Flexible Working Arrangements

Flexible Working Arrangements
A Future of Work

• The need for flexible working is growing.
• The changing context of work is creating new
challenges and opportunities that companies
can only meet with the sort of agility that
flexible working arrangements provide.
• In order to convince companies to embrace
or extend flexibility, the benefits must be
clear.

• Flexible working arrangements allow
companies to meet present and future
challenges by creating choice,
accommodating generations, enabling
complexity, and creating agility.
• But even if the benefits of flexibility are
widely known, an understanding of how best
to implement flexible working arrangements is
crucial in avoiding difficulties.

The Changing Context of Work
• The context in which work takes place is
changing rapidly, creating new challenges and
opportunities for companies is essential.
• Traditional ways of working are no longer
valid, as the landscape of work is redefined
by advanced technologies, new societal
values, changing demographics, and rapid
globalisation.

The Changing Context of Work
• The external business context has changed
significantly since the 1980s.
• In terms of technology, society, demography
and globalisation, a number of shifting trends
have created new challenges and opportunities
for companies.

Advanced Technologies
• More Complex Work: the nature of work is
becoming more complex and technology-
dependent, creating a need for employees to
manage their own working styles and time.
• Increased Collaboration: new technology
platforms are facilitating greater collaboration
and enabling new forms of virtual working.
• Disrupting Hierarchies: social technologies
encourage network-based work in place of
traditional hierarchical structures.

The nature of work is becoming more complex and technology-
dependent, creating a need for employees to manage their own
working styles

New Societal Values
• A Democratic Push: there is an increased
desire for employees to be able to create work
and develop skills that are personally
meaningful.
• Autonomy and Choice: individuals want to
be empowered to create their own working
styles, and to feel that working relationships
are ‘adult-adult’ rather than ‘parent-child’.

There is an increased desire for employees to be
able to create work and develop skills

Individuals want to be empowered to
create their own working styles

Changing Demographics
• Older Workers: increased longevity means
that employees can work for longer, requiring
companies to accommodate an ageing
workforce or face losing important knowledge
and skills.
• Multiple Generations: up to five generations
are expected to operate within a company,
requiring an understanding of the different
needs and aspirations of each.

Increased longevity means that employees can work
for longer, requiring companies to accommodate an
ageing workforce

Rapid Globalisation
• Customer Expectations: a growing global
market presents companies with new
opportunities, but capturing these opportunities
and meeting customer demands requires a 24/7
culture.
• Sustainable Growth: expansion cannot continue
to come at the expense of increased resource use,
with the needs of a low-carbon economy
necessitating more agile ways of working.

meeting customer demands requires a
24/7 culture

needs of a low-carbon economy necessitating
more agile ways of working

Rapid Globalisation
• In combination, these four forces are
creating an urgent need for flexibility.
• Each force represents a growing level of
complexity and meeting this complexity
requires a more agile approach to work.

Growing level of complexity requires a more agile
approach to work

• In the context of an increasingly sophisticated
business environment, we see flexibility as
essential to the future viability of both large
and small organisations.
• Flexibility allows companies to confront
complexity by providing a diverse offer to
employees.

• Current flexibility arrangements can be
anything from a formal offer to all
employees, to an informal and individual
negotiation between employee and employer.

• The most frequently cited forms of flexible working
were:
• Part-time working
• Home working
• Job shares
• Variable hours
• Compressed hours
• Sabbatical / Career breaks
• Staggered start / end times
• Dual roles
• Flexible Benefits (buying / selling holiday time)

Types of Flexible Work Arrangements
• There are many types of flexible work
arrangements, and choosing the right one
can make a big difference in your office.
• Whether you’re a manager or a job seeker, it’s
important to know the differences between the
various types of flex arrangements.

Types of Flexible Work Arrangements

1. Telecommuting
• Telecommuting refers to a job that’s
performed remotely only part of the time.
• It can be a full-time position, however since
telecommuting usually means employees come
into the office semi-regularly, the workers in
this arrangement usually live locally.

2. Remote Working
• Remote work is entirely performed away from the
office. It can be a permanent position or
temporary. Since the employee doesn’t have to
come into the office at all, they can live and
work anywhere around the world.
• It’s a might be a good option for businesses
looking to broaden their applicant pool and for
job descriptions that don’t require in-person work.
Video conferencing and consistent communication
are keys to success.

3. Condensed Workweeks
• While as an employer, you may want to maintain a
40-hour work week, you can be flexible on where
and when those hours are spent.
• Consider a condensed work week, which equates to
four 10-hour days and Fridays off. For many job
seekers, it’s the ultimate schedule.
• However, it’s only suitable for workers who can remain
productive throughout long work days. Businesses can
also lower overhead with a three-day weekend, but it’s
difficult to implement for an entire organization.

4. Customized Working Hours
• Allowing workers to choose their own work
hours (within reason) is a great perk—and free
for an organization to offer.
• Some workers are morning people, others have
more energy in the evening, and some simply
want to avoid rush hour or pick up their children
at a certain time.
• Offering workers to choose their hours in a
window (such as starting anywhere from 6 a.m.
– 9 a.m.) is a popular and relatively simple
system.

5. Part-time Positions
• Not every position warrants full-time work.
Offering part-time positions can help increase
productivity.
• However, if an employer wants to be certain to
keep attracting the highest quality employees,
they may want to think about offering the same
benefits.
• Perks and benefits packages are some of the
most common reasons why employees leave or
don’t pursue a job.

6. Job Sharing
• Job sharing is somewhat like part-time work. The
system consists of two or more part-time workers
sharing a full-time job.
• It’s not among the most common flexible work
arrangements, but it can be the right fit for some positions
and businesses.
• For the employee, it’s a part-time job, which might be all
they want or have the bandwidth for. For the employer,
it’s the equivalent of full-time work without offering
benefits. However, managers still need to supervise more
than one person for a single job. Implementation
requires negotiation with each worker.

7. Flexible Vacation Time
• There have been increasing headlines about
businesses offering unlimited paid time off.
• Of course, this comes with plenty of
requirements. Being more generous with vacation
time requires a culture that rewards a performance
quality rather than hours worked.
• Regardless of what type of arrangement a
business offers, there needs to be a current
flexible work arrangements in place. Flexibility
requires practice, patience, and a little trial
and error.

Benefits of Flexible Working
• Benefits of flexible working are still not
clearly defined, and that some companies are
still unwilling or unable to expand the remit of
flexible arrangements beyond a certain point
for fear of losing competitiveness.
• More research is therefore needed to outline
the tangible benefits of extending flexible
working.

The Benefits of Flexible Working
Arrangements
• Flexible working arrangements address
both the business context and the employee
context of work, and provide a number of
benefits that meet the challenges that the four
forces present.

Flexible working arrangements address both the
business context and the employee context of work

The Benefits of Flexible Working
Arrangements

Increased Employee Productivity
• Flexibility has a substantial impact on the capacity
for companies to be agile.
• Flexibility enables employees to operate in an
environment that best suits their personal working
styles and allows companies to respond to
fluctuations in workload.

Increased Employee Productivity

Effective Virtual Teams
• As work becomes more sophisticated, more
geographically distributed, and more
technology-dependent, the importance of
virtual teams will increase rapidly.
• Flexible working supports a more significant
shift towards un-tethered work, in which
employees collaborate in large expert groups,
and coordinate their own workflow

• By connecting specialists in self-managed team
environments, the role of leaders and
managers becomes less an act of command-
and-control and more an act of orchestration.
• Given the increasing sophistication of work, these
more fluid network-based structures are crucial to
maintaining competitiveness and are best suited to
the increasing complexity of client demands.

• The shift to virtual team environments also
has a positive effect on performance.
• The ability to work flexibly, particularly
regarding home working, necessitates a focus
on measuring employee output, which in turn
encourages employees to work more
productively

Meeting Customer Needs
• Flexibility creates opportunities to confront
an increasingly global environment by
enhancing business continuity and customer
coverage.
• Flexibility around when and where to work
creates greater opportunity to operate across
locations and time zones, and improves access
to new markets.

Meeting Customer Needs
• In an increasingly complex external environment, in
which customers and clients demand 24/7 coverage,
it is essential that companies are able to leverage the
flexibility of their employees to fill in gaps and provide
a more distributed and dynamic service.
• The traditional office-based model of work is incapable
of accommodating the level of agility that is expected
in the modern age unless a company has a tangible
presence across the globe.
• Flexible arrangements allow employees from one
location to serve a global market.

Matching Customer Expectations
• Evolving customer expectations are producing
a demand for 24/7 access to goods and services.
Even for companies operating for target
customers, there is no longer an assumption that
business activity and consumption should fall
within the brackets established by 9-to-5 business.
Customers increasingly want to be able to shop
and access goods and services at a time that suits
them, and are more frequently exhibiting a
desire for 24-hour service.

Matching Customer Expectations

Reduced Business Travel
• Flexible working has a significant effect on
business travel, with associated reductions in
operational costs and carbon emissions.
• By creating a culture that reduces the dependence
on face-to-face meetings, flexible working
enforces a more agile operational model that
brings people together more quickly and at lower
cost.
• And as the authenticity of virtual meetings
increases, the comparative benefits of face-to-
face interaction will continue to diminish.

Agile Infrastructure
• Flexible working can create tangible
infrastructural savings by reducing office
occupancy.

• For one company, each London-based desk
reduction represents a £10,000 p.a. saving,
while another claimed that a move to
flexible working has created a 20% reduction
in real-estate costs.
• Flexibility also encourages a shift to cloud-
based software, which one company
predicted would create a 38% reduction in
data centre energy expenditure by 2020.

• Now that many desk-based roles can be performed
from any location and at any time, offices are often
best utilised as collaborative and open environments
to encourage physical interaction.
• The move towards shared spaces and hot desks
represents a more dynamic approach to work, where
networks of employees come together in ad hoc teams
to complete specific task-based projects.
• In this context, flexibility is crucial, as it allows the
physical organisation of work to mirror its process.

Now that many desk-based roles can be performed from any
location and at any time, offices are often best utilised as
collaborative and open environments

Increased Engagement
• The ability to accommodate the desire for
greater choice at work is often the first cited
when determining whether or not to
implement flexible arrangements.
• Many employees want to work flexibly as it
allows greater work/life balance, which in turn
leads to greater engagement and higher levels
of loyalty.

Greater Retention
• Presenting employees with choice also
increases retention by providing alternative
ways of working to those who may have
considered leaving the company.
• This has substantial economic benefits given
the cost of turnover and disruption to client
experience.

Greater Retention
• Flexibility also allows companies to retain
talent throughout times of economic hardship
by offering options that can save money while
providing employees with time off or reduced
working hours.

More Senior Women
• The ability to work flexibly is particularly
important among working mothers and
those returning from maternity leave, and
often produces an increase in the number of
women who reach the most senior levels.

Attraction and Retention of Senior
Executives
• The desire for flexibility, often seen as a
primary concern for employees in the early
stages of their career, is increasingly
becoming an issue for executives at the most
senior levels of the organisation.

Attraction and Retention of Senior
Executives

Flexible Retirement
• Flexible working arrangements ensure
greater rates of retention among employees
nearing retirement, who may instead choose
to move into different roles or embrace
more flexible working arrangements as an
alternative to full retirement.

Flexible Retirement
• This is important in a knowledge economy,
in which much of the value of an employee
is held as tacit knowledge.
• Ensuring that older workers remain associated
with the company helps retain this knowledge
while providing an ageing population with
employment options.

Generational Working Styles
• Flexible working enables different
generations to exercise control over how
they structure their roles.
• Each of these generations will have different
expectations on where, when, and how to
work. Providing flexibility is crucial as it
offers an opportunity to enable working
styles that can respond to the needs of each
generation.

Top Companies offering flexible working
arrangements
• Philips, India
• No parking? Work from home
• Electronics firm Philips , lets employees who drive to
work and doesn’t get space for parking , go back and
work from home.

The Future Group, India
• Traffic dictates office hours
• Future Group allows people to come in
between 8:30 am and 10:30 am and leave
after eight hours of working. Logic - They
change work hours to flexi timings and that
gave people lot of relief from traffic.

Future Group allows people to come in between
8:30 am and 10:30 am

SAP Labs, India
• Come and leave whenever you want
• SAP labs doesn’t monitor entry and exit
timings .
• Women employees are entitled to twenty weeks
of paid maternity leave with an additional
sixteen weeks of extended maternity leave with
loss of pay or a part time work option.

KPMG, India
• Work from anywhere
• KPMG India has an agile working policy,
which allows people to "work from
anywhere" be it a client location or home.

Microsoft, India
• Buses and cabs
• Microsoft- India, has a fleet of buses for point-
to-point pick up and drop of employees within
the campus and cabs for home pick up and
drop after office hours.

Infosys, India
• Buses , cycles and cabs
• So that their employees doesn’t have any
problem in reaching office at time .

Google, India
• When it comes to facilities, working
environment and benefits, work-life balance,
very few companies can compete with Google.
• Employees have access to fully equipped gyms
across offices in India with trainers and
customised health programs.
• Employees can play table tennis, pool, football,
air hockey and other games in the recreation area,
or go to one of the several sleep pods for a quick
nap.

Google, India
• Food at Google offices is another attraction.
Three meals and unlimited snacks from the
cafeteria are totally free of cost. Meals are made
as healthy as possible along with an elaborate
menu.
• Women’s empowerment is another focus area.
Google offers academic scholarships to future
leaders in technology and supporting employee
resource groups like Women@Google.

Marriott Hotels, India
• Marriott calls it employees ‘associates’.
• On their birthdays or anniversaries, the
hotel employees are allowed a meal for six
in any hotel or a stay to experience their
own hospitality at its best.
• Access to a gym, recreation, discount on food
and beverages, room stay, assignments locally
and internationally, international placements
and health insurance are other benefits.

Amazon, India
• In Hyderabad, Amazon has a fleet of AC
cabs, all sedans and SUVs. Almost a mini
Uber.
• Employees can opt out to get transport
allowance.

Cisco, India
• With a global workforce Cisco is working in
every time zone around the world.
• In annual surveys , employees repeatedly say
workplace flexibility is one of the best thing about
working at Cisco.
• Employee uses collaborative technologies reduces
travel, carbon emissions, and travel costs while
increasing employee productivity and work-life
balance.
• 91% of employees say their managers support
their efforts to balance work and personal life.

Adobe, India
• Adobe doesn’t impose restrictions on the
working timings.
• Free to work at your convenience keeping
productivity levels in mind. It has a fully
functional gym, cricket pitch, half basketball
court, 3 foosball tables, 4 table tennis tables,
carom, chess and of course a pool table.
• Lunch and dinner is on company’s behalf.
• Adobe has a visiting doctor on campus,
comprehensive medical and life insurance
policies, cultural events and parties.

Successful People Who have Flexible
Work Arrangements
• Richard Branson
• Richard Branson is the billionaire chairman of Virgin
Group
• Richard Branson says he's never worked out of an
office, and he never will.
• "We like to give people the freedom to work where
they want, safe in the knowledge that they have the
drive and expertise to perform excellently, whether
they at their desk or in their kitchen,"
-Branson

Richard Branson
chairman of Virgin Group

Work Arrangements
• Amazon's James Hamilton
• Amazon's star engineer James Hamilton works from a boat
and occasionally telecommutes from Hawaii.
• James Hamilton is in charge of Amazon's $4.5 billion tech
infrastructure business. He makes sure Amazon Web Services
stay up and running so thousands of sites, from Pinterest to
Reddit, can function.
• Hamilton works mostly from a 52-foot yacht, Dirona.
Occasionally he bikes to Amazon's headquarters, but he isn't
required to be in the office.

Work Arrangements
• Jeff Hyman, CEO of Retrofit
• Works primarily from home
• Jeff Hyman is the CEO and founder of Retrofit, a
personal training and weight-loss company that
has raised $11 million from venture capitalists
and employees nearly 50 people full-time.
• He works primarily from home now, although he
did have an office job when he was the head of
marketing at Dyson.
• "Retrofit CEO Jeff Hyman and Retrofit work
approximately 80% from home and 20% in the
office.

Work Arrangements
• Larry Ellison, CEO Oracle
• Billionaire Larry Ellison lives a lavish
lifestyle, and he hasn't had to have a desk job
in a long time.
• He works from all over the world, from the
Hawaiian island he owns, Lanai, to his
collection of mansions.

Work Arrangements
• Rafat Ali, Skift and Paid Content founder
• Rafat Ali uses his dinner table to get work
done, overlooking Manhattan from 40 floors
up.
• Rafat Ali works from the dinner table from in
his 40th floor home that overlooks New York
City.

Rafat Ali,
Skift and Paid Content founder

Success People Who have Flexible Work
Arrangements
• Matt Drudge, Drudge Report.
• Matt Drudge, the man behind Drudge
Report, has a home office.
• Matt Drudge generates more than $1 million
annually from his news site, Drudge Report.
• He runs the business from his home office,
originally in Hollywood and then in Miami.

Work Arrangements
• Craig Newmark, Craigslist
• Craig Newmark primarily works from
home and takes lots of pictures of birds.
• Craig Newmark, the mastermind behind
Craigslist, primarily works from home.
"I overlook a small forested area and bird feeders
and bird baths, which attract bird and squirrel
visitors,"

Work Arrangements
• Jeff Weiner, LinkedIn CEO
• Jeff Weiner doesn't work from home, but he
steps out of the office frequently to do work
over long walks.
• While LinkedIn CEO Jeff Weiner doesn't work
from home, he takes a lot of time out of his day to
go on 30-minute walks around LinkedIn's
headquarters where he holds business meetings.
Steve Jobs used to do this too.

Conclusion
• The context of work is changing rapidly.
• The forces of technology, society, demography
and globalisation are creating new challenges
and opportunities for companies.
• Yet meeting the challenges and leveraging the
opportunities of the future requires agility.
Flexible working arrangements allow companies
to begin to create more agile working
environments.

Terminology
• Work Life Balance
• Work–life balance is a term commonly used
to describe the balance that a working
individual needs between time allocated for
work and other aspects of life. Areas of life
other than work–life can include personal
interests, family and social or leisure activities

Terminology
• Freedom at Workplace
• The way we define work is changing. Freedom in
the workplace can be the ability to keep non-
traditional hours, work from home, take unlimited
vacation days, exercise creativity in how to approach
immediate job goals

Terminology
• Remote Working
• Remote work is a working style that allows
professionals to work outside of a traditional
office environment.
• It is based on the concept that work does not
need to be done in a specific place to be
executed successfully.

Terminology
• Flex Time
• Flextime is a flexible hours schedule that
allows workers to alter workday start and
finish times.

References
• Flexible Work Arrangements
• https://www.inc.com/encyclopedia/flexible-work-arrangements.html
• Flexible working arrangements
• https://www.fairwork.gov.au/employee-entitlements/flexibility-in-the-workplace/flexible-
working-arrangements
• Flexible Working: The Way Of The Future
• https://www.forbes.com/sites/joyburnford/2019/05/28/flexible-working-the-way-of-the-
future/#7a0faad34874
• The Benefits of Flexible Working Arrangements
• https://www.bc.edu/content/dam/files/centers/cwf/individuals/pdf/benefitsCEOFlex.pdf
• Types of Flexible Work Arrangements
• https://hrdailyadvisor.blr.com/2017/02/16/types-flexible-work-arrangements/
• Which companies in India offer flexible working arrangements?
• https://www.quora.com/Which-companies-in-India-offer-flexible-working-arrangements
• 9 Successful People Who Work From Home
• https://www.businessinsider.com/successful-people-who-work-from-home-2013-
3#amazons-star-engineer-james-hamilton-works-from-a-boat-and-occasionally-
telecommutes-from-hawaii-2

Flexible Working Arrangements

Recommended

Recommended

More Related Content

What's hot

What's hot (20)

Similar to Flexible Working Arrangements

Similar to Flexible Working Arrangements (20)

More from GAURAV. H .TANDON

More from GAURAV. H .TANDON (20)

Recently uploaded

Recently uploaded (20)

Flexible Working Arrangements