There should be no doubt that the introduction of the Flexible Working (Procedural Requirements) Regulations (2002) triggered the start of a positive change in working practices in the United Kingdom. There have been many regulations recently concerning employment conditions, many of which have their source in the European Community. Typical examples include the Working Time Directive (WTD), introduced in 1998, which limited the number of hours to be worked to 48 per week, and the imposition of the National Minimum Wage (NMW) in 1999. While these regulations all form part of the UK’s employment law, there are subtle differences in how they are applied. For example, the National Minimum Wage applies to all workers who is working or seeking work, whereas the Working Time Directive is voluntary due to a mechanism whereby the worker can opt out. The application of the Flexible Working Regulations is for the most part optional for the employer. Only in a few circumstances concerning the care of children or disabled family members can the worker request a change to their working conditions. Even if these circumstances exist and a request is made, companies are only compelled to “seriously consider” it.
While no fair-minded employer would unreasonably refuse such a valid request, there are many who saw the regulations as a method of achieving some tangible benefits for their businesses. There are many ways to offer flexible working and some are more obvious than others.
In the majority of cases the work still takes place at the company premises so the flexible working options can be made available to all employees regardless of whether they have factory, office or Online Jobs.
The most common options revolve around doing the same work but varying the length of time spent doing it. These options would typically be part-time working, job sharing or the one which is used a lot in schools, term-time working. All of these can allow workers to achieve the necessary work/life balance by releasing time for them to have control over demanding issues in their domestic lives or to enjoy more leisure pursuits.
Other flexible working methods involve full-time working but alter the times at which the work is carried out. Flexitime is the most well-known of these, with many public sector employers using the system whereby staff can work a varying number of hours every day. Usually, a fixed working period applies, say 9.30am to 3.30 pm, but, beyond this, employees are allowed to work any hours within an expanded working day, say 7.00am to 7.00pm. This gives benefits to the administrative or information processing areas where there are mainly computer-based or Online Jobs and the type of work is regular rather than seasonal. Variations of this need for more hours to be worked at specific times include “annualised hours”, “compressed hours” and “staggered hours”. “Annualised hours” is quite self explanatory as it requires the worker to contract to a yearly, rather than weekly, number of hours to be worked. This might be handy to a retail Internet Business where there could be a seasonal nature to their trading. “Compressed hours” is more a weekly system and might involve working 4 days of 10 hours each rather than 5 days of 8 hours. “Staggered hours” is like a condensed version of shift working which would normally cover an extended working day rather than a full 24 hour period with, for example, some employees working from 7am to 3pm and others from 11am to 7pm. Again, this would suitan Internet Business where a sales or customer service function covering more than the average working day is needed.
To Work From Home is viewed as the most flexible of the options and is possibly the most complicated for an employer to introduce because of the limited number of roles that may be suitable for home working within their particular business. Also the employer will not want to risk losing some productivity if theemployees who want to Work From Home are not ideally suited to doing so, and many are not.
If flexible working is to be deemed a success then both employers and employees have to achieve some benefit from it. For some employees this could be as straightforward as having the option to finish or start work earlier or later if they should ever need to. Alternatively, being able to Work From Home to save on childcare costs or to care for an elderly relative can make a crucial difference to someone’s life. At the very least the employee should be grateful for the employer’s desire to create better working conditions for their workers.
By providing flexible working the employer will want to create a more loyal workforce yet still retain operational control when the business needs a short-termincrease in manpower. Ultimately, it might enable talented staff to continue working when a change in their personal lives takes palce which might otherwise have obliged them to stop working.
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