Flexible working

Flexible Working

This blog will look at the different forms used when describing flexible working, and will look at the applications of these terms when applied to the working environment.

Five companies that offer flexible working routines:

Sun Micro Systems: An innovative leader in the IT industry, with software services, servers and storage of sensitive data.

KPMG : This is a global company providing audit, tax and advisory services.

PNC Financial Services: A diversified and growing financial services organisation. Dealing with retail, business and corporate markets.

Best Buy Inc: A speciality retailer of PC’s, entertainment software and appliances and consumer electronics.

PricewaterhouseCoopers: Providers of industry focused assurance, tax and advisory services. 

Flexible working terms are:
Numerical:  This is an organisations ability to adjust the size of the workforce to suit demands at any given time, whether this be short or long term.

(Metzner, 2010)

Functional: Ability to alter and use a particular mix of human capital by using broad
job descriptions for the employed workforce. As production methods change the workforce changes activities according to the new production methods.

(Metzner, 2010)

Financial: Allows organizations to let wages and incentives rise and fall with economic
conditions. This can be beneficial to organisations from a tax viewpoint or short time cost savings.

(Metzner, 2010)

Temporal:Match between service/ production schedules and employee input (working hours) by using different flexible policies. Often used because of cost advantages.

(Metzner, 2010)

 

Locational:Letting employees work outside the normal workplace. Advantage of using workers as needed as well as possible reductions in overhead costs. 

(Metzner, 2010).

KPMG is a forward looking company that exhibits flexible working routines, this company implements most, if not all of the above flexible working patterns. One only has to look at the KPMG website http://www.kpmgcareers.com/whykpmg/careerprogression.shtml to peruse the diversity of this company from a flexible working routine and an employee viewpoint. 

Richard Jordan, solutions Manager at Sun Micro Systems has highlighted the benefits of flexible working and has been quoted as saying (builder.com, 2013) “Sun employees who work from home score the highest of all employees in performance ratings, followed by employees who work flexible hours, and then employees who work in the office”. This ties in with the Authors of Introducing Human Resource Managements view (Hook, 2011) that one of the advantages is that working at home cuts down on travelling and the costs associated with working from an office.

Barbara Wankoff KPMG’s National Director estimates that 70% of employees work flexible hours.  Other components of KPMG's "culture of flexibility" include compressed workweeks and "jump-start" Fridays during the summer (when employees are encouraged to leave at 3 p.m.).

Some of the drivers for flexible working are as follows: Changes in technology, Parental leave, cost-cutting measures, as companies have to become more competitive in the current financial climate, customer demand, as a motivational tool, to promote diversity, and maybe that generation Y demands this.

This is a definition of flexible working routines as described on the CIPD website http://www.cipd.co.uk/hr-resources/factsheets/flexible-working.aspx

• Part-time working: work is generally considered part-time when employers are contracted to work anything less than full-time hours.
• Term-time working: a worker remains on a permanent contract but can take paid/unpaid leave during school holidays.
• Job-sharing: a form of part-time working where two (or occasionally more) people share the responsibility for a job between them.
• Flexitime: allows employees to choose, within certain set limits, when to begin and end work.
• Compressed hours: compressed working weeks (or fortnights) don't necessarily involve a reduction in total hours or any extension in individual choice over which hours are worked. The central feature is reallocation of work into fewer and longer blocks during the week.
• Annual hours: the period within which full-time employees must work is defined over a whole year.
• Working from home on a regular basis: workers regularly spend time working from home.
• Mobile working/teleworking: this permits employees to work all or part of their working week at a location remote from the employer's workplace.
• Career breaks: career breaks, or sabbaticals, are extended periods of leave – normally unpaid – of up to five years or more.

The flexible working routines can be broken down to terms that are more meaningful for practitioners and Managers such as, Numerical: this is to deploy extra staff when needed, i.e. at Christmas. Functional: transferable skills that can be switched between jobs. Financial: Pay and reward systems. Locational: home working otherwise known as teleworking. Temporal: To work longer hours when required i.e. at sale times and, or at peak promotional periods.

A more in-depth analysis of flexible working can be found in Floris Metzners 2010 Thesis, Matching organizational flexibility demands and employee flexibility - A first step towards an unifying framework for labour flexibility, in pages eleven and twelve: http://essay.utwente.nl/60052/1/MA_thesis_F_Metzner.pdf
 

Conclusion:

In the current financial climate, it is clear that companies have to adapt to the demands placed on them in an uncertain and competitive jobs market. Whether this is from a recruitment viewpoint or from a flexible approach to employment, it is clear that companies are adapting and evolving to facilitate the current drivers in an ever-increasing flexible working environment.

Works Cited

Anon. (2013) CIPD [online]. CIPD and the HR Proffession. Available from: http://www.cipd.co.uk/hr-resources/factsheets/flexible-working.aspx [Accessed: 30 January 2013].

builder.com, C. (2013) Career Builder.com [online]. Career builder.com. Available from: http://www.careerbuilder.com/Article/CB-632-Job-Search-Five-Flextime-Friendly-Companies/ [Accessed: 30 January 2013].

Hook, M.f.&.c. (2011) Flexible working arrangements. In: Introducing Human Resource Management. 6th ed. Edinburgh: Pearson education Limited, p.123.

Metzner, F. (2010) Matching organizational flexibility demands and employee flexibility - A first step towards an unifying framework for labour flexibility [online]. http://essay.utwente.nl/60052/1/MA_thesis_F_Metzner.pdf. Available from: http://essay.utwente.nl/60052/1/MA_thesis_F_Metzner.pdf [Accessed: 31 January 2013].