Recording and monitoring uptake of policies
Recording the uptake of your work-life balance policies should be an ongoing component of your implementation plan. You won’t know how successful (or unsuccessful) your work-life balance initiatives are unless you collect accurate workforce data that clearly links these initiatives to your usage rate.
When you’re developing your recording mechanisms, you’ll need to think very carefully about exactly what information you need to collect to assess your outcomes. For example, it would be useful to know:
- who is using the policies;
- what policies are being used and which ones are not being used;
- why are employees using certain policies; and
- what is the impact of granting the policy on the agencies ability to fulfil business requirements.
How can recording and monitoring the process help?
Keeping track of how things are going along the way can provide you with opportunities to:
- target areas where particular managers might need some additional training;
- identify whether particular policies may require increased promotion;
- promote examples of where policies have been successfully implemented;
- identify further areas for improvement; and
- recognise trends across target groups.
Remember - don’t collect data for the sake of collecting data – communicate the results. The way to encourage employees to participate is to let them know how others have benefited from taking part. Likewise, one of the best ways to show managers who may not believe that work-life balance policies can operate effectively in their workplace is to show them how well they are working elsewhere in the department.
What should be recorded?
Organisations will need to develop their own measures, relevant to their specific business requirements and arrangements.
An obvious measure to record would be the usage rate of each particular flexible arrangement. For example, in relation to telecommuting, prior to this initiative, your organisation may have six employees who telecommute on a regular basis and 15 employees who telecommute on an ad hoc basis for particular project work. In order to measure the success of your strategy to increase the uptake of telecommuting within your organisation, you may decide to record the number of employees who telecommute on a regular basis and an ad hoc basis every three or six months after the commencement of this initiative. You may also wish to record individuals’ reasons for telecommuting and how long they’ve been given approval to do so. There may also be other significant pieces of information around this issue that you also would find useful.
System for recording uptake of policies
It is important to develop a formalised system for collecting and recording information to ensure consistency across work units. In order to assist with this, a sample template (Word, 41 KB) has been developed. Agencies can adapt the sample form to suit their particular HR systems.
Line managers would be required to complete this form each time an employee makes a request under a work-life balance policy. The form is then to be forwarded to HR where the information is to be accurately recorded, analysed and reported to management on a regular basis. As the data will provide insight into many aspects of how work-life balance policies are being utilised, it should include information such as:
- gender;
- classification level;
- why and how requests are dealt with;
- reasons for accessing policies; and
- reasons for refusal
This is important
information that can
help improve uptake
of policies as it can
identify barriers (for
example based on manager’s
reasons for refusal)
and assist with the
provision of more targeted
information to employees
(e.g. if uptake is
low amongst men then
the agency might consider
developing information/education
campaigns focussing
on men).
Last updated 29 September 2009
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