How you can make your workplace more flexible
Flexible working is one of the main employment trends this year. Your organisation may already be practicing and indeed, embracing flexible working with passion! However, you might also find that the ‘flexibility’ buzzword is being thrown around in boardroom meetings, but actually following through with action hasn’t happened.
What does flexible working mean to your organisation?
Here is one definition of work-life balance that is helpful to understand the intent of flexible working for your employees:
“People having a measure of control over when, where and how they work. It is achieved when an individual’s right to a fulfilled life inside and outside paid work is accepted and respected as the norm to the mutual benefit of the individual, business and society”.1
Effectively, flexible working allows your employees to have some control over when, where and how work is completed. It’s more than just leave entitlements and working hours, although they are a major contributing factor.
Flexible working can be broken down into 3 main areas:
- Working hours
Reduced hours, compressed working weeks, split shifts, autonomy in start and finish times.
- Working places
Working from home, working from another location, use of technology to work on the move.
- Working practices
Purchased leave, phased retirement, job-sharing, annualised hours.
All of these areas individually or packaged together make work flexible. So when you’re putting together a flexible working strategy, consider something from each area and allow your employees the opportunity to choose what works for them and their life. You will find that if you shift your way of thinking, have more trust and give that autonomy to your employees, you will be rewarded with a truly engaged workforce.
There are some great resources in this article Flexible Work by the Workplace Gender Equality Agency (WGEA). Including information on how to use a flexibility roadmap, as well as a guide to the change process:
If you would like some advice on how to implement a flexible working strategy please contact us.
If you would like to advertise your flexible job role(s) to an active, engaged community of talented individuals, check out our advertising packages.
Ref: 1. B Pocock, ‘Work-Life ‘Balance’ in Australia: Limited progress, dim prospects’, Asia Pacific Journal of Human Resources, (2005), vol. 43, no. 2, pp. 198–209, p. 201.