The Role Of Flexibility In The Work Place Management Essay

The Role Of Flexibility In The Work Place vigilance shewFlexibility is a mood to help slew define how and when do is done, flexibility helps employers and employees utilisation proceedsively to en open the organisation achieve its objectives. (Simonetta Manfredi, Director, Centre for Diversity Policy Research, Oxford Brookes University.) Flexibility is all ab step to the fore creating a situation where both the employer and employee benefit from the memorandum of work, creating a balance between individual needs and delivering of dish out. (Helen Gibbs, ranking(prenominal) Personnel Adviser, London Borough of Sutton) Flexible worksss relates to working(a)s succession, pattern of work and location of work (ACAS rascal 6). Many employers in united kingdom save introduced a range of elastic working options for their employees. In (2004) the workplace employement relations survey (WERS) discoer that a good number of employees ( over 70 percent) gave whatsoeverwhat kind of malleable working option to employees and these has growingd from the results of the survey carried out by workplace oeuvre relations survey in 1998 ( Kersley et al, 2005). These increase in flexible working option by employers was propelled as a result of growing need for work life balance ( Bailyn et al, 2001). In the United Kingdom, legistlative adventure up for p atomic number 18nts who abide young children that are disabled these would enable them to oblige a more flexible working practise beca expend they offer employees the opportunity to choose where and where they indigence to work Vlasios Sarantinos (2007). For flexible working practise to work effectively there must be a transparent and accessible process that will be used to manage flexible take made by employees, this enables employees feel that the organisation is treating them fairly and their request for a various type of working arrangement is being looked into. In these essay i am going to be criti cally reviewing the role that flexibility can play in the work place. edifice the culture Theres a clear set of shared values, including the service user comes first, and people mean business. value users come to the office regularly so that backroom employees can meet them and have a horse sense of what the service is about. These values underpin the companys approach to flexible working. Employees feel they belong to something and are pushed to achieve their full potential. Management is work force on managers will not hand work out to their staff unless they are able to do the work themselves. All managers have to do a care shift once a month so they dont lose touch with the needs of service users and employees. Internal communication is reinforced by open days, where the chief executive meets staff informally. Thirty per cent of managers diary quantify is non-prescribed, so as to leave judgment of conviction for informal contact with their staff. Peoples opinions are listen ed to. The number of managers has been halved from 24 to 12 and the company aims to farm its managers from deep down. Finance Manager Steve Tuck believes that employees are motivated by seeing the improvement in the eccentric of life of service users. Its not unknown for people to take clients habitation for a meal.Put in ur own words.There are various forms of flexibility which organisations used to engage employees in an organisation running(a) flexibility These type of flexibility allows employees to make use of their competencies and skills to enable them move freely across the different channels of production. This type of flexibility is likely to be desired when the employee no longer has stable affinity with the organisation and it relies on tuition across the channels of production.Numerical flexibility These flexibility depends on the capacity of the organisation to increase or decrease its labour number as it chooses by hiring some momentary workers and employing p eople who will be accomplishn fixed contracts.Temporal flexibility This type of flexibility come tos adjustement of working hours to meet demands of production, persona time working could be engaged in to handle intense peaks when needed.fiscal flexibility In financial flexibility labour approach is cut down with efforts put in by the organisation to secure profit making.Vlasios Sarantinos (2007)Below are examples of flexible working practise which employees make use of in an organisationPart-time working Its a form of work where employees are under a contract to work for less than the full time hoursTerm-time working . in this working arrangement a staff remains on his or her permanent contract plainly can take stipendiary/unpaid leave during school holidays.Job-sharing This is a type of working arrangement where a job problem is shared between two or more employees.Flexitime in this working arrangements staffs are allowed to choose deep down a given time frame when they w ant to begin and end their work.Compressed hours Compressed hours involve re allocating or reducing the set working hours into fewer and longer blocks during the week.Annual hours The set time within which full-time staffs must work is defined over a whole year.Working from home on a regular basis in this working arrangement the employees have a plectrum to work from home and report outcomes to their supervisor.Mobile working/teleworking This allows staffs to work all or part of their working week at a location aloof from the employers workplace.Career breaks This are period in which the employee is allowed to go on break, it may be a career break or sabbatical.Chattered institute of personnel and development (2005)Flexibility is seen to be important in workplace to both employers and employees because it gives them an opportunity to steer the way they work in a way that will be comfortable with their personal lives. For employers flexible working can help retain staff who have the required and skill required by the employer, it as well widens the talent pool in the job market enabling them to recruits potential workers with more skill and remedy retain the staffs that are loyal and committed which can tinge to an increase in productivity and profitability(Confederation of British Industry 2009). Employers have realised that in order to provide quality services when needed by customers a flexible working system that involves the two parties is needed which makes the workforce flexible enough to adapt to changing business conditions. Recession has had an effect on organisation layout and operations causing a jackpot of people to loose their job and holding unto whatever they can lay their hands on. The effect receding has on flexible working can be viewed as both negative and positive. Negative, because it has led to an increase in the number of people working part time that would love to take up a full time job and positive from the employers perspe ctive because employers respond to more flexibility which indicates that that there is a tendency for organisations to embrace flexible working to have as a new way of working in the organisation. We need increased flexibility in the work place if the economy is to return back to stable and sustained growth, and in order to do this we need to develop all resources available particularly man power to help increase productivity and give the economy a competitive advantage. Employers may find it expensive introducing flexible working because of the salute it might incur, the business premises may have to be open for a longer period of time thereby increasing cost of thaw and lightning(Confederation of British Industry 2009) . Flexible working also plays an important role to employees because it enables them to balance their job at work alongside their responsibilities at home because in the society today both men and women want flexible jobs which involves minimal travel to enable th em share the responsibilities of raising a family. Flexible working improves the example of employees and gives some a feeling of worth, it also reduces absence and lateness to work(The Women and Work Commission 2006)Flexible working has been seen to chance upon business by playing an important role to make sure that shifts are fully covered and services are maintained flexible working is needed in organisations ( British chambers of commerce, 2007). A flexible human uppercase practise makes organisations more stable, skilled and enthusiastic free from distractions, flexible working practisces helps organisations to attract talents, with the difference in generation of workers with varying lifestyle and working conditions, companies have to re organise their recruitment efforts, benefits plan, productivity incentives, work processes and work schedules in order to recruit qualified hands. Technological attainment also require that we think of how we can connect with people more e ffectively, organise teams and measure employees work behaveance when they work from home. Focused and talented employees who are on flexible schedules are likely to give out their crush and be more committed to the goals and objectives of the organisation and deliver great value to customers who when quelled continue to patronize the organisation thereby improving sales and boosting the companys image.flexibility also helps reduce cost associated with health care, overhead, labor, turn over and legal fees. Cost involved with labor can be reduced and profitability can be increased by using a flexible human capital practise in which you boost the output of one employee and efficiency among groups across the organisation and reduce violent as a result of poor concentration, loss of work time and mistakes.it reduces labor cost for the same output thereby increasing profitability.Flexibility also reduces health care cost because staffs have fitting resources to meet the demands wh en they have control of planning their time, these flexible working practise reduces focus and depression face up by most employees which directly reduces health cost of the company.BOOK IMPACT OF FLEXIBILITY ON ORGANISATIONAL PERFORMANCE.To prove morale and job satis occurrenceion flexible working increases the morale of employers to perform at their utmost best because they feel they are treated as adults who have control of their life and their time and they tend to perform at their utmost best when they are at work.To improve productivity/Quality the need for producing a good quality product must be of paramount importance because there are cost associated with poor quality which dents the image of the organisation and makes customers unsatisfied, flexible working arrangement ensures fresh and capable hands at the production line at all times. When an employer is worn out down and his her shift is over another employee takes and continues the process of production.It also in spires and increases commitment an loyalty from staffs( Alison and Lou, 2001)Opposing flexibility Traditionally, flexibility has been seen as a characteristic of poor quality jobs (see forexample De Witte, 1999 Nolan et al, 2000 Purcell et al, 1999), where employershave sought to achieve organisational flexibility by agent of using non-standardworking practices, such as part-time work and temporary employment.Reduced absence and employee swage Flexible working enables employees to take care of their personal obligations leading to a decrease in denounce absenteeism because they have more options to which their time can be managed and it helps skilled workers remain in the organisation because staffs are more likely to stay in the organisation. (British chambers of commerce, 2007).Reduced training costs by introducing flexible working organisations retain trained employees there by saving up expenses that would have been used in training new staffs if the trained staffs were to e xit.Promoting customer satisfaction Customer satisfaction can be meliorate where,customer service hours can be extended or shifted to periods when it is most required, andWorkers with different skills can be attracted and retained because of the flexible worksystem in the organisation to help respond to diverse customer requirements. ( Success with flexible working practices, 1997).Book success with flexible work practise.Flexibility has been seen traditionally to mark poor quality jobs De witte, 1999, Nolan et al, 2000 Purcell et al, 1999) because employers try to achieve flexible working environment in the organisation by using working practices that are not up to standard, It might have been predicted generally that access to flexible working arrangement would impact job satisfaction positively, it has also been discovered that a nobleer sense of responsibility and work completion affects job satisfaction positively ( Hyman and Summers, 2004 Igbaria and Guiraraes, 1999), Howev er findings on the effect of irrelevant working on job satisfaction varied, In some studies lack of social interaction has lead to a negative impact on job satisfaction cod to feelings of isolation ( igbaria and Guimaraes, 1999), while some people tend to have a higher job satisfaction ( Baruch,2000). Igbaria meant that employees working in remote locations may perform low because they are not satisfied with their job and this may be due the fact that they have no one to interact with however Baruch said that some employees may in truth enjoy working in remote locations and it tends to enchance their job performance. Flexible working offers employees choices to help them achieve a work life balance that is satisfactory. melodic phrase which is one of the problems employees face has been linked to flexible working but flexible working does not seem to have an effect on reducing stress levels. Stress and anxiety may also be created by flexible working because an employee that works for a littler amount of time or hours reduces but still has the same level of workload as soul working full time this tends to put pressure on the employee which might stress him or her out trying to cope with the work load (Dr Claire and Deirdre, 2008)It has been suggested by some researchers that people who turn over more time working remotely tend to have lower job stress ( Raghuram and Wiesenfeld, 2004) however (Mann and Holdsworth, 2003) said that people working remotely show more signs of mental ill health than those working in organisational premises. well-nigh evidence was found by Tietze and musson (2005) of some worker who work remotely experiencing stress, they tend to experience stress which was linked with the self organisation required of their work, because it created new demands on them. An analysis linked to stress pointed the fact that flexible working time or flex time affected absenteeism positively, while compressed working practise had no effect Baltes et a l, (1999).Baltes was saying that when workers were allowed to work with flexitime that means choosing when to resume and close work within a set time frame that it enabled them to always show up for work because they could adjust their schedule to meet up with the time they choose and that compressed working did not affect absenteeism positively or negatively. Remote workers were worried about the lack of opportunities to develop themselves which the employer denied them having including mentoring from senior colleagues and informal learning cooper and Kurland (2002). Cooper discovered that concerns began to grow among workers working remotely that their absence was not felt by the organisation and they were neglect with no further course or training to further develop their skills, and because of these flexible workers tend to have lower long term career potential Frank and Lowe (2003).Although Mc Closkey and igbaria (2003) brought a contrasting a view saying dat flexible working had no direct or indirect effect on career prospects of employees. Cohen and Single (2001) found that professional staffs who worked reduced working hours were less able to spend time developing their skill which is one of the business factors important for a succesfull career(Dr Claire and Deirdre, 2008). Meaning that the less time professional workers spend in their workplace the less opportunity they get to learn new things. line of business impact of flexible workingThe companys policies towards flexible working are reflected in its business outcomes. Since 1997, employment at the company has gone up from 60 to 280 staff and turnover has increased from 1 million to 9.5 million. indisposition absence has been reduced to 0.6 days a year, well below that for the care sector as a whole, which produces significant financial savings. The company also sees direct benefits in terms of staff recruitment and retention. Sandwell CCT came number in the Sunday Times 100 best companies to work for list in 2007, and first nationwide in the work-life balance category. It also came first in the categories of managers who listen, managers motivating staff to give their best and training making a difference. It believes that this success has boosted the companys image as an employer. Employee turnover at Sandwell CCT is now 4%, compared with 20% or more across the care sector generally. Because staff enjoy their jobs, there is a high level of employee engagement and this is reflected in the quality of service and value for money.PUT IN UR OWN WORDS.