of the paternity leaves should be made part of the strategic planning of the
human resource management plan. This would include all the terms and policies for taking a
paternity leave. The human resource management plan should be revealed to the employees
thoroughly and all the policies should be stated with clarity. This would help in making aware
about the benefits which are applicable for both the genders and this could help in changing
the thinking process of the society too. The human resource management constitutes the main
part of the organisation but it should be kept in mind that the people working even have a
personal life and the women and men should be treated equally under all the circumstances
(O’Reilly et al. 2015). The men should take a step forward and try to demand and make up
certain plans in the working area so that others get motivated and try to follow it. In the
strategic plan a section of the plan should be contributed towards acknowledging the people
about the importance and viability of equality. Even some of the women get surprised on
seeing a dad taking care of his child, this mentality should be attacked and sessions should be
provided by the office heads. The strategic planning and HR planning are related to each other
because the strategic plan is associated with the organisational goals and the HR planning is
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done for the human resource management. It is the responsibility of the organisation to
understand the necessity of the employees or of the men workers who have to play the crucial
sharing role with their wife for taking care of their children. Therefore for identifying this
necessity and taking appropriate action a strategic human resource planning is essential
(Stone, 2017). This human resource planning must include proper analysis and activities for
the best outcomes. The multi generalisation workforce and the trend of globalisation have to
undertake within the HR planning because the women workforce has more potential than
taking care of their children. In the process of maintaining gender equality within the
workplace, the best initiatives can be started with providing flexible working hours to the men
for the better childhood for the future generation.
4.0 Side-Effects of Inflexible working Hours on the Gender Gap
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Figure 1: The wage gap based on gender inequality
(Source:Armstrong & Taylor, 2014)
It has been seen that the college graduates irrelevant of their gender earn an almost the same
amount in a specified industry. But as they move down the line, the gap in between the pay
scale of two gender types keeps broadening. The main and generally seen reason for this
rising gap is because women make up strong preferences for their families, children and other
like incidents. The men do not care about these factors at any point in their career (Hadfield,
2017).
The human resource management procedure is associated with providing the best quality of
Management within the organisation, and some basic principles which are part of the policies
of Human Resource Management are anti-discrimination, equal opportunity, etc. But the most
important area of providing equal opportunity is not maintained by most of the organisations
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(Stone, 2017). This process can easily be identified from the amount of pay for both genders.
According to the national pay gap, there is a difference of 14.6% between the earning of
different genders. The average earning of a man is counted as 244.80 $ extra than women in
Australia. Because of the major role of providing primary care to the children the opportunity
of flexible working hours is only available for women. But the opportunity of being a primary
caregiver to a father is neglected by the human resource management of any organisation. The
parental leaves are available for both the women and men but most of the time when the men
want to use those leaves it will be counted as taking a day off. However, there are 17
companies in South Australia which become part of the gender equality group and providing
paid time off to the male parent is become part of the human resource planning (Wang&
Degol, 2017).
The women get a "temporal flexibility" in their workings but the men are not given that
flexibility in their workplace (Gatewoodet al. 2015). This depends on the companies’ policies
and rules concerning the HR department. The industries should opt for flexible hours of
working for both men and women as this would help in balancing the workings or the careers
of the two genders. The effect of inflexible working hours for men actually leads to a creation
of a problematic area in the career path of the women (Agarwal, 2017).
5.0 Conclusion
On exploring one of the most important and the most avoided topic on human resource, it has
revealed that the equality could take place in every sense if the people are treated as just on
one ground and that is human beings. The existence of different laws for men and women
makes it more difficult for the people to operate and it creates a sense of discrimination in the
country or the organization. The article provided "Concerns inflexible working hours for men
could be damaging women's careers", this has rightly brought up the simplicity of how the
policy of equality could be applied in every organization. The importance of strategic
planning of human resource would keep in mind that the men and women are equal. This
would provide the base for the plantings. The side effects of inflexible working hours of men
on the gender gap have rightly revealed every detail of it and it has shown the effects which
the inflexible working hours of men have on the career of the women.
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6.0 Recommendations
The analysis of the inflexibility in the working hours of men has come up with some hidden
facts and has revealed how badly it impacts the careers of the women. The recommendations
are:
 The policy of developing a workplace gender equality, if taken seriously and be
implied in all the organizations then the women could grow equally.
 This could also be done by applying to treat the employees just as employees and not
as men employee and women employee.
 The resent generation is taught the importance of equality as this would bring up a
generation which would be against discrimination on any grounds.
 Proper structure of the policy needs to be prepared for the workplace and human
resource management needs to facilitate the prior knowledge to every employee about
these policies.
 In work place proper working environment needs to be established and human
resource management should need to take the responsibilities to facilitate the just
environment where men and women both can enjoy the flexible work hour without
any harassment by co-workers or any offensive words.
 Human resource department should have to know or must have knowledge about all
the policies of the organisation like paternity leave, maternity leave and other so that
they can facilitate the proper information to the employees.
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7.0 References
Agarwal, B. (2017). Gender, Property, and Land Rights: Bridging a critical gap in economic
analysis and policy 1. In Gender and Rights (pp. 119-149). Routledge.
Armstrong, M., & Taylor, S. (2014). Armstrong's handbook of human resource management
practice. Kogan Page Publishers.
Baum, T. (Ed.). (2016). Human resource issues in international tourism. Elsevier
Bratton, J., & Gold, J. (2017). Human resource management: theory and practice. Palgrave.
Eacott, A. (2018). Could men's inflexible working arrangements be damaging the career
prospect of their wives?. Retrieved from
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-08-31/calls-for-better-working-hours-for-men/
10184968?section=business
Gatewood, R., Feild, H. S., & Barrick, M. (2015). Human resource selection. Nelson
Education.
Hadfield, G. K. (2017). Households at work: beyond labor market policies to remedy the
gender gap. Geo. LJ, 82, 89.
Huffman, M. L., King, J., & Reichelt, M. (2017). Equality for whom? Organizational policies
and the gender gap across the German earnings distribution. ILR Review, 70(1), 16-41.
Huffman, M. L., King, J., & Reichelt, M. (2017). Equality for whom? Organizational policies
and the gender gap across the German earnings distribution. ILR Review, 70(1), 16-41.
Miyake, A., Kost-Smith, L. E., Finkelstein, N. D., Pollock, S. J., Cohen, G. L., & Ito, T. A.
(2010). Reducing the gender achievement gap in college science: A classroom study
of values affirmation. Science, 330(6008), 1234-1237.
Muralidharan, K., & Sheth, K. (2016). Bridging education gender gaps in developing
countries: The role of female teachers. Journal of Human Resources, 51(2), 269-297.
O’Reilly, J., Smith, M., Deakin, S., & Burchell, B. (2015). Equal pay as a moving target:
International perspectives on forty-years of addressing the gender pay gap. Cambridge
Journal of Economics, 39(2), 299-317.
Stone, R. J. (2017). Human Resource Management (2017). Milton Qld: John Wiley & Sons
Australia, Ltd, 355-372.
Wang, M. T., & Degol, J. L. (2017). Gender gap in science, technology, engineering, and
mathematics (STEM): Current knowledge, implications for practice, policy, and future
directions. Educational Psychology Review, 29(1), 119-140.
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