Scandinavian work-life balance experience: its implementation in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) happiness context

Employee happiness and satisfaction are unanimously correlated to enhanced levels of productivity and efficiency, making them important for employees and employers. Scandinavian countries consistently rank highly on the world happiness index and correspondingly possess comparatively happier employees in their workplaces. Aside from the structural setting, internal components, and atmosphere of the workplace, it is primarily understood that the initiatives undertaken by Scandinavian countries in relation to the concept of work life balance are significantly important. The concept of work-life balance is cognizant of an employee’s struggle in maintaining equilibrium between work and personal life. This study could aid the United Arab Emirates (UAE) in identifying, implementing, and emulating similar strategies to reap comparable benefits. This research encompassed a quasi-experimental mixed method design which sought to reveal and establish the impact, link, and correlation of numerous independent variables upon employee happiness. The theoretical model guiding this study highlighted four key areas, including organizational, people, job factors, and work-life balance. The qualitative aspect involved dividing these categories into 14 sub-components and utilizing more than 100 academic studies to collect requisite data to determine their theoretical purpose and supposed effect upon employee happiness and productivity. The quantitative aspect involved a corresponding survey conducted in UAE public sector. The data collected were evaluated using the statistical technique of regression analysis to estimate relationships between variables, which was eventually tied with the qualitative research to either confirm or refute the conclusions reached earlier. Each section of the survey was assessed using the Cronbach Alpha Score. It was concluded that countries possess the skill of augmenting workplace factors to achieve the desired result of increased productivity. Such factors and strategies are not yet well understood nor endorsed in the UAE. As such, this research sought to clarify the value and influence of work-life balance and other components on employee happiness, revealing areas of improvement in the UAE work environment

Career, family, and workforce mobility: an interdisciplinary conversation

The purpose of this article is to synthesize conceptual and empirical work from the fields of both sociology and career development to explore how issues of career, family, and workforce mobility are necessarily interrelated. The use of work from sociology and career development demonstrates that the complexities of family solutions to career mobility undo the apparent simplicity of delivering a worker to a new worksite. Although organizations and governments work to develop policies that incentivize mobility, including transport infrastructure, housing, employment conditions, and tax incentives, these will not necessarily address the private concerns and priorities of families. This article argues for an interdisciplinary approach to better understand the intersubjective complexities implicated in the growing phenomenon and expectation of worker mobility and suggests both areas and design strategies for further research

New Jersey's Growing Remote Workforce and the Skill Requirements of Employers

Highlights factors driving the rise in remote work jobs, the ways remote work is affecting the workplace, and the skills workers need to be effective in remote work environments

Frontline Employees’ Informal Learning and Customer Relationship Skills in Macao Casinos: An Empirical Study

This study uses qualitative methods to better understand how the informal learning of frontline employees influenced their customer relationship skills in dealing with patrons at gaming tables, in the hope of achieving positive customer experiences in a competitive environment in Macao. As casino operators need to get their employees to work after limited formal training, they might find that their emphasis on formal training might be insufficient to provide patrons with customized service in Macao. In this context, the concept of informal learning, which is determined and directed by learners themselves to further improve what they have learned from their formal training, is likely to be of special significance in Macao. Based upon a constructivistic framework, this study used semi-structured interviews to gather data from 49 frontline employees. The study relied upon the Miles and Huberman (1994) framework to analyze qualitative data. Data analysis suggested that informal learning among frontline employees would lead to four strategies: (i) to be polite and respect patrons; (ii) to uncover patrons’ emotional status from their body language; (iii) to manage patrons’ emotions in their gaming pursuit; and (iv) to self-regulate emotions to the demands of a service encounter

Perspectives on Human Nature and Their Implications for Business Organizations

Employing psychological principles to reform the structure and agendas of business organizations increases employee fulfillment. This Essay proposes changes in corporate structure in order to nurture employee\u27s mental health in a way that also benefits companies by resulting in greater employee productivity. This Essay argues that the decentralization of business organizations and greater employee involvement in decision-making will improve both quality of life and the environment

The Australian workplace barometer: report on psychosocial safety climate and worker health in Australia

The Australian Workplace Barometer project aims to provide science driven evidence of Australian work conditions and their relationships to workplace health and productivity, through a national monitoring and surveillance system. This report was commissioned by Safe Work Australia to provide a summary of the results from data obtained from six Australian states and territories: New South Wales, South Australia, Western Australia, Tasmania, the Australian Capital Territory and the Northern Territory. The data provides evidence relating to psychosocial risk factors in the working Australian population as well as an analysis of relationships between risk factors and employee health and motivational outcomes

Review of government initiatives for reconciling work and family life

Presents a review of government initiatives that help families balance their work and family responsibilities, highlighting innovative ideas and including a discussion of international trends and themes. Summary This AIFS Research Report presents a review of government initiatives that help families balance their work and family responsibilities, highlighting innovative ideas and including a discussion of international trends and themes. Most of the information reviewed in this report pertains to OECD countries, especially New Zealand and countries in the European Union, as work and family policies have been extensively developed in these countries. Some East Asian countries have also been included, and for some countries, state (as opposed to federal) policies are discussed. The wide range of policies that have been used in different countries, combined with significant variation in approaches, means that those reviewed in this report are necessarily selective, and much of the discussion is quite broad. This review particularly focuses on government policies and approaches that address work and family issues for people with caring responsibilities for children or the elderly. The report outlines some of the broader aims, approaches and considerations of governments in the area of work and family, and then reviews policies related to leave and return-to-work policies; child care, child payments and early childhood education; working hours and other aspects of employment; and governance, support and promotion of work–family initiatives. This review reflects work–family policies that have recently been implemented (up to 2014) across developed countries, but not necessarily the state of play at the time of publication

Understanding Mobile Banking Applications’ Security risks through Blog Mining and the Workflow Technology

This paper provides a review of the security aspect of mobile banking applications. We employed blog mining as a research method to analyze blog discussion on security of mobile banking applications. Furthermore, we used the workflow technology to simulate real-life scenarios related to attacks on mobile banking applications. Insights are summarized to help banks and consumers mitigate the security risks of mobile banking applications

BUILDING INDONESIAN HUMAN CAPABILITY: REDUCING DEPENDENCY ON FOREIGN EXPERTISE IN THE FURTHER EDUCATION AND TRAINING SECTOR

Foreign expertise holds a revered status in the Indonesian Further Education and Training sector, with the notion of ‘Bule’ playing a pivotal role in how international interventions are resourced. Foreign expertise often brings with it many local assumptions, particularly around the sharing of contemporary and start-of-the-art western knowledge, but often in reality this is not practically manifested. It is for these reasons that Maconick (1999) contends that greater emphasis needs to be placed on defining the operational role of local capacity building. The authors believe that greater emphasis should be placed on building local human capital, and this paper describes the engagement process in the design of occupational standards challenging the conception that foreign expertise and influence should be unfettered. While foreign skills and talent can play a pivotal role in developing local human capability, it must be recognised that these interventions must be cultural appropriate and look towards creating a sustainable future where indigenous human resources are given equal standing. The methodology applied reflected a ‘most significant change approach’ (Dart & Davies, 2003) to the evaluation of training methods with an emphasis on workplace engagement