Blog Nine - Flexible working

Flexible Working

Flexible working occurs when a business’s working practices allow employees a certain degree of freedom in deciding how the work will be done and how they'll coordinate their schedules with those of other employees (Anon., 2012). Therefore flexible working relates to when, where, how and what work is done (Anon., 2012). There are different forms of flexible working including part time work, job sharing and taking on a zero hour’s contract. Flexible working has occurred more regularly in the present day due to different factors such as changes in technology. ‘Rapid advances in ICT have a significant effect on work patterns, work location and work times’. (Gold and Bratton, 2007). Other impacting factors of flexible working on businesses are a reduction in operating costs and motivating the new generation Y workers. ‘FTSE 100 companies are much more likely to offer flexible working arrangements than SMEs’ (Woods, 2010).This statement suggests that larger companies have more funding available to offer flexible working within their contracts to employees. However an increased amount of companies lately are offering this incentive within their working contracts to potential applicants.

John Lewis offers a wide variety of flexible working contracts for employees. One programme of flexible working follows a ‘working mum’s partnership’ where parents of children working at John Lewis can arrange their hours around their lifestyle. Therefore enabling parents to be able to work for the supermarket chain however being entitled to choose a plan of when these hours will be worked.  This secured John Lewis an award in the employee engagement category of the ‘working mums awards 2010’ which was due to ‘the way we constantly consult one another regarding the business, and for everything we do to make working parents' lives easier’ (Garner, 2012). However flexible working is not solely offered to working parents but to all partners as Jo Faragher explains that employees are entitled to request flexible working arrangements regardless of their family or carer commitments (Faragher, 2007). This also benefits employees’ future careers at John Lewis as they can change departments within the supermarket and choose which career path would favour them.

Secondly, BT offer a range of flexible working contracts to employees including home working, mobile employees and office based employees as part of their ‘Work anywhere portfolio’ (Anon., 2012). This strategy has benefited BT by optimising property usage, reducing costs and increasing employee productivity. The offered home working contracts have shown to increase home workers productivity by 20% compared to office-based colleagues and absenteeism has reduced by 60%.

Virgin media offer many jobs to employees around the UK however they have outsourced a lot of their work within the call centre and technological department. It was announced in May 2011 that Virgin media had plans to move its technological operations after shutting a call centre in Wiltshire. This caused Virgin Media to outsource work to the multinational outsourcing company ‘Accenture’. This can have a negative effect on the morale of employees due to altering the company’s operations however Virgin Media ensured all employees affected by the closing of the centre will be redeployed or relocated to others roles within the UK.(Anon., 2011)

Other part time working contracts

Part time working occurs when an employee works less than 35 hours a week however is still entitled to sick pay and holidays accrued. Employees can benefit from more time available within their lifestyle to work around their job hours and employers can more part time staff willing to work different shifts within a week which will vary. For example students would take up part time jobs to fit around their university course and employers can call these workers in if needed on certain shifts.

Home working entitles employees to work from home therefore not having to be connected to the work location during business hours. However a certain amount of work hours must be completed by the employee according to their contract. This may benefit an employee that may not work well in teams as working from home is individual to the employee and employees can live far away from the location of the business and travel is not needed. Employers can offer work to people at home reducing location costs and the need for meetings in person which may be time consuming.

Annualized hours occurs when employees working time is organised according to the number of hours to be worked over a year rather a week (Gold and Bratton, 2007). This benefits employers who are in charge of a workforce in a company with altering peaks of business between seasons. For example in the summer, tourist businesses such as theme parks may incur more customers therefore demand for workers during the summer period will be higher than other times during the year. This type of flexible working is similar to term-time working where employees can take unpaid leave during the school holidays which follow a similar pattern each year and particular benefits parents who have child care commitments. Both annualised hours and term time working follow numerical flexibility within an organisation as the amount of staff on the work force changes according to peaks in work during different times of the year.

Compressed hours allow employees to work their total number of agreed hours with their employer over a shorter period of time i.e. working three days instead of working the agreed hours in four days. This allows employees to work their full hours during a week however have more days off and therefore a longer break from work which could improve motivation and morale.

Zero hours occurs when employees are not offered a contract with a specific amount of hours available to work, hours of work may alter from week to week. Employers therefore have the opportunity to ask employees on a zero hours contract to work any time during the week dependant on availability however this will help with peak times of work. However the line manager may be uncoordinated as to which employees are called in to work on certain days and therefore some employees may be called in more than others giving a disadvantage to some members of staff on this contract.

Job sharing involves two employees working on a part-time basis however covering a full time post. An employer can benefit from two employees with different skills and ideas working on the same task increasing productivity.

Flexi-time allows workers to choose the amount of hours they wish to work over a period of time allowing maximum flexibility for employees on this contract and benefit employers during busy periods of work. However if many employees are contracted to flexi-time work, the line manager may lose the span of control in their department losing the structure of communication and work focus.

‘9 day fortnight’ is another flexible working contract where an employee is contracted to work 9 days within a fortnight and incurs 5 days off work within the two weeks. This benefits full time workers who wish to work during the week and have weekends off and benefits the employer as they have insurance of full time workers.

Lastly, employees can take career breaks during their working contracts to finish work for a fixed period of time and returning to work after the break. This may benefit mothers who wish to take longer time periods off work to raise children and then wish to return to work after this time period.

Although employees can benefit from the flexibility of these working contracts, it may however affect motivation as businesses may see these employees as less important to the company and employees may feel demotivated by this. Research into workers views in a variety of different settings found that people on fixed-term contracts generally had a positive psychological contract. A reason of this finding was that employees on fixed contracts had more focused work to complete (Gold and Bratton, 2007).

Overall, offering flexible working contracts can benefit a company due to retaining and attracting staff, saving costs and offering a better work-life balance for employees. Also it can help to reduce the businesses environmental impact due to offering home working contracts. Furthermore some companies may offer flexible working contracts which other businesses do not offer therefore gaining a competitive advantage over other companies. One of the main benefits is that employees on flexible contracts are adaptable to change benefiting the companies’ productivity. Flexible employees have the potential continuously to learn new skills and to broaden the range of skills possessed. (Gold and Bratton, 1994)

References

Anon. (2011) Virgin outsources techies, pulls plug on Trowbridge call centre [online]. The register. Available from: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/05/04/virgin_cuts/ [Accessed: 26 April 2012].

Anon. (2012) Flexible work [online]. BusinessDictionary.com. Available from: http://www.businessdictionary.com/definition/flexible-work.html [Accessed: 25 April 2012].

Anon. (2012) Flexible working services [online]. BT. Available from: http://globalservices.bt.com/LeafAction.do?Record=Flexible_Working_Services_solutions_uk_en-gb&fromPage=Furl [Accessed: 25 April 2012].

Anon. (2012) Organisations and people [online]. flexibility. Available from: http://www.flexibility.co.uk/flexwork/general/hr2.htm [Accessed: 25 April 2012].

Faragher, J. (2007) John Lewis Partnership: Working in partnership [online]. Personnel Today. Available from: http://www.personneltoday.com/articles/2007/04/17/40155/john-lewis-partnership-working-in-partnership.html [Accessed: 25 April 2012].

Garner, M. (2012) John Lewis [online]. Working Mums. Available from: http://www.workingmums.co.uk/top-employers/2613546/john-lewis.thtml [Accessed: 25 April 2012].

Gold, J. and Bratton, J. (1994) Human resource management - Theory and practice. Kent: The Macmillan press.

Gold, J. and Bratton, J. (2007) Human resource management. 4th ed. China: Palgrave Macmillan.

Woods, D. (2010) Flexible working [online]. HR Magazine. Available from: http://www.hrmagazine.co.uk/hro/news/1018699/ftse-100-companies-offer-flexible-arrangements-smes [Accessed: 25 April 2012].