Business Report: Addressing Employee Issues at AKC Architectural Firm

This business report analyzes employee issues at AKC Architectural, a Melbourne-based firm, focusing on increasing absenteeism among architectural and administrative staff. The report explores the potential of flexible work arrangements, particularly work-from-home options, considering the employees' personal circumstances and the firm's operational needs. It discusses the organization's software support, resource limitations, and cost-saving opportunities associated with remote work. The report also addresses the challenges of flexible work systems, employee tracking, and the need for tailored arrangements for different staff roles. The conclusion highlights key findings and recommends strategies to balance employee needs with the firm's objectives, including motivating employees, implementing work-from-home policies, and updating technology for employee tracking and efficiency.

Running head: EMPLOYEE ISSUES IN AKC
EMPLOYEE ISSUES IN AKC
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author note

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EMPLOYEE ISSUES IN AKC
Table of Contents
Introduction......................................................................................................................................3
Discussion........................................................................................................................................3
Organizations’ software support..................................................................................................3
Additional resources....................................................................................................................4
Cost savings for the firm..............................................................................................................4
Benefits of using home office......................................................................................................4
Work from home..........................................................................................................................4
To Stop Abusing..........................................................................................................................5
Issues of flexible work systems...................................................................................................5
Tracking Staff numbers on Site...................................................................................................5
Different arrangements for different staffs..................................................................................5
Conclusion.......................................................................................................................................6
Recommendations............................................................................................................................6
References........................................................................................................................................6

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Executive summary
The business report is on the AKC Architectural firm of Melbourne that has quite a good number
of staffs having high work ethics. The HR of this particular firm faced issues with the employees
as the absenteeism rates are increasing both in the architectural and administration staff. It started
with the introduction of the firm, aim and purpose. The discussion section stated few questions to
investigate the issues from different perspectives. It reached the conclusion with the key findings
and then recommended few suggestions to the firm to mitigate the challenge.

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Introduction
The firm AKC Architectural is reliably one of the most popular in regions of Melbourne.
The management of this medium sized firm is way beyond supportive for employees. The
workers of this organization are efficient and dexterous towards their work and conduct (Brown
et al. 2017). Recently, the human resource department is facing an issue among the employees.
Most of the employees who are employed in this firm are married to tender age people for which
employees have to stay at home with their individual spouses for various reasons. This is
excessively hampering the working culture as it affects employee attendance.
Discussion
As an Accountant of this firm, I have the charge to write a business report to analyze
various aspects that whether this firm can support the idea of giving the provision of work from
home to the employees (Nieves and Osorio 2017). The report intends to cover equally both the
administration staffs and the architectural staffs. To do this some points need an elaborative
discussion which is given below.
Organizations’ software support
The organization deals with the architectural work profile which requires various digital
web designing programs and software that has high privacy and security reasons. Work from
home will not be an issue for people who only work on systems like administration (Noe et al.
2017). Although they do need quite a few software that is enabled in the systems and by taking
their laptop at home they can complete their tasks. But for architectural staff they need to create
various templates of design and submit them to their respective supervisors and have to be

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responsible for quick changes as directed. Company do not have personalized software that can
track the work and employee’s location.
Additional resources
The firm has limited resources as per real requirement of the architectural firms (Lo,
Macky and Pio 2015). The web designing and creating templates for setting up of catalogs needs
the company to invest on the software. It has quite a number of laptops and systems for its
employees. The offers and workload is relatively higher than other industries therefore it requires
updates software to be run on every system. The company needs to pay attention in these areas to
increase the annual productivity and to meet the demands.
Cost savings for the firm
For the firm so promising, the works are going smooth because of the equal contribution
of employees. This company should give a thought to the cost reduction or cost savings part as
far as the operations are concerned. It have options to go for cheaper laptops in the market rather
than buying the desktops which would be costlier and would not allow work from home facility
(Reilly and Williams 2016). It can save cost by using common wireless fidelity network for
internet and a utility software enabled commonly on laptops.
Benefits of using home office
The employees are from various background. They have to be set on a common platform
to work in a firm. All should be educated about the judicious use of home office that relates to
the taxation system (Cappelli 2015).

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EMPLOYEE ISSUES IN AKC
Work from home
Based on situation of employees in this firm who are married to young children, they
should get 14 hours of work from home out of 38 hours. The 14 hours of work from home would
be standardized as per standard working hours in a week (Reilly and Williams 2017).
To Stop Abusing
Processes can be, having good incentive plans for over times to employees (Brown et al.
2017). Proper work schedules and two work from homes in a week. These are few of the
processes that can be put forth to stop the employees from abusing company’s working systems.
Issues of flexible work systems
Employees have to face challenges due to flexible working conditions as they have their
young spouses at home to look after. Their work life balance would be hardly managed and as a
result they would not be able to perform good for the company (Nieves and Osorio 2017).
Tracking Staff numbers on Site
There can be two easy ways to ensure about the staff numbers on the site is by checking
the online log in on the employee portals on regular basis. The second effective method is
keeping the track of bio metric attendance of every employee. These methods can show data both
for the employees working in office as well as working from home.
Different arrangements for different staffs
Different staffs have different individual needs and therefore face issues in the flexible
working conditions. As mentioned earlier, employees need to attend their young spouses in one
or the other situations so there should be fixed arrangements of shifts, work from home and
leaves so that they can plan their personal schedules (Sheehan et al. 2016).

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EMPLOYEE ISSUES IN AKC
Flexible working hours are in favorable for administration staff as they have fixed
responsibilities that can be better performed in the first half of the day in a fixed shift.
Conclusion
The business report was directed towards management issues of employees of AKC
Architectural firm in Melbourne. The staffs contribute a lot and have splendid morale and ethics
in works. The only issue is they having young married spouses at home and have to be with them
regarding sickness and other issues. Through few topics in discussion it has been found that
flexible work culture would go wrong as a strategy for them. They need couple of hours of work
from home facility to serve both the firm and the teenage spouses. The questions have
investigated both the employees and administration staff and also discussed few limitations of
firm to work upon.
Recommendations
Based on the key findings few recommendations can be,
 Employees should be motivated to come to office.
 Work from home is a new trend company can start without giving a second thought as it
provides good productivity and employee satisfaction.
 Firm can stay updated with its technologies and employee tracking software to track
employee efficiency.

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References
Brown, M., Kulik, C.T., Cregan, C. and Metz, I., 2017. Understanding the change–cynicism
cycle: the role of HR. Human Resource Management, 56(1), pp.5-24.
Cappelli, P., 2015. Why we love to hate HR… and what HR can do about it. Harvard Business
Review, 93(7/8), pp.54-61.
Lo, K., Macky, K. and Pio, E., 2015. The HR competency requirements for strategic and
functional HR practitioners. The International Journal of Human Resource Management, 26(18),
pp.2308-2328.
Nieves, J. and Osorio, J., 2017. Commitment-based HR systems and organizational outcomes in
services. International Journal of Manpower, 38(3), pp.432-448.
Noe, R.A., Hollenbeck, J.R., Gerhart, B. and Wright, P.M., 2017. Human resource management:
Gaining a competitive advantage. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill Education.
Reilly, P. and Williams, T., 2016. Strategic HR: Building the capability to deliver. Routledge.
Reilly, P. and Williams, T., 2017. How to get best value from HR: The shared services option.
Routledge.
Sheehan, C., De Cieri, H., Cooper, B. and Shea, T., 2016. Strategic implications of HR role
management in a dynamic environment. Personnel Review, 45(2), pp.353-373.