Maintain worklife balance

Companies can establish a culture of flexibility to help employees better manage work and personal responsibilities

IF YOU are always working late, stop and ask yourself why. Is it because you have too much work? Do you manage your time poorly? Are your company's processes inefficient or lacking in good management practices? Or is making your presence felt the key to getting a promotion?

Working late occasionally during audit periods or a new business drive can be necessary. However, when a work-late culture is practised unnecessarily, it can be detrimental to productivity, personal health and society at large.

Ms Debbie Phillips, vice-president of United States-based WFD Consulting, which offers work-life solutions to many leading Fortune 500 companies, says: "Working late constantly can have a detrimental impact on society as it impacts negatively on family relationships.


"In some societies and locations, women in particular are choosing not to or finding it difficult to, develop a relationship, marry and have children because the work environment and a work-late culture do not support women who want to have a career and a family."

Make a difference
What can companies do to better manage the impact of working late or break unhealthy cultural habits?

Ms Phillips believes that companies need to create a "culture of flexibility" that allows employees to manage the demands of their work and personal lives.

Even companies for industries that provide round-the-clock client services can still implement flexibility and create process improvements that help alleviate issues related to health, family relationships and productivity.

"Work-life balance is indeed a real challenge in a dynamic and fast-paced industry like ours," says Ms Teo Lay Sie, chief operating officer of UBS Singapore. "UBS is well aware of the pitfalls, and we have designed our management practices and benefits package to cater to various aspects of work-life harmony.

Our culture is about performance by objectives as opposed to time in the office and that is the premise that our flexible work-life philosophy is based on."

UBS's flexible work-life initiatives include variable working hours, part-time, telecommuting, plus options for permanent home work, occasional home work and hybrid (for staff who split their time between office and home work).

Best practices
Workload management is important too. Professional services firm KPMG LLP believes it is vital to understand employees, and proactively manages staff portfolios to monitor workloads and resource planning.

Explains Mr Philip Lee, KPMG LLP's head of People, Performance and Culture: "We strongly believe that high performance and productivity are sustainable only if people have a healthy work-life balance and are happy. We invest significantly in training to improve productivity and actively encourage our people to develop healthy work habits."

Law firm WongPartnership LLP believes that an Employer of Choice is one that can juggle both the demands of clients and the expectations of employees. "There will be times when late nights are inevitable � we help by providing our lawyers with a dinner service, snacks and fresh fruit every evening. We even provide a laundry service and concierge service to them," says Mr Raymond Tong, a partner with WongPartnership LLP.

The key to successfully managing a work-late culture or eradicating one based on "face-time" is how a company evaluates its staff for remuneration and promotion. UBS, KPMG, WongPartnership and other Employers of Choice evaluate their staff by performance and not merely presence.

Mr Tong explains: "We adopt outcome-oriented performance management criteria in our appraisals which focus on measurable deliverables in terms of work performance and not on factors such as the number of hours spent in the office. This assures our lawyers that they are appraised based on how well they do their work, rather than how much time they spend on it."

For corporations to thrive in today's globally competitive economy, they need to attract the best employees and get the best out of them. Corporations that value "face-time" over performance, or who as a result of careless management and poor practices require their staff to work many hours overtime, will achieve neither.

WFD's Ms Phillips says: "Leadership needs to make a clear decision to break the work-late habit and then demonstrate the seriousness of the decision through action. I think employers can effect organisational change and share best practices which may eventually impact societal change."

The new wave
Technological advances and a generation of workers comfortable with them are already accelerating that change. WFD's study, Generations And Gender In The Workplace, debunks the myth that Generation Y workers put a lower value on work than they do on personal time, as compared to their parents. The study found that young employees in the US worked more hours than employees their age did 25 years ago.

Ms Phillip explains: "The difference is that Gen Y employees are very skilled at using technology and want to work smart. It's too soon to tell if Gen Y employees will be successful at forcing employers and industries to change, but the early indication is their behaviour is changing the way employers think about how, when and where work needs to be done."

Nokia's history of success

Do you know that Nokia started out as a a wood-pulp mill ? Nokia was started in 1865 by an engineer named Fredrik Idestam as a paper manufacturing plant in southern Finland near the banks of a river. Those were the days when there was a strong demand for paper in the industry, the company's sales acheived its high-stakes and Nokia grew faster and faster. The Nokia exported paper to Russia first and then to the United Kingdom and France. The Nokia factory employed a fairly large workforce and a small community grew around it. In southern Finland a community called Nokia still exists on the riverbank of Emäkoski. Finnish Rubber Works, a manufacturer a Rubber goods, impressed with the hydro-electrcity produced by the Nokia wood-pulp (from river Emäkoski), merged up and started selling goods under the brand name on Nokia.

After World War II, it acquired a major part of the Finnish Cable Works shares. The Finnish Cable Works had grown quickly due to the increasing need for power transmission and telegraph and telephone networks in the World War II. Gradually the ownership of the Rubber Works and the Cable Works companies consolidated. In 1967, all the 3 companies merged-up to form the Nokia Group. The Electronics Department generated 3 % of the Group's net sales and provided work for 460 people in 1967, when the Nokia Group was formed. In the beginning of 1970, the telephone exchanges consisted of electro-mechanical analog switches. Soon Nokia successfully developed the digital switch (Nokia DX 200) thereby replacing the prior electro mechanical analog switch. The Nokia DX 200 was embedded with high-level computer language as well as Intel microprocessors which in turn allowed computer-controlled telephone exchanges to be on the top and which is till date the basis for Nokia's network infrastructure.

Introduction of mobile network began enabling the Nokia production to invent the Nordic Mobile Telephony(NMT), the world's very first multinational cellular network in 1981. The NMT was later on introduced in other countries. Very soon Global System for Mobile Communication (GSM), a digital mobile telephony, was launched and Nokia started the development of GSM phones. Beginning of the 1990 brought about an economic recession in Finland. (Rumour has it that Nokia was offered to the Swedish telecom company Ericsson during this time which was refused) Due to this Nokia increased its sale of GSM phones that was enormous. This was the main reason for Nokia to not only be one of the largest but also the most important companies in Finland. As per the sources, in August 1997, Nokia supplied GSM systems to 59 operators in 31 countries. Slowly and steadily, Nokia became a large television manufacturer and also the largest information technology company in the Nordic countries.

During the economic recession the Nokia was committed to telecommunications The 2100 series of the production was so successful that inspite of its goal to sell 500,000 units, it marvellously sold 20 million. Presently, Nokia is the number 1 production in digital technologies, it invests 8.5% of net sales in research and development. Also has its annual Nokia Game.Attention: This email and any files transmitted with it are confidential and intended solely for the use of the individual or entity to whom there are addressed..If you are not the intended recipient please delete the message and notify the sender, You may not disseminate, distribute or copy the contents in this email.

Gas Thief Gets Burned -- Literally

Thursday, October 02, 2008
Quoted from http://www.foxnews.com/

Police in Wisconsin said a man was arrested after he used a cigarette lighter while trying to siphon gasoline from a van. The man, who was visiting friends, went to drive home early Saturday but realized that he didn't have enough gas in his SUV.

Police said the man tried to siphon the gas with help from another woman, but he couldn't see how much gas was in the container, so he used the lighter to check.

A blast of fire burned his hands and caused nearby residents to call police.
Police said he and the woman were located later in a store parking lot. He was arrested for theft and negligent use of burning materials.

The woman was referred to authorities for being party to theft. Formal charges haven't been filed. (AP)