Flexible Working

Introduction: in this blog I will be identifying three companies that offer flexible working. Then I will go onto explaining the different forms of flexibility and what advantages these have on both the employer and employee, and also identifying any challenges that may arise from these different working methods, particularly for the line manager.

What is flexible working?

Flexible working could be defined as a work practise that allows the employees the freedom to decide how the work will be done for e.g. part time less than 35 hours a week to deciding how they would co-ordinate with their work rota with other employees within the organisation. The employer sets the hour of work and times employee need to be able to work. Flexible working is now becoming popular than before as people are demanding to have flexible hours to work so that they can have a work-life balance. Many companies are now offering flexible working, in order to retain its employees. There are many benefits of flexible working it gives employees the chance to fit other commitments and activities around their work-life

Different forms of flexible working:

There are different forms of flexible working these include working part time less than 35 hours per week, job share, zero hours etc. Flexible working benefits both the employer and employees, and now employers are recognising the benefits of having flexible working within the organisation as it provides good business practices and staff are more motivated to work harder and get the tasks complete. By law an employer has to give flexible working hours to individuals, who have parental responsibility of a child under 17, for disabled child under 18. Flexible working adapts to individuals and there are many different forms of flexible working such as:

Different forms of flexible working	Features
Job share	This is where the job is shared with another person usually a full shift split between two people.
Home-working	This is where an individual is working from home.
Part-time	Working fewer hours during the week, less than 35 hours.
Annualised hours	This is where the hours are worked out over the year.
Flexi-time	This is where an individual could choose when to work and the hours.
Zero-hours	This is when an individual is called in when they are required by the company.

Three companies that offer flexible working:

1.       B&Q: offers all its permanent employees with flexible working hours to suit their needs, giving them the opportunity to achieve more balance between work and other commitments. Also B&Q provides its employees with an enhance 6.6 weeks annual leave a year. B&Q also offer job shares where two people split the shift. They also offer part time working to suit employees’ needs.  

2.       Asda: offers its employees with flexi time where employees could improve their work-life balance, ‘Asda Flex’ programmes is aimed at encouraging its staff whether hourly paid or salaried, working within any part of the business to work flexible hours to suit their needs. Asda also offers its employees to take up to three years unpaid leave (career break) they also offer female workers a five day paid leave for IVF treatment and time off to donate blood, and 12 week paid leave for organ donation. Asda believe that by creating a flexible working approach they can support colleagues with their individual needs and emphasize on their core values.

3.       BT Call Centre: offers its employees with flexible working as they believe that employees should enjoy the physical and mental benefit of work-life balance, and therefore offers flexible working. BT believe that by working in partnership with each other they could establishing alternative working arrangements by ensuring they are making their business more productive, cost effective and energised. BT states that it understands that people have other interests outside of work, and offer employees with flexible working in order for their employees to be motivated to work harder.

Different forms of flexibilities:

·          

      Numerical flexibility: is where organisations take on extra workers during busy periods such as Christmas for e.g. Amazon takes on more staff during busy periods to ensuring all orders and delivery is placed and received on time and to avoid delays.

·         Functional flexibility: this is where multi-skilled employees can work within different areas of the business for e.g. supermarkets such as Tesco use functional flexibility within their business to ensure all areas of the business are running smoothly at all times.

• Financial flexibility:  this is where the pay and rewards differ for employees who work full time as opposed to the part time employees, such as bonuses and annual leave, some businesses provide different pay and rewards to their full time employees as opposed to their part-time employees.
• Locational flexibility: employed to work in one place but can be asked to work somewhere else or home-working, this is most common with companies such as BT.
• Temporal flexibility: altering work hours to enable more efficient use of labour e.g. staff working longer hours at sales period this is used by companies such as B&Q to ensure that they are well staffed to ensure the business is running smoothly.

Advantages of flexible working:

There are many advantages of flexible working for both the employer and employee. The employer could benefit from having flexible working within the workplace to ensure the employees are motivated to work hard.  Employee could benefit from flexible working as they can manage other commitments, be less stressed as opposed to working full time, and manage time effectively. Alternately the employer could benefit from flexible working within the workplace as the employees are more likely to be motivated and more productive. The business could have greater stability as the staff that might have left, are offered hours to suit their needs, as work-life balance tends to have a positive impact on staff retention, there is  also an increased customer satisfaction as staff are more likely to be focused on the customers and more job satisfaction and better staff morals and also sickness levels are dropped as employees are getting flexible working and their can manage their work-life more effectively.

Challenges that may arise:

Challenges that may arise from these different working methods explained above, for the line manager would be that they would need to adapt and introduction flexible working in the workplace in order to retain their employers and get people to work for their company. The challenges that could arise for these different working methods mentioned above is that the working arrangement could be perceived as unfair, not visually been at work the employees are likely to miss out on important aspects and meeting the company is having, and working for home the employees are lacking the space and equipment to perform effectively as opposed to being in the office.

Conclusion: Overall flexible working is becoming more common and most employers are accepting that employees may be entitled to flexible working and some have rights to be entitled to flexible working over others especially if they are a parent of a young child, not only is flexible working beneficial to the individual for a work-life balance, it is also benefit the company as they will have a more motivated, hardworking individual and employers are accepting this and are providing different forms of flexibility. 

References:

[1] Mullins. L, (2007) Management and Organisational Behaviour 8^th ed. Harlow: Prentice Hall

[2] Asda launches flexible-working [Online] Available From: http://www.personneltoday.com/articles/2008/05/19/45907/asda-launches-flexible-working-scheme.html [Accessed 19th Feb 2012]

 [3] BT work-life balance [Online] Available From: http://www.btplc.com/Careercentre/WhyjoinBT/Worklifebalance/Worklifebalance.htm [Accessed 19th Feb 2012]

[4] B&Q Benefits and Rewards [Online] Available From:  http://www.diy.com/diy/jsp/corporate/content/careers/our_roles/benefits.jsp [Accessed 19th Feb 2012]

[5] Flexible –working [Online] Available From: http://www.businesslink.gov.uk/bdotg/action/detail?itemId=1073791179&type=RESOURCES [Accessed 19^th Feb 2012]

[5] Simpson, M. (2012) PowerPoint

[6] Who can request flexible working?  [Online] Available From: http://www.direct.gov.uk/en/Employment/Employees/Flexibleworking/DG_10029491 [Accessed 19th Feb 2012]

[7] The jury's out on whether flexi-time rules are benefiting young families [Online] Available From:  http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/2881858/The-jurys-out-on-whether-flexi-time-rules-are-benefiting-young-families.html [Accessed 19th Feb 2012]