Flexibility in the Workplace

“Flexibility in the workplace” is a term used to describe a wide range of work styles and employment practices that differ from the traditional 9-to-5 full-time job. The term “flexible” refers to the many options more and more employers are allowing their employees in order to improve family life and keep employees happy as well as productive.

For employees, a more flexible work schedule may allow them more freedom to organize their employment to fit in with their life or lifestyle. For employers, the flexibility may allow them to better organize their resources in terms of varying needs of customers or with the peaks of the demands in their business.

There are many different types of flexibility options offered by many companies today.

• Telecommuting allows an employee to work from home either full or part-time. Some employees work home a couple days of the week and in the office on the other days.
• Job sharing: Two employees share the same job with the company. In most instances they both are part-time workers, and in some instances, they still enjoy the benefits of paid vacation, medical insurance, and 401K plan.
• Part-time workers usually work a part-time schedule
• Home-based employment: A home-based worker works strictly from home. Some are contractors to whom work is outsourced, and some are employees who are strictly home-based because they work in another state or country than the company office.
• Flexible hours, also referred to flextime: an employee chooses a convenient time to start work each day and put in 8 hours. For example: If you start at 6:00 a.m., you leave at 3:00 p.m.; if you start at 7:30 a.m., you leave at 4:30 p.m. (if you’re taking an hour for lunch). Or maybe you just work a 6-hour day.

Technology plays a big role in where we work, the way we work, and the way we communicate at or away from work. Some aspects of flexible working, such as flextime, are not necessarily supported by new technologies. But telecommuters and home-based workers depend greatly on technology to get their jobs done:

• Conference Calling: This form of communication between coworkers and businesses has been around for a while, and now it is greatly used as a method of daily virtual meetings among people working from home, traveling, and occasionally while vacationing. AT&T, as well as many other telecommunication companies, offers conference calling where parties are given a dial-in number, a host code, and participant code, which allows them to connect with each other from other states and other countries. So for the telecommuter and the home-based worker (or even the traveling employee), conference calling allows you to be there, even when you’re not there physically.
• Remote Access: The ability to connect to a company’s network by making a virtual network connection via VPN (Virtual Private Network) connection allows one to work from anywhere that there is an accessible Internet connection.

• Laptop: Most teleworkers use laptops given to them by their company to connect to their companies network remotely, which is another way that technology helps people with flexible work schedules.

 

• Video Conferencing: Video conferencing is a lot like teleconferencing, except it actually puts a face on it. With video conferencing you can not only hear the participants, but also see them. Leading communications technology provider One example of this is WebOffice, by Polycom. Polycom believes that this technology "redefines personal desktop conferencing". Polycom WebOffice is a Web-based collaboration solution that enables users to share data and communicate in real time. It acts as a "conferencing portal", integrating a range of conferencing and data sharing applications. Once in a collaboration session, the participants can present documents, share applications, use whiteboarding capabilities, or instantly launch an audio and/or video conference. For control and security, the WebOffice owner can encrypt documents, limit the number of participants, and add or remove participants at any time.

It is important, though, not to fall into the trap of seeing one as necessarily "better" than another. Plenty of people are happy to work to non-standard work times which are determined by their employer - especially if they have some choice about which shifts or days to work.

What are the benefits of Flexibility in the Workplace?
For the employee, the major benefits can be:
• a better work-life balance
• the ability to avoid stressful commute times for journeys to work
• the ability to have more control over time off (e.g., a compressed working week, term-time working, part-time working, and jobsharing)

For the employer, benefits include:
• the ability to meet fluctuations in demand
• the ability to provide round-the-clock cover
• the ability to retain valued staff when other demands on their time may be high
• the ability to make more efficient use of facilities

What are the issues?
Key issues revolve around
• trust and supervision
• communication between staff who work at varying times, and who may meet less frequently
• optimizing use of the buildings (and parking spaces)
• integrating non-core staff
• achieving fairness in benefits for all staff

Recently, Working Woman magazine published an article on how small businesses are using flexible schedules in their offices. I have outlined just a few:

Summary
There is so much information on the Web regarding all types of flexible work situations, and their successes and failures. It’s not for everyone. There are a lot of people who prefer to go to work every day and work in the traditional office setting, but for those of us who want a little flexibility, its nice to know it could be an option.