Flexible working

Introduction

Reconsidering traditional employment patterns are calling as flexible working. Better operational flexibility, advance the use of employees’ skills and capacities, increase productivity and employment cost are the aims of the flexible working pattern. This could include operational flexibility, multi-skilling, job sharing, and the use of the sub-controlling and outsourcing, home working and flexible hour arrangements.

·        Operational flexibility

Operational flexibility raises to flexibility in the ways in which work is carried out. Financial flexibility sometimes extends to this term. The three forms of operational flexibility are the following;

Forms of operational flexibility	Description
Functional flexibility	Employees can be redeployed quickly and smoothly between activities and tasks. Require Workers who process and can apply a number of skills. Require workers who carry out a number of different tasks in a work team.
Structural flexibility	‘Flexible firm’ where the core of permanent employees are supplemented by a peripheral group of part-time employees, employees on short or fixed-term contracts or sub-contracted workers (Doeringer and Priore (1971) and Atkinson (1984).
Numerical flexibility	Associated with structural flexibility. The number of employees can be quickly and easily increased or decreased in line with even short-term changes in the level of demand for labor.

Table 1 – Operational Flexibility forms

·         Multi-skilling / Job-Sharing / Homeworking/ Flexible hour arrangements

	Introduction	Advantages
Multi-skilling	The employee can be used flexibly, transferring from one task to another as the occasion demands.	This means multi-skilling take place when workers acquire through experience and training a range of different skills they can apply when carrying out different tasks
Job-Sharing	Two employees share the work of one full-time position, dividing pay and benefits between them according to the time each works is an arrangement. This can be splitting days or weeks or, less frequently, working alternate weeks.	Include reduced employee turnover and absenteeism, due to it suits the needs of individuals.
Homeworking	Such roles as consultants, analysts, designers or programmers or undertake administrative works can carry out home-based employees.	Flexibility to respond to fluctuations in demand, reduced overheads and lower employment costs if the homeworkers are self-employed
Flexible hour arrangements	Can include flexible daily hours, weekly hours, daily and weekly hours, compressed working weeks or annual hours.	The employee may follow an agreed pattern day by day according to typical or expected workload, worked at certain peak periods during the year, working time can be unlike daily or weekly the arrangement, work fewer than the five standard days, scheduling hours on the basis on the number of hours to be works.

Table 2 – The reconsidering employments patterns

Flexible working is a pattern of working practice or working hours that deviates from the stranded or normal arrangement has many advantages.

Reference/Bibliography

Armstrong, M. (2012) Armstrong’s Handbook of Human Resource Management Practice, 12th edition

Lypton,T (1975) Best fit in the design of organizations,personal review,4(1), pp 15-22

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