Dealing with Dual-Career Couples

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Institution

Policies that can be implemented to deal with Dual career employees

The number of dual career couples in many organizations has tremendously gone up in the recent times. This has presented the human resource managers in such organizations with numerous challenges. Most of the companies are torn between employing these couples and enduring the costs that come with them, or not employing them and losing some of the best employees in the industry (Hall, 2008). This has prompted companies to come up with varied policies that would allow them to deal with this issue. Some of these policies include, providing day care assistance for the employees. In order to ensure productivity of the employees, the company can provide day care services for their children. Studies have shown that most of the dual career couples are absent from work so that they can be able to attend to their families, and especially their children. By providing day care services within the company, will ensure that employees can be able to see their children regularly during the day and, therefore, reducing the cases of absenteeism

In addition, the company may resort to providing employees falling in this category with flexible time off. To ensure that employees have adequate time with their families without necessarily affecting their productivity, the company can give the employees their normal leave days, and some percentage of their sick leave days that they do not use (Parker & Arthur, 2004). In addition, employees can also be allowed to carry the annual leave days to the following year. This will ensure that that the employees have more time to spend with their loved ones. In addition, the flexible time off can be crafted in such a way that it coincides with their partners leave off. This will ensure that such a couple will achieve a good work life balance.

On the same note, companies with such employees may resolve this issue by employing both partners, which would ensure continuity in the operations of the company and safeguard the employees’ productivity. Companies can employ both partners of dual career couples so as to ensure that both employees continue working in the company (Crainer, 2011). This also ensures that, there are no difficulties in the event that any of the employees is relocated to other places. It is necessary, however, to ensure that appropriate measures are taken when employing couples so as to prevent their relationship from affecting their productivity in any way.

In addition, companies facing the problem of dual career couples can solve it by incorporating telecommuting. This is where the companies allows increased flexibility of the employees in choosing where to work, as well as the time required to accomplish a given job (Crainer, 2011). This has been made possible by the increased use of technology and specifically internet. Telecommuting allows such couples to work from their home, therefore, leaving them with more time to spend with their families.

Job sharing is another policy that a company can adopt in order to ensure that dual career couple continue being productive. Job sharing occurs when two employees in a company agrees to perform a certain job of a full time employee on a part time basis (Hall, 2008). This would allow the productivity of the organization to continue uninterrupted while also ensuring that dual career employees have enough time for their families.

Explanation/ analysis of the policies recommended

Most companies in the world have recognized the issue of increased dual career couples among their working force. This has made them to develop appropriate human resource schemes policies that can help the couples to continue working without unnecessary pressure, therefore, ensuring that such employees are productive just like any other employees. Some of the above policies can be effective in ensuring that the company overcomes the various challenges associated with this issue.

Some of the above policies can be extremely expensive to implement, but they have long lasting benefits to the companies. For instance, it might be difficult for company especially small companies to establish day care services to their employees (Crainer, 2011). However, such a policy can ensure that dual career couple work without worrying about their children. In addition, providing a day care service to employees reduces the number of days that employees are absent from their workplaces or jobs. The company can charge the employees some fees for these services from their salaries.

Dual career couples employees have extra responsibilities of ensuring that they are able to balance their parental roles, as well as professional roles. Balancing these roles may sometime prove to be extraordinarily difficult, and may sometimes result to employees suffering from stress; this subsequently affects the productivity of the employees (Parker & Arthur, 2004). The implementation of the varied policies suggested above would not only come in handy in dealing with the issue of dual career parents, but they also help the company to save on some of its resources. For instance, when a company use telecommuting as a policy to deal with this issue, the company can save the money spent on such employees in terms of office since the employee carries out the responsibilities from home.

It is, however, imperative that a company carries out comprehensive research before implementing the above policies. This is especially considering that some of them may require large sums of money to implement and sustain. In fact, there exists no one-size fits all solution to this problem, in which case an organization has to determine which policy would suit its situation. Companies also have a choice of refusing to employ dual career employees especially if they think that the company cannot accommodate them.

References

Crainer, S. (2011). Changing direction: one person can make a difference. Business Strategy

Review , 22 (2), 10-16.

Hall, F. S. (2008). Dual Careers–How do Couples and Companies Cope with the Problems?

Organizational Dynamics , 6 (4), 57-77.

Parker, P., & Arthur, M. B. (2004). Giving voice to the dual-career couple. British Journal of

Guidance & Counselling. , 32 (1), 3-23.