Explain Why Employers Should Provide A Flexible Working Environment

Incorporating flexibility is required in all work plans as many occurrences could happen that derails you from your work/project [7]. An example of this, was whilst working in the procurement department, I had a project which consisted me researching into a new travel management system and to write a strategy for which company could offer Tarmac a competitive package. It heavily involved me communicating with other travel management companies, other departments to get data and then writing a detailed report of my finding of the most beneficial package to key stakeholders.

Businesses should evaluate their flex work arrangement on a regular basis. As the bar graph shows above, company that doesn’t offer flexible work arrangement has

Under the current economic situation and the family structure, most couples have found that it is necessary for both members of the family to stay at work once they have started a family. This can make for non-work related items to intrude on the working day.

Every employee has the right to work in a flexible and safe working environment whether it is in an office or on a construction site. Providing a flexible work environment is an obligation that every employer must preserve to have productive and hardworking employees.

This essay will discuss and analyse why flexible working practices are an important feature of UK business organisations, by providing specific organisational examples and justification through academic theory. Flexible working is a form of employment that suits an employee’s needs such as, having flexible start and finishing times, or working from home opportunities. In the UK, all employees have the legal right to request flexible working hours from their employers. Additionally, employers must deal with these requests in a reasonable manner, for example, employers may analyse the

Factors driving the interest in flexible working is a flexible work schedule as flextime, telework , or a compressed work week . These are examples of the increasing variation in the timing and duration of working time, and location of work. Although the standard work schedule has traditionally been the norm in the organization , more and more employers are experimenting with a variety of flexible work schedules at the same time as they change jobs and the time zone system processes and work culture . In the rapid rise of flexible work schedules and other members of the organization not only the United States , but a phenomenon of global employment . Studies countries from the U.S. to Australia estimate that only about half of the employees , working regular daytime work schedule regular five-day week ( Gold, 2001 ; Watson , Buchanan , Campbell and Briggs , 2003). As the opening statement suggests, when implemented with both the employer and employee interests in mind , a flexible work schedule can improve efficiency, work focus , and empower individuals to manage their own working time ( Halpern , 2005; Kossek , 2005) . Flexible work schedule is an increasingly important issue for the industry - Organizational ( I - O) psychology because they reflect the adaptation of human resource practices to the changing nature of work , such as changes in the labor force is becoming increasingly diverse in the availability of work and the dramatic changes in the system design work in

The world of work is transmuting. The working patterns experienced by the post-war baby boomer generation (born: 1946–1964) are no longer acceptable to much of generation X (born: 1965–1980) or the millennial generation (born: 1981–2000). Work-life balance has entered the business lexicon and it is here to stay. From the perspective of employers often faced with skills shortages and skills gaps. Provision of flexible working arrangements is now part and parcel of the brand image of many organisations, particularly where the labour market for staff is global – where it was once national or even local. Moreover, in a world of always-on, always-connected economies, the line between work and home is becoming increasingly blurred.

In today’s fast-paced competitive world, flexible work arrangements are a key component to ensure employee commitment. Flexible work arrangements ensure that employers have a flexible work force i.e. there is availability of sufficient labor to meet the workload at all times. Transforming practices in the work place so that it suits employee needs better, is extremely crucial in ensuring employee satisfaction and commitment. Flexible work hours, telecommuting, compressed work weeks etc. are examples of flexible work arrangements. We would be concentrating on implementing flexible work hours at our work place.

Reilly’s (2001) thoughts on mutual flexibility and White et al’s (2004) work regarding intelligent flexibilty advocating approaches benefiting employers and employees are potentially useful for making a case to organisations for flexible working, which I kept in mind when making my recommendations.

Basing on introducing varied types of temporal flexibility, this essay mainly discusses how is working time flexibility mutually beneficial to the employer and the employee. However, the existence of temporal flexibility cannot only in good side, downsides are analysed to manifest temporal flexibility thoroughly. The essay is divided into three parts. The first part introduces mutual benefits on flexible work practices, the second part introduces mutual benefits on flexible work arrangements, and the last part introduces mutual benefits and conflicts.

Flexibility is the willingness to change or compromise. When flexibility exists in the workspace, both the employee and employer maximize their productivity. Workspace is a space in which employees execute work for the company employing them. Workspace flexibility is comprised of the decisions made by the company and the employee to better tailor when, where, and how an individual will work to meet the needs of both the employee and the company. Workspace flexibility encompasses a large array of arrangements that allow individuals to both contribute to their firm, while also being able to have a schedule that better suits their needs. A business’s objective is to create a smart management strategy in its workspace that will increase its productivity while lowering costs, thus making the business more efficient. It is believed that increasing flexibility can be a means to achieve this. I can be very expensive to do this; however, the benefits outweigh the costs. Flexible work arrangement strategies can be separated into categories including scheduled hours, amount of hours, and work location. Flexibility in the workspace helps employers and employees reach their ultimate goal of maximizing their profit.

Flexible work arrangements has its pros, unfortunately it does have its disadvantages as well. First of all, it is important that employers need to recognize that flexible work arrangements are not always appropriate for all people, jobs or industries. For example, if companies allow its service workers to arrive to work at different hours, customer service may suffer. Potential customers are forced to either wait or seek somewhere else. This also concerns manufacturers; many factory operations rely on employees to arrive at the same time, because they depend on each other for the smooth flowing of production.

For example, if someone does their work in the same setting every time, then their productivity may decrease whereas if you let the employee choose where he or she wants to do his or her work at they’ll be more relaxed and more concentrated on the task that he or she is working on. Another example is myself because when it comes to writing papers I never do them at school for the reason being that I cannot concentrate because there are a lot of distractions happening around me. So I write my papers at home in my room because that’s where I fully concentrate solely on my paper. Yes, I believe that there are disadvantages associated with flexible work arrangements because some employees may feel they are isolated from their coworkers (Chapter 4, page 140). For example, when employees need to work as a team on a project some employees may be working from their home, which can lead employees to be isolated from their task to contribute to the project. Another disadvantage with flexible work arrangement is when working from home, your personal life can intervene while working on work responsibilities (Chapter 4, page 141). An example of someone’s personal life intervening on work responsibilities might be when someone has a young child around while working at home, the child might be making a mess and causing trouble, causing the parent to stop doing what he or she is doing to focus on the

However, during the projects, the system can have the advantages and disadvantages. For the aspect of advantages , for example, flexible working can reduce the employee rate of absenteeism and late. What's more , flexible working can improve employee's productivity . In addition , it can reduce the overtime pay. However, the flexible working also bring the difficulties to the managers for they cannot guide the work for staff. Overall, flexible working system has much more advantages than disadvantages.

2.3: The use of flexible working practices in Harrods from both the employer and employees