Work Life Balance - Robin Martin Jones

Work-Life Balance-Robin Martin-Jones

Description

Robin being her career with a Fortune 500 company as a "Fast Tracker" the moment she got out of school. She was trained well from school and others and this lead to a rise to a mid-level management position just like other male "Fast Trackers". After Robin's maternity leave was over she returned to work with the plan to do the 80 percent flexible work arrangement. Even with this plan in motion Robin was able to accomplish the objectives of other managers even though they worked full-time schedule. When Robin decided that it was time for a change she started to look for opportunity to advance in the job, but soon she realized she had hit the glass ceiling. Out of frustration, Robin quit the job to form a start-up.

Diagnosis

Robin was deeply troubled when she applied for and was looked over for three different promotions where other male "Fast Trackers" similar to her had risen steadily in the organization. It was this realization that put the thought in here that she was not supported within the company and would not be allowed to take on a higher level position by the upper management. Even though Robin was informed before she joined the organization just how far other women had advanced in the company, she naively assumed that the same opportunity were open for women in circumstances like her, a working mother of little children. But the reality in today's world is that is that equal opportunity does not necessarily mean family friendly. It might have done her some good to do some research on what position the majority of women hold in today's world. According to Pellet, "The statistics are sobering. Women hold 50.6 percent of management and professional positions yet represent just 15.4 percent of Fortune 500 officers and only 2.4 percent of Fortune 500 CEOs. At a time when global competition is intensifying the need for businesses to fully leverage all available talent, the numbers suggest a worrisome disconnect: Women are now well represented in the corporate workforce but simply aren't advancing to the upper echelons." The women who have already advanced to high position within the company that Robin is currently working for may have to work twice as hard to keep up with the demands of their job and family life, or they may simple be neglecting the family life to achieve the role they want within the company. Robin believes she is capable of handling both her manager and family roles well at the same time the company she works for had its doubt. This hard reality was hard for Robin and led her to be stressed. Therefore, she chose to leave the company to form her own start-up, where she might be able take control and live a balanced yet fruitful life.

Theory

What Robin has gone through working for this company can be labeled as macro level organizational stressors, for example; the lack of opportunity for Robin to advance within the company. The stress become so high for Robin that she becomes so frustrated that she began to feel that she was not going to be able to continue to work in the organization. Based on the fact that Robin was able achieve the same objectives of other employees who worked full-time, this leads us to believe that Robin was of type a personality. This particular personal disposition may lead Robin to feel more acute about the pain of the work stress. Robin's personality type was stood out by the fact that she showed little patience about the time for her promotion and left the organization abruptly. Her psychological hardiness to stress may be on the low side too [Luthans, 2011]. We can safely say that Robin's work environment was not truly family friendly. But the common