Situation 11

It's a common knowledge that nowadays machines replace people at work, and this problem affects considerably industrial workers. More and more staffs feel undervalued, and, as a result, their productivityplummets.

People become unsatisfied also because of the pressure applied by supervisors. Each day new objectives arise and stress is viewed as inevitable day-to-day part. In addition, sometimes supervisors are very severe and ruthless towards staff. Except health problems, this high pressure may lead to another problem - work-life balance issues.

In fact, what does it mean?

It means that most time of their lives people pass at work. Feeling stressed every day, undervalued because of machines replacing people at work, working in multitask environment results on family relations. All these implemented changes in a technical environment affect staff badly.

A person comes at home in bad humor (stressed, angry, or exhausted). This bad humor will have a negative impact on the whole family. So, family relations are on pain off the whole factors mentioned above.

If I had to give an advice, I would like to say that the primordial thing is to separate life from work. Work is work, life is life. Nothing connected to work must affect and reflect on your family relations.

In order to resist replacement people by machines, it's good to remember that machines are techniques, so they can break down and, in the end, provide with a false result. Humans' brain is sophisticated and fine. So, to stay competitive either with machines or other people, put your efforts to do your best and self-develop - increase your competitiveness. More competitive you are, the highest chance of job saving is.

Situation 12 Present a change to the management of your company

My name is Mariya and I'm from Transportation Department. I have gone beyond the scope of my job and carried out a research. As you know, our department is engaged in searching for transport for the delivery of the cargo given by our clients.

I would like to start by saying that based on my working experience; I would like to propose to your suggestion my idea concerning the change of the work of the staff.

Every day we come to office and do our work. In order to reduce the time which is needed to go at work, I would like to propose to try teleworking.

Teleworking has a number of advantages for both parties: employer and employee.

Speaking about the employer, teleworkers can be more productive because they do not suffer the interruptions to their work that they would in an office. Teleworking leads to an improved motivation with reduced levels of stress and absence due to illness. The employer can allow the employee to work from home if he has some personal urgent changes.

For an employee, teleworking frees up the time each day spent travelling to work. Teleworking saves the cost of using a car or public transport to travel to work. Teleworking provides flexible working hours and permits to save work-family balance.

In other turn, I admit that teleworking has some disadvantages. Firstly, it becomes more difficult for managers to manage teleworkers and monitor their performance. A teleworker may feel isolated because they miss the social interaction from their colleagues at work. A teleworker may be unable to work effectively because of distractions in the home environment.

In our department we do not need to be present each day at office - we just need computers with necessary tools. We can do our job at home and 2-3 times per week come to the office and finalize our projects.

I am sure that teleworking will appeal to the great number of people from our department and it will positively effect on our department productivity.

Please, consider my offer and give me your response.