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  3. (1)Improving the balance between the working part of the day and the rest of

(1)Improving the balance between the working part of the day and the rest of

游客2023-11-30  21
问题     (1)Improving the balance between the working part of the day and the rest of it is a goal of a growing number of workers in rich Western countries. Some are turning away from the ideals of their parents, for whom work always came first: others with scarce skills are demanding more because they know they can get it. Employers, caught between a falling population of workers and tight controls on immigration, are eager to identify extra perks that will lure more "talent" their way. Just now they are focusing on benefits(especially flexible working)that offer employees more than just pay.
    (2)Some companies saw the change of mood some time ago. IBM has more than 50 different programmes promoting work-life balance and Bank of America over 30. But plenty of other firms remain unconvinced and many lack the capacity to cater to such ideas even if they wanted to. Helen Murlis, with Hay Group, a human-resources consultancy, sees a widening gap between firms at the creative end of employment and those that are not.
    (3)The chief component of almost all schemes to promote work-life balance is flexible working. This allows people to escape rigid nine-to-five schedules and work away from a formal office. IBM says that 40% of its employees today work off the company premises. For many businesses, flexible working is a necessity. Globalization has spread the hours in which workers need to communicate with each other and increased the call for flexible shifts.
    (4)Nella Barkley, an American who advises companies on work-life balance, says that large firms are beginning to understand the value of such schemes, "but only slowly". For most of them, they still mean little more than child care, health care and flexible working.
    (5)Yet some schemes go well beyond these first steps. American Century Investments, an investment manager in Kansas City, pays adoption expenses and the cost of home-fitness equipment for its employees. Rob Marcolina, a consultant with Bain & Company based in Los Angeles, was allowed time off to marry his partner in Canada Mr Marcolina, who has an MBA from the high-ranked Kellogg business school, says his employer’s understanding makes him want to be "part of Bain for some time".
    (6)Businesses have other good reasons for improving employees’ work-life balance. Wegmans Food Markets, a grocery chain based in Rochester, New York, frequently appears near the top of lists of the best employers in America It has a broad range of flexible-work programmes, which gives it one of the lowest rates of employment turnover in its industry — 8% a year for full-time workers, compared with 19% across the industry.
    (7)Simple programmes can be surprisingly cost-effective. IBM, for instance, is spending $50m over five years on "dependant-care" facilities for its employees. Although that sounds generous, it is the e-quivalent of little more than $30 for each IBM employee every year. That is far cheaper than a pay rise and probably a better way to retain talented mothers and fathers. Ernst & Young, a global accounting firm, has a low-cost range of initiatives called "People First". It provides breaks for people to provide care and has over 2,300 flexi-time employees in the United States. James Freer, a senior executive, says he is "absolutely convinced" the initiatives help produce better financial results.
    (8)DeAnne Aguirre, a mother of four and a senior partner in San Francisco with Booz Allen Hamil-ton(BAH), says "it is easy to make the business case" for work-life balance,programmes at the consultancy by looking at attrition rates. BAH calculated that it was investing more than $2m in turning a raw recruit into a partner, an investment it should be reluctant to write off. Coming, an American glass company, reckons that it costs 1.5 times a worker’s salary and benefits to replace him. If it can retain just 20 workers a year who would otherwise have left, Corning reckons it would produce annual savings of $2.6m.
    (9)The spread of flexible work has come about at least partly as a result of initiatives to keep women workers. Companies have had to offer extended periods of leave for them to look after dependants(young and old), and flexible working in between. At BAH, women partners take an average of eight-and-a-half extended breaks during their careers. Men take an average of one-and-a-half. Ernst & Young, keen to show that part-time workers can also become partners, recently made the first such appointment in Houston, Texas.
    (10)Some of these initiatives are spreading even to the castles of binge working, such as investment banks. Business schools are now climbing on the bandwagon, too. In October Tuck School at Dartmouth, New Hampshire, will start a course on returning to corporate life after an extended absence. Called "Back in Business", the 16-day, $12,000 re-entry programme is open only to students with "work experience in a high-potential career".
    (11)The majority will inevitably be mothers wanting to rejoin the workforce. But fathers are also asking for sabbaticals(公休假). Work-life balance "is not just a women’s issue" any more, says Ted Childs, who is in charge of workforce diversity at IBM. "Men, too, are very concerned about it."
    (12)The demand is being stoked by the "Generation Y", the under-28s. They look sceptically at the idea of lifetime employment within a single organisation and they are wary of the commitment they believe too often drove their parents to the divorce courts. Hay’s Ms Murlis says that today’s business-school graduates are "looking for a workstyle to go with their lifestyle", not the other way round. They are happy to binge-work for a while, but in return want extended sabbaticals.
    (13)Many of the more imaginative schemes come from organisations that are not under pressure to report quarterly to Wall Street. Wegmans and American Century Investments are family-controlled businesses and the big accounting firms and consultancies, such as Ernst & Young, KPMG, Bain and BAH, are partnerships. This allows them to take a longer-term view of growth and costs.
    (14)To some extent, the proliferation of work-life-balance schemes is a function of today’s labour market. Companies in knowledge-based industries worry about the shortage of skills and how they are going to persuade talented people to work for them. Although white-collar workers are more likely to be laid off nowadays, they are also likely to get rehired. Unemployment among college graduates in America is just over 2%. The same competition for scarce talent is evident in Britain.
    (15)For some time to come, talented people in the West will demand more from employers, and clever employers will create new gewgaws to entice them to join. Those employers should note that for a growing number of these workers the most appealing gewgaw of all is the freedom to work as and when they please. [br] The current situation about the work-life balance problem is that
选项 A、many companies launch varying programmes for the problem.
B、most companies are ready to take effective solutions.
C、companies are at two extremes in solving the problem.
D、most companies are indifferent to the problem.
答案 C
解析 细节推断题。根据work-life balance及各选项内容定位到第2段。该段介绍了不同公司对新趋势的不同做法：一些公司如IBM作出了调整，而一些公司则不相信或缺乏能力应对这一变化，这是两个极端，故C为正确答案。
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