Taslim Ahammad :
Flexible working opportunities may benefit everyone: employers, employees and their families. Advantages for employers and employees exist when the employer allows employees to work flexible work schedules. Whether the flexible work schedule involves compressing work days, flexible daily hours, or telecommuting, challenges exist for the employer and the staff. Employers should recognise that it makes good business sense to provide flexible working opportunities for their staff.
Flexible work is a way of working that suits an employee’s needs, for instance having flexible start and finish times, or working from home. Flexibility at workplace allows employers and employees to make arrangements about working conditions that suit them. This arrangement helps employees to maintain a work life balance and may help employers improve the productivity and efficiency of their business. The company sets certain limits such as minimum and maximum number of hours of work every day, and the core time during which all staffs must be present. Therefore, flexible working is often used to describe any other working arrangement than the traditional nine to five in the office.
Some of the benefits of flexible working for employees include a better work-life balance, lower levels of absenteeism, and reduced tardiness and lower levels of stress. The employer benefits from greater motivation and productivity, fewer overheads and an improvement in trust and the employer/employee relationship.
There are many different ways or types of working flexibly. Some of the options that you are most likely to come across in many business, are: (i) Part time work -staffs will be contracted to work less than standard, basic, full-time hours. (ii) Working from home-workers will spend all or part of the week working from home or somewhere else away from the working premises. (iii) Job sharing — a full-time job may be split between two workers who agree the hours between them. (iv) Compressed hours-workers cover their standard working hours in fewer working days. (v) Flexi-time — employees have the freedom to work in any way they choose outside a set of core hours determined by the company. (vi) Working from home – Homeworking guidance offers companies and staffs advice on how to: (a) recognise when homeworking can be beneficial (b) choose whether the job and post holder are suitable for homeworking (c) agreement with the practicalities of setting up a homeworker (d) arrange homeworkers as part of a flexible workforce.
Why consider flexible working or staff—Most of the time long hours in a fast-paced job can be stressful, so rather than burning out, a different working pattern might be better. Flexible working arrangement gives staff more freedom, to a degree, to choose the hours they work, where they work them and when. In a business, incorporating those ideals into company may seem counterproductive initially but not only likely to increase staff retention rates, have a happier workforce and improved productivity, also have a wider pool of talent to choose from when it comes to recruiting.
Flexible scheduling has become part of what workers are looking for in their comprehensive employee benefits packages. Employees will love wok, the employer will benefit from overall positive morale which is linked to increased productivity. Moreover, company will retain the best employees for the task.
(Taslim Ahammad, Assistant Professor, Bangabandhu Sheikh MujiburRahman Science and Technology University, Gopalganj, Bangladesh)
