Why Organizations Should Implement Flexible Work Hours?

In today’s fast-paced competitive world, flexible work arrangements are a key component to ensure employee commitment. Flexible work arrangements ensure that employers have a flexible work force i.e. there is availability of sufficient labor to meet the workload at all times. Transforming practices in the work place so that it suits employee needs better, is extremely crucial in ensuring employee satisfaction and commitment. Flexible work hours, telecommuting, compressed work weeks etc. are examples of flexible work arrangements. We would be concentrating on implementing flexible work hours at our work place.

Flexible work hours also known as flextime is a work schedule that allows employees a certain degree of freedom with regard to the time that they want to work in the organization.

Under a flexible work arrangement there is a core period of the day during which employees are expected to be in the office (for example 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.), while the rest of the working day is ‘flextime’.

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During ‘flextime’ employees can choose the time when they want to work with the primary objective of achieving a certain amount of total daily, weekly or monthly work hours expected by the employer. (Flextime) The most common flexible hours arrangement are flextime, compressed work weeks (which is basically something like having four 10-hour days or having 9 working days in a fortnight), part-time work and job sharing (a form of part time work having two people doing the same job but sharing the work, the hours and the salary) (Workplaces that Work) NTUC Income Insurance Cooperative Limited is one of the companies that have successfully implemented flexible work hours in their organization.

20 percent of their workforce is using this arrangement.

Another example of a company successfully implementing flexible work hours is Abacus International Private Ltd. (Flexible Work Arrangements) Advantages and disadvantages of implementing flexible work hours Implementing flexible work hour schemes has a lot of benefits: -By choosing a suitable time slot employees can avoid commuting to work during rush hours thus enabling them to save and have a better control over time. -Employees benefit due to better work-life balance and this improves their morale and job satisfaction thereby improving their productivity. -Allows the employer to schedule work out of the conventional 9 to 5 period.

-Employee turnover reduces

-As the employees are allowed a certain degree of freedom it is less likely for them to leave the job. Such an arrangement allows the employers to keep their valued staff members who may have other commitments in life.

-Continuity in work flow is not affected

-Employers also may require smaller office spaces and lesser furniture and equipment because all employees are not present in the office at all time, thereby ensuring optimum utilization of resources. -Such a system reduces overload of work and allows people to work during the time when they feel they can accomplish the most (for example: a morning person can work during the day and a night person can work during the late evening). -Improves image of the employer and the organization and increases willingness to work. The employee turnover rate in NTUC Income has reduced by 6% over a period of 7 years from 1992 to 1999 after implementing flexible work hours. Abacus International reported reduction in employee turnover and higher job satisfaction after introducing flexible work hour schemes in 1998. The schemes did not affect deadlines and ensured better work-life balance. (Flexible Work Arrangements) There are few disadvantages of this system also:

-The costs of having flexible working hours involve having the cost of administering the scheme. The cost of electricity will be higher when flexible working hours are implemented as the office premises. -It may not be suitable for those organizations where continuous cover for work is required. -It changes the way the management supervises employees. It is extremely important that the management supervises staff according to performance that is measurable. As they are not able to monitor employees when they are not at work, managers need to use different methods to judge their performance. -Team work and social interaction in the organization are affected. Telecommuting means working in different locations and this may affect teamwork. As it may affect the coordination of schedules among team mates. -There also may be resentment among those employees who are not chosen for telecommuting.

Research model

Now we will take a look at NTUC Income insurance implementing flexible work hours. NTUC Income insurance allows employees to choose their starting time and their finishing time. This enables them to choose a time slot so that they can meet their other commitments. Such arrangements help them to cater to their family needs and have better work life balance. NTUC Income has experienced improved employee motivation, lower employee turnover and they have also witnessed a reduction in sick leave, from approximately 4.7 days in 1998 to 4.2 days in 2001. The NTUC case illustrates the following: -Flexible work hours are offered to employees to enable them to manage work and family responsibilities effectively.

-Flexible work hours work well when is trust and accountability from both the employers and the employees side. (Guidelines on Best Work Life Practices) NTUC Income conducted surveys to ask employees about their views on these arrangements. The result of these surveys showed that employees were happy with these schemes. And these schemes resulted in better employee morale and improved employee commitment. (Flexible Work Arrangements) Hypothesis for the research was that that implementing flexible working hours in the

Key issues that need to be considered in the implementation

One of the main issues that need to be considered is the supervision of such employees. Since the employees are allowed to choose the time that they want to work for, there need to be proper practices in place to monitor that the employees are working the required amount of hours. Another issue that needs to be considered is the communication between different employees. As the employees will be working at different times they will therefore meet less frequently thus communication between them is affected. A major issue that needs to be considered is achieving fairness for all staff and employees. Providing these benefits to only a few employees might cause resentment among the others resulting in problems in the organization. Another thing that needs to be looked into is having clear and effective HR policies to help keep track of the number of hours each employee has worked and to ensure that there is work happening in the organization at all times.

For example there may be days when no one would be there in the office because people may have worked at some big event in the office the previous day. Also keeping track of the hours that employees have worked enables employers to judge the hourly rate for each employee and also helps to see if some jobs are too big for the employee and some are too small. It also helps to understand and reduce employee stress. Other issues that need to be considered are that is there enough labor at all times in the organization. The time, effort and resources required to implement these schemes also need to be considered. Another issue is maintaining a high level of contact between the employees and the management ensuring that there is proper communication and that the management is updated with what’s happening.

Conclusion

Flexible work hours have many benefits which outweigh its disadvantages. It improves employee morale and provides numerous benefits to employers also. Many companies have successfully implemented these schemes and have derived benefits from these schemes. In order to implement these schemes effectively the following steps need to be performed. -The scheme should first be implemented for a period of three to four months and then the impact must be assessed. -It should be made voluntary and should be implemented in the whole organization. -Setting up a team or a task force having representatives from all the parties that have a stake in this scheme i.e. people from human resource, management and employees would be helpful this would allow the company to assess individual needs so that difficulties can be anticipated.

-After assessing the needs the next step is positioning it in the minds of the employees and to communicate the implementation of these schemes to the employees. -Convincing the employees about the benefits of these schemes addressing all relevant issues is the next step. -Evaluation of the scheme needs to be done and then necessary changes need to be made. -The staff needs to be informed of these changes and continued evaluation of the programme should be done. If these steps are performed then flexible work hours can easily be implemented in the organization.

Bibliography
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