Flexible working is clever way to keep staff motivated
By 
Home working: Flexible working leads to less stress, higher productivity and loyalty
By Kirsten Hemingway
During the recession many clever companies have introduced flexible working as a way of avoiding redundancies.
Instead of losing the employee, they have looked at cutting the corporate overhead of having an office space for that employee and found that actually the saving by moving them to home working has enough of an impact to pay the salary of the individual for at least one year. Is now the time to introduce flexible working?
Flexible working ranges from ‘flexitime’ where an employee can choose how weekly or annual hours are worked (also called ‘self-rostering’), through ‘flexi hours’ where an employee is allowed to come in and leave earlier or later, to ‘flexiworking’ which enables an employee to work overtime and then take that time off in lieu.
Another approach to this is ‘condensed hours’ where an employee works the week’s hours in just four days, taking the fifth day off.
There are many different variations of the above which accommodate the particular requirements of the employee and employer, such as ‘shift working’, ‘staggered hours’ and ‘term-time working’.
At the next level, employees may be given tasks to complete and not given any particular time to complete them in – for example – a sales role may be targeted on results and paid on results rather than on hours worked.
Some organisations have gone as far as allowing many of their staff to work from home. BT has used this methodology to save money instead of ‘off shoring’ their call centres. Others are completely virtual using mainly a contracted workforce of freelance consultants and specialists. Many are a combination of all of the above.
There are benefits to employees when they are able to choose a more flexible work life as many of the day-to-day tasks we have to undertake (such as getting children to or from school or visiting the dentist) often need to be completed during the working day.
Being able to have this flexibility leads to less stress for the employee and this in turn leads to higher productivity and loyalty as people remember trying to strike a balance when they did not have as much control.
People feel better about the work they are doing if they feel as though they are doing a good job and, if your morning school-runs, for example, are very tight , having to start a day by apologising for being late can damage self-esteem.
If organisations are completely flexible then people within them are less likely to find it odd that someone is unable to commit to a 9am meeting.
As directors it is our responsibility to ensure that we do all we can to reduce stress in our companies. We have the responsibility for ensuring our compliance with legislation around flexible working. This legislation would seem to have not been popular in the media, but in most cases we are finding that organisations are directly benefiting from flexible working policies.
These companies are using flexible working as part of a wider strategy to enable them to connect with customers in a more modern way.
Some organisations see flexible working as a perk and are putting off implementations until they can afford to do it. These organisations may be making people redundant unnecessarily or delaying investment in marketing, networking, recruiting and training.
As a board of directors part of our role is to ensure we comply with legislation and to be responsible for our employees — our main role is to ensure the continuity and performance of the organisation that we lead.
Flexible working allows us the opportunity to ensure all of our objectives are met. This must be done strategically and with proper thought. There is much help and guidance available and directors should look to those sources for information about how to create the right situation for their company.
Kirsten Hemingway is Vice-chair of the Bristol branch of the Institute of Directors
Your Comments