Flexible working is good for your health and wealth

Firstly let’s confirm what flexible working is, previously flexible working requests were only open to parents and carers but following the Modern Workplace consultation in June several years ago, the Government made it available to all. The Gov.uk website describes it as…

Flexible working is a way of working that ideally suits an employee’s needs, e.g. having flexible start and finish times, or working from home. And then goes on to define the many different ways of working flexibly;

Job sharing

Two people do one job and split the hours.

Working from home

It might be possible to do some or all of the work from home or anywhere else other than the normal place of work.

Part time

Working less than full-time hours (usually by working fewer days).

Compressed hours

Working full-time hours but over fewer days.

Flexitime

The employee chooses when to start and end work (within agreed limits) but works certain ‘core hours’, eg 10am to 4pm every day.

Annualised hours

The employee has to work a certain number of hours over the year but they have some flexibility about when they work. There are sometimes ‘core hours’ which the employee regularly works each week, and they work the rest of their hours flexibly or when there’s extra demand at work.

Staggered hours

The employee has different start, finish and break times from other workers.

Phased retirement

Default retirement age has been phased out and older workers can choose when they want to retire. This means they can reduce their hours and work part time.

 

Work-life balance

Flexible working requests are made by employees for a variety of reasons; a change in geographic distance in relation to the workplace, traffic issues, caring for a relative, cost of travel, medical conditions, attending professional study courses, childcare and bad weather to name the most common. Though not forgetting being more productive is often the reason cited for a request by people with more detailed or technical roles like web development and programming. I meet more people now who would request it just simply as it’s a personal preference; some people don’t want to conform to the early rise for the 9am start and would prefer their work day to end later as that’s their optimum working time. I was recently told by an MD that he couldn’t believe it, when a fairly new Millennial employee casually mentioned to him one day when they were out on an appointment, that she would quite like to come in to the office at 9.30 because of the traffic from now on. Though she didn’t go about the request in the right way for this particular leader or perhaps as most of us of a more mature generation would have expected, this MD told me she was great at her job, was a high potential employee, but he wouldn’t accommodate her request or even consider it, it was a definite no, so she left.

A recent Regus survey showed that occasionally working away from the main office is seen as a key factor by employees in achieving a good work-life balance, with 66% of respondents believing workers that have flexible working options are happier, and 62% stating they are more content now that they work outside the main office some of the time.

Employees are now legally allowed to request this and employers do need to treat their requests with genuine consideration. There are understandable reasons for rejecting requests often relating the specific nature of the job or perhaps the size of the business and these include;

• extra costs that will damage the business
• the work can’t be reorganised among other staff
• people can’t be recruited to do the work
• flexible working will affect quality and performance
• the business won’t be able to meet customer demand
• there’s a lack of work to do during the proposed working times
• the business is planning changes to the workforce

This is itself a grey area though as it can often be down to how well the individual asking is viewed by the business or their line manager. Often the individual views and attitudes held about the impacts of flexible working by those responsible for handling and agreeing requests have a bearing on the decision. How motivated are they to finding a workable solution, do they understand the work and role performed by the individual asking enough to make an informed decision? HR may be the facilitators of the request but they rarely decide on the individual arrangements agreed. I was once told by the chairman of a small consultancy firm that if he couldn’t see the consultants in the office then he didn’t believe they were working hard enough, and this was based on nothing more than a hunch. As you might imagine this created resentment and a feeling that they weren’t trusted or even truly respected as responsible individuals.

I have seen some employees, in my view with an initial reasonable request for flexible working declined several times with often unworkable or unfair suggestions proposed by the business as an alternative, such as negotiating that the employee take half an hour for lunch all week to accommodate an early finish on one day of the week, when they know they have rarely taken lunch in their entire time with the employer because of the high workload and lack of resource. And if the employee shares this, they are then ironically ‘told off’ for not looking after themselves.

Yes, if the employee is unhappy with their employers response to their requests they can discuss it with ACAS, appeal to the employer and if ultimately they are still unhappy they can take further action in the form of an employee tribunal. In most businesses though, the relationship and trust between the employee and employer has already broken down if it were to reach this point, so most employees are unlikely to pursue this course of action and just accept the best compromise available. For how long though is the big question. And is this really the most long term productive and profitable situation for the business? The employee-employer relationship has been tainted, the commitment and loyalty held by the employee previously is now damaged and no doubt weakened, and all for perhaps a request that just couldn’t be accommodated, even temporarily.

“I don’t think many employees will risk their work relationship for the sake of eight weeks’ pay compensation,” says Steve Williams, ACAS head of equality services.

Add up the potential loss of productivity by the now disillusioned employee, which could go on for months, even years and the costs associated with less goodwill by this employee to take on more, to help out at specific times when the business needed it due to staff sickness, the exceptional work load or other unforeseen situations that require the extra discretionary effort by engaged and loyal staff.

Or add up the cost of the less productive employee who is now disengaged and looking for another job and doing just what is required, the bare minimum, rather than the perhaps discretionary extra effort they did before when they were more motivated, the cost of recruiting their replacement, the training and on-boarding of the new individual, the downtime in this transition and perhaps even the potential tribunal costs and consequential damage to the reputation of the business to existing employees and potential new recruits for just being taken to a tribunal regardless of the outcome. Don’t underestimate the potential affect it may have on levels of employee engagement amongst other existing employees as well as your external employer brand and reputation with new hires and the ultimate success of your recruitment efforts.

In short, being unwilling to explore openly the possibility of different working arrangements in order to maintain, if not increase, employee effectiveness, willingness and loyalty can be very damaging and costly.

 

Culture change

A spokesman for the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, says:

“We want these reforms to bring about a culture change in Britain’s workplaces.
“Family-friendly policies and economic growth can go hand in hand. Flexible working really can help employers boost productivity and profits.”

In its impact assessment on the rollout of flexible working to all employees, the government estimates that in its first 10 years the new policy will bring overall economic benefits of about £475m. Most of that, it thinks, will come from increased productivity, lower labour turnover, and reduced absenteeism.

It is understandable why some companies do fear staff may not be as productive outside of the workplace. Or they may be concerned that if certain individuals have different working arrangements to those of other employees that this will cause inconvenience to the business, colleagues and customers and have a negative impact to productivity and ultimately profit. The truth is it really doesn’t have to. In reality if an employee has a reasonable request for flexible working, in most cases with open dialogue, an open mind and a bit of research by the decision makers an acceptable arrangement for all can be met. Rather than just an agreement that it will be reviewed ‘later’, a bit more proactive exploration on both sides of what is and isn’t working or might do, should be discussed along the way so that any obstacles identified to it becoming a permanent arrangement can be addressed and/or an alternative arrangement sought. This should be on a case by case basis with the wider business impact taken into account.

Sometimes informal arrangements make more sense, something most organisations have done for years; allowing certain individuals (or roles) to utilise specific flexible working arrangements that suit both the employee and employer. Be it working at another office or location periodically, working slightly different hours to accommodate rush hour traffic or childcare or other care issues or given certain circumstances like road-works or bad weather being able to work more flexibly, ultimately allows the employee to be more empowered and focused on the work, therefore more satisfied, hopefully less stressed and much more productive.

Providing that their job productivity is easily measured, they are accessible when needed and others are not having to alter their work arrangements too much to accommodate other’s needs, then it falls to the manager’s attitude and confidence in their staff’s productivity when they can’t physically see them. If this is an issue then often it is the managers lack of familiarity, experience or capability in how to properly manage staff and how to put performance measurements in place that needs addressing. Improved role-modelling or (business) cultural awareness will enable them to find workable solutions, evaluate productivity and performance effectively. I hope the days of people sitting at their desks in the office way past their finish time purely to seem committed to their job are behind us. When in fact we all know, if we ever did it ourselves or know staff that have, are often ‘busy’ doing personal activities such as online banking, or retail shopping as they don’t want to be in the first trench to leave too close to their contractual time either! Still so long as they are in the office they are being productive…aren’t they?

This article was jointly authored by Sharon Kennedy Principal Consultant of Engage & Prosper, Employee Engagement Specialists and Naysan Firoozmand  Managing Director Nordics and Netherlands for Ashridge HULT the worlds leading international business school and part of the renowned UK based Ashridge Business School. Please feel free to connect with either of us on LinkedIn.

 

Like what you’ve read? Sign up to our employee engagement newsletter to hear more, fresh from the blog.

Engage & Prosper is a UK based privately owned Employee Engagement Consultancy and Social Enterprise, on a mission to help organisations develop a highly productive and fulfilling workplace culture, with their people, through enhanced employee engagement strategies, fabulous and effective internal communications platforms and tailored reward and recognition programmes.

For more information on Engage & Prosper or to discover how we can help you achieve your organisational and people goals please call +44 (0) 330 223 0464 or find out more at www.engageandprosper.com