HRMT 5 Report: Analysis of Maternity Leave and Productivity Loss

This report, prepared for Senior Management at Organisation XYZ, addresses the significant loss of productivity and associated costs stemming from maternity leave within the company. The memo highlights that a considerable portion of female employees take maternity leave within three years of recruitment, leading to issues like increased hiring expenses, job redistribution, and overtime payments. The report aims to identify potential options for reduction while adhering to Canadian Human Rights Legislation. It examines strategies such as job design and analysis, targeted recruitment, and effective selection processes to mitigate the impact of maternity leave. The analysis includes recommendations, emphasizing the importance of employment planning and management's role in decision-making. The author acknowledges the challenges and biases inherent in addressing this issue, advocating for a balanced approach that considers both employee and employer interests. The report concludes by referencing relevant literature to support the proposed strategies.

8/28/2019
Running Head: HRMT 0
HUMAN RESOURCE
MANAGEMENT

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Memorandum
Loss of Productivity and Cost Reduction
To: Senior Management, Organisation XYZ
From: Mavia Sale, HR
Date: August 31 2019
Re: Approaches for Loss of Productivity and Cost Reduction and Loss of Productivity as of
various Maternity Absences.
BACKGROUND
Various researches state that nearly half of female employees taken maternity holiday
in the period of 3 years from the recruitment date in the organization. The company faces
several issues due to this practice such as high cost as of productivity loss, further hiring,
distribution of job, paying overtime to other workers until some new candidate is not get
recruited or trained. The intention of organization is not to discriminate contrary to women or
their rights of maternity leaves, however, it just required to evade any pointless and costly
legal implications to the organization. The employees must be allowed to take maternity
leave with abiding the Canadian Human Right Legislation.
Potential Options for Reduction -
 Job Design and Analysis – Changing the needed job outputs and skills that an
applicant is likely to accomplish and show to particularly target and entice older
female and male workforce than is presently recruited. Increasing on the
unoccupied locus to embrace some overtime and job allowances may entice new
kinds of candidates or interested long-lasting workforces. The job description can
also be restated to boost more women and men considering a particular age to
apply for jobs, will in chance, reduce the maternity holiday number and
productivity loss. One of the likelihood can be the work situation and organization
culture build over a period may be influenced, involving the level of skills of new
recruitments being unfair or underneath the existing standards.
 Recruiting – During the time of stationing openings, higher number of male
candidates can be targeted with adopting certain language that would talk about

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strength and masculinity assets. When 57% of the organized labour force being
female, perceptibly, the way the jobs are displayed is the cause we have appealed
a higher pool of female workforce. The adoption of particular exterior hiring
sources will be significant to increase the applicant’s pool. With adoption of
effective tools to test the competencies and capabilities of likely applicants
required to be gender free, disability and minority bias to evade from any sort of
complaints related to Human Rights.
 Selection: HR managers and management have the final direction when selecting
a new candidate. If both female and male are equally qualified and apply for the
same job, then selecting the male candidate is an effective key to the alleged issue.
However, difficulties may arise when female applicant gets to know about the
male candidate qualifications. The company can pointlessly be exposed if there is
a selection of male candidate over a female with higher qualifications and skills.
With regards to this, solely recruiting men to change female workforce on
maternity leave could indicate an interchange on the organization part to disregard
women of childbearing age from upcoming employment and progression. This
could suggest to eternal workforce and future prospective candidates that the
organization adopt discriminatory recruitment practices.
Recommend Options for Reduction
Employment planning is important for the way a job posting is expressed and where is
it stationed can appeal a particular type of employee to apply for the position. Management
control all the planning for employment related to job description wordings, necessary skills
must be in employee to perform the job, experience selection and education. As recruiting
more older women/men is the purpose for raising productivity and the loss of core
employees, the choice of thorough selection would be the least invasive and delicate way to
enable this process to happen. Though, a grouping of all the overhead stated alternatives
would be helpful to ensure the objective is attained. To ease the stress on maternity holidays,
changing one or all to aim the preferred will support. In addition, management will have the
final decision is selection with enabling new recruitments to be women over a certain age of
men. It is also significant to know that the woman returning from maternity holidays will

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arrive at their position or a position parallel to the one they left, once their permitted
pregnancy-associated absenteeism is over.
ANALYSIS
Considering many of the person being the average age of 25 and there is 57% of
female workforce controlled, were captivating maternity holidays within the 36 months of
being recruited, I was given the charge to showing direction to lessen the number of
maternity holidays in the organization. It was quite difficult for management to recruit
temporary workforce and swinging tasks to the leftover workforce. Though overtime and job
extension may be effective for workforce short term and new employees can often get
positive influences, the recruitment process cost, training cost and productivity loss were
leading to worry on the organization and internal workforce.
The company aim in noting down this memo was job design -
1. Job design- The procedure of describing the approach work will be accomplished and
the tasks that a set job needed (Bratton & Gold, 2017).
2. Recruitment – The procedure by which the company pursues candidates for a
potential engagement (Bratton & Gold, 2017).
3. Selection- The procedure by which the company put efforts to recognise candidates
with the significant skills, knowledge and other attributes that will benefit the
company in attaining its objectives (Bratton & Gold, 2017).
With selection of these company objectives, it enables me to recommend potential
alterations to policies while pertaining to all legal necessities were met. Put together this
memo enabled me to also encourage not just men but women of an older population.
Individuals in the early two-thirds of working lives more embrace towards promotion, wages
and mobility whereas individuals in last third embraced on achieving some useful direction,
stability, causes to be beneficial and conducts to interact. Sonnet, Olsen & Manfredi (2014)
states that work is about society and individual interaction and sharing. Using terms such as
strong ability, driven and dedicated could be adopted in the interpersonal skills significant for
the occupation. With more dominance of women in corporates and modifying the women,

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percentage could alter the business model and likely the culture that has been making the
organization prosperous.
The management and managers are considered as two audiences to which the memo is
directed and both will undertake the final decision in reducing maternity holidays. Maybe
there can be negative change to the organization culture and the whole productivity, there is
requirement of immediate change to raise prompt profitability and workers shortage because
of 3 morel female staff compelling maternity holiday this year. The corporate also seeks for
workforce stability but at what cost? The company can be called to be undertaking ways
exploiting human rights as if women perceived penal reaction to various maternity holidays
and this can also lead to filling of a complaint.
I found some challenges while noting down this memo on ways to lessen the number of
maternity holidays in the company. I must be reacted as a positive resource and policy being
an HR Practitioner, however, I sensed while creating this memo, like a woman with no kids, I
was somewhat siding with the manager. Even though there are not kids to me, I do fully
come to an understanding that women is permitted to have families, just as they are permitted
to have an extensive and fulfilling career as their male corresponding. Many companies and
organizations still perceive the traditional role of women and state that women are good in
putting family prior to career. At present, many families still practice maternal wall bias
where women are forced to leave their job or profession with the male dominated society
(Abramovitz, 2017).
Currently woman that needs time apart from their professions, take a large stake they will
be able to line the labour force another time where they left off, making the progression
within the organisation that was once presented to them. Because of this, younger women
have to struggle in the organisation when they return to their specific positions mainly if their
family life situation alters. Considering today’s social life and family, diverse is very
common and it was found that more than 70,226 Canadian couples were divorced in the year
2008 (statcan.gc.ca, 2015). In addition, it is very important to make sure that women reflect
as viable and sustainable in the workforce. With earning $0.72 on the dollar by the women
and with the man at same position makes (Bratton & Gold, 2017). Hence, it still has a long
way to go to become a fair minded and unbiased workforce.
During the selection of my recommended options, I was trying to conciliate both
employees and employer. As mentioned prior, the least intrusive choice was in the selection

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procedure where the HR manager/management says the ultimate decision in who is recruited,
hence, can fill the position with someone they sense would not take maternity leave within
two to three years. This choice can only be adopted for short term as that organisation
reputation did not hamper with recruiting a particular sort of employees. Clearly, if the
organisation is having women in their workforce has been beneficial for the enterprise; hence,
they should remain to employ women to the same degree as earlier.

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References
Abramovitz, M. (2017). Regulating the lives of women: Social welfare policy from colonial
times to the present. UK: Routledge.
Bratton, J., & Gold, J. (2017). Human resource management: theory and practice. UK:
Palgrave.
Sonnet, A., Olsen, H., & Manfredi, T. (2014). Towards more inclusive ageing and
employment policies: the lessons from France, the Netherlands, Norway and
Switzerland. De Economist, 162(4), 315-339.
statcan.gc.ca. (2015). Divorces and crude divorce rates, Canada, provinces and territories,
1981 to 2008. Retrieved from
https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/91-209-x/2013001/article/11788/tbl/tbl2-
eng.htm
Wailgum, T. & Perkins, B. (2019). What is ERP? A guide to enterprise resource planning
systems. Retrieved from https://www.cio.com/article/2439502/enterprise-resource-
planning/enterprise-resource-planning-erp-definition-and-solutions.html