Flexible Work Arrangements

11 Key excerpts on "Flexible Work Arrangements"

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  Managing Social and Ethical Issues in Organizations

  • Stephen W. Gilliland, Dirk D. Steiner, Daniel P. Skarlicki(Authors)
  • 2017(Publication Date)
  • Information Age Publishing

    (Publisher)

  More than one in every three employees in federal government was working with a flexible sched-ule, while only one worker in seven was so employed in local government. The most radical change in working habits was the introduction of tele-work: working from home,on the road, or anywhere else outside the office. In effect, telework allows for both time and place to be flexible. In 2004, over 40 million Americans and 20 million Europeans teleworked (InnoVisions Canada, n.d.a, n.d.b). Clearly, flexible working arrangements are growing profusely, ensuing in an almost overwhelming presence in work life. However, before we con-tinue to review the factors that contribute to the spread of flexible working arrangements, let us outline the most popular alternatives. We present only the basic forms, but many variations and combinations have been and may further be created to increase flexibility. Figure 1.2. Full-time workers with flexible arrangements, by selected occupations. Source: BLS, 2002c 13.7 16.0 18.3 20.7 21.4 24.5 31.4 35.5 40.7 45.5 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 Executive Service/ Other Administrative support Operators Sales Protective service Professional speciality Precision production Technicians Farming Percent Flexible Working Arrangements 9 THE BASIC TYPES OF FLEXIBLE ARRANGEMENTS Flexible working arrangements vary from the widespread permanent part-time employment to the less popular hoteling variation, and from the vet-eran flexitime to the modern telework. The following briefly surveys all of the basic variations of FWA, namely: flexitime, compensatory time off, v-time, compressed work week, permanent part-time, job sharing, hoteling, and telework. Flexitime Flexible working hours (flexitime) is an arrangement that grants employ-ees certain freedom in choosing their times of arrival or departure but not in the total number of working hours. The organization usually defines the degree of variation possible.

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  The Flexible Workplace

  A Sourcebook of Information and Research

  • Christine Avery, Diane Zabel(Authors)
  • 2000(Publication Date)
  • Praeger

    (Publisher)

  CHAPTER 1 An Introduction to Flexible Work The twenty-first century workforce will be more female and more di- verse. In addition, there will be increased competition for talented workers. Since the publication of Workforce 2000 in 1987, the landmark report issued by the Hudson Institute, managers have been preparing for this new workforce by becoming more sensitive to work/family issues. Industry, both in the United States and abroad, has become increasingly concerned with the development of family-friendly poli- cies that help employees balance the demands of work and family. One important type of family-friendly benefit is workplace flexibility and alternatives to the traditional workweek. Many corporations, how- ever, are developing Flexible Work Arrangements for compelling eco- nomic reasons. Permitting employees to telecommute is less expensive than providing office space. In the United States the 1990 Federal Clean Air Act and state air-quality standards have induced companies to offer some type of telecommuting option to their employees. Many companies are already offering workplace flexibility. Flexible Work Arrangements include a range of options: flexible work schedules, com- pressed workweeks, job sharing, job exchanges, voluntary part-time work, phased retirement, telecommuting, and home-based work. 2 THE FLEXIBLE WORKPLACE Technology has transformed the way we work. Personal comput- ers, fax machines, and other technological innovations have already created the "electronic cottage" as a workplace. Workplace flexibility has not only been adapted to manufacturing settings, but it has also been implemented in the service industries as well as the service pro- fessions. Higher education is also beginning to recognize the impor- tance of new ways of working. The Wharton School of Business (University of Pennsylvania) has incorporated work-life issues into its required curriculum (Estess 1996).

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  Work and Family in the New Economy

  • Samantha K. Ammons, Erin L. Kelly, Samantha K. Ammons, Erin L. Kelly(Authors)
  • 2015(Publication Date)
  • Emerald Group Publishing Limited

    (Publisher)

  Discussions of flexibility led to many more approvals than denials of use, and also increased the likelihood of subsequent discussions occurring, indicating that promoting discussions of Flexible Work Arrangements can be a path toward expanding use. Originality The study identifies specific factors that can lead managers to support exploration of flexible work arrangement use. Keywords: Flexible schedules; telework; supportive supervisor behaviors; alternate work arrangements Expanding access to Flexible Work Arrangements (FWAs) is perhaps the most often cited means to enhance work-life reconciliation. These arrange-ments enable workers to reconfigure scheduling, placement, or volume of work outside of traditional on-site full-time standard shifts. However, access to options is unequally distributed among industry sectors, within industry sectors, across work-units within organizations, and among indivi-duals within work-units. As a consequence, the amply documented benefits that flexible work offers in the harmonization of work and family lives can best be characterized as “uneven,” with some workers having multiple options to bend work to fit their family and others having few or none. A full understanding of the factors that account for this variation has yet to be developed. FWAs take many forms, including alternate schedule assignments (variations in starting and ending times, work days, and work weeks), flexible place assignments (adjusting work locations), or reduced work assignments (shorter hours in return for lower pay or job sharing). Manager dispositions can be as important (and in some circumstances more impor-tant) than formal policies in determining the conditions in which FWA use is supported or denied ( Breaugh & Frye, 2008 ; McNamara, Pitt-Catsouphes, 302 STEPHEN SWEET ET AL.

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  Mass Career Customization

  Aligning the Workplace With Today's Nontraditional Workforce

  • Cathleen Benko, Anne Weisberg(Authors)
  • 2007(Publication Date)
  • Harvard Business Review Press

    (Publisher)

  THREE Why Flexible Work Arrangements Are Not the Answer What I dream of is an art of balance. —Henri Matisse W hen it comes to our lives and our careers, more of us are thinking like Matisse. We envision lives that artfully balance a passion for work and for personal interests, and more of us are trying to find ways to pursue these dreams. Formal Flexible Work Arrangements have been a first step in our attempts. They provide options other than the traditional work-place expectation that employees will work continuously and full-time and do so consistently in the office. But by focusing on relatively short-term personal situations while ignoring longer-term career implications, FWAs mainly have served as way stations 57 in career paths, sidelining—and even derailing—the careers of FWA program participants. Major companies have had FWA policies since the 1990s, and some have had them for more than twenty-five years. We refer here to the formal FWA policies and programs that allow employees to work outside an organization’s normal requirements and career paths (see table 3-1). Organizations have also responded with in-formal flexibility, enabling employees to leave work early to coach the soccer team or arrive a few hours late to accommodate a doc-tor’s appointment, or in other ways provide occasional adjust-ments in work schedule and sometimes even work location.

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  HBR Guide to Work-Life Balance

  • Harvard Business Review(Author)
  • 2019(Publication Date)
  • Harvard Business Review Press

    (Publisher)

  SECTION THREE

  Explore Flexible Work Arrangements

  Passage contains an image

  CHAPTER 10

  Winning Support for Flexible Work

  by Amy Gallo

  Many professionals seek Flexible Work Arrangements to accommodate lives that don’t mesh with a 9-to-5 day. Yet few companies have official policies or programs for alternative schedules—and just as few managers are willing or equipped to provide them for members of their teams. This doesn’t mean you should give up on the idea of flextime if it would help you cut down a lengthy commute or avoid burnout. It just means that the onus is on you to propose a plan that works for you, your boss, and your company.

  What the Experts Say

  Before you pursue a flexible schedule, recognize that you’re likely to be bucking long-held conventions. “Traditionally, managers were reluctant to have people work remotely because of lack of trust: Are you really working, or are you eating bonbons with your friend?” explains Stewart D. Friedman, founding director of the Wharton School’s Work/Life Integration Project. Even those bosses who trust their employees worry about appearing to favor certain people or allowing productivity to decline.

  Still, some managers and organizations are reaping the benefits of nontraditional schedules. Research from Lotte Bailyn, MIT management professor and coauthor of Beyond Work-Family Balance , shows that when employees have the flexibility they need, they meet goals more easily, they’re absent or tardy less often, and their morale goes up. By focusing on these upsides and thoughtfully framing your request around them, you greatly increase your chances of getting approval for an alternative work arrangement.

  Define What You Want

  The first step is to figure out what you’re trying to accomplish. Is your goal to spend more time with family? Less time at the office? Or do you want to remove distractions so you can focus on bigger, longer-term projects? Once you’re clear on your goal, decide how you can achieve it while still doing your job effectively. Options include a compressed workweek, a job share, working from home, and taking a sabbatical. Of course, not every job is suited for a flexible arrangement. Before you make a proposal, think carefully about the impact your wished-for schedule will have on your boss, your team, and your performance.

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  Flexible Working in Organisations

  A Research Overview

  • Clare Kelliher, Lilian M. de Menezes(Authors)
  • 2019(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  approach were included in the measure of family-friendliness, meaning that flexible working arrangements were bundled with childcare and other practices that were targeted at parents. Furthermore, some authors differentiated between regular and irregular flexible working arrangements, while others discriminated between formal and informal arrangements, the amount of actual choice available to the employee or the degree to which the arrangement could be customised. Similar variations in measures and definitions were also observed with respect to types of flexible working arrangements, as shown in the second part of the table, and are consistent with observations from a recent review of the literature that was restricted to examining telecommuting (Allen, Golden and Shockley, 2015). In summary, taking into account the variance in what has been measured in the literature, there is a need to be careful in interpreting and making generalisations from findings.

  It is noteworthy that the research in relation to flexible working has emerged in a number of identifiable phases. Figure 3.1 illustrates the evolution of this research. Early interest in the 1970s was concerned with attempting to assess the impact of flexitime on worker performance. From the late 1980s onwards studies began to focus on remote working when developments in information technology enabled greater working away from the workplace. The late 1990s and the 2000s saw interest emerging in the use of ‘family-friendly practices’ addressing the provision of flexible working arrangements as part of programmes designed to assist employees achieve a better work–life balance. More recently we have seen a concern to evaluate the extant evidence, with a number of literature reviews and meta-analyses being published, along with greater examination of factors mediating the relationship between flexible working arrangements and performance-related outcomes.

  In the next sections an overview of the accumulated body of evidence on the likely outcomes from the offering and uptake of flexible working arrangements will be presented. In reporting the findings, we consider a causal chain from management practices to performance, as represented in several recent studies of the management practice performance nexus (e.g. Wood, Van Veldhoven, Croon and de Menezes, 2012). As shown in Figure 3.2

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  The Boomer Retirement Time Bomb

  How Companies Can Avoid the Fallout from the Coming Skills Shortage

  • Donald L. Venneberg, Barbara Welss Eversole(Authors)
  • 2010(Publication Date)
  • Praeger

    (Publisher)

  Working at home can also reduce the number of distractions that employees face in the office and can help employees work at the times when they are most pro- ductive. For example, if older workers like to work early in the morning, they start working long before the office opens up. It is also an advantage for the worker as commuting costs are reduced. According to SHRM’s Workplace Flexibility in the 21st Century report, respondents noted these potential benefits: ability to recruit tal- ent from different pools of workers, an increased amount of diversity in the workforce (for example, workers who are housebound), and sat- isfaction with the job can be increased as well as loyalty to the organi- zation (also known as organizational commitment). Flexible working means more time spent in their communities, may increase employees’ productivity, a reduction in using paid time off for nonwork tasks, and reducing workplace related stress. Finally, when an organization offers flexible work arrangements, it may be able to retain workers who might otherwise need to leave the organization. Telecommuting can be offered by a company on an ad hoc basis, part-time basis, or full time. Offering telecommuting on an ad hoc basis is the most common. According to SHRM’s survey report, 45 percent of organizations surveyed in 2009 offered ad hoc telecommuting as a ben- efit. This arrangement is typically offered to an employee the organiza- tion specifically wants to retain. For example, if a valued employee whom the organization depended on decided that he or she wanted to retire, the manager might suggest an ad hoc arrangement to keep the worker employed. An older worker may wish to relocate to warmer climates, but if offered a chance to relocate and still be able to contrib- ute remotely, may choose to continue to work rather than retire. It is important to note that ad hoc arrangements are provided solely at the discretion of the individual manager.

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  Integrating Work and Family

  Challenges and Choices for a Changing World

  • Jeffrey H. Greenhaus, Saroj Parasuraman(Authors)
  • 1997(Publication Date)
  • Praeger

    (Publisher)

  Gigi readily admits that had she continued in her old schedule the stresses in her life probably would have continued to grow, eventually resulting in her leaving the organization and seeking a more flexible job. The flexible work arrangement has been very positive for everyone involved: Gigi, her children and family life, her supervisor, and the organization. Gigi was able to keep a job she enjoyed, meet the demands of her family life, and spend more time with her children. Her supervisor is satisfied with the work arrangement because Gigi is very conscientious and completes her work. The organization has benefited because the flex- ible work arrangement has enabled the retention of a skilled and valued employee. Orig- inally, Gigi had been a secretary, but she has since been promoted twice and is now part of the managerial staff. Cost Savings In cases where employees work at home permanently, significant financial savings are possible for the employer due to the need to maintain less office space. Gus Bender, second vice president of data processing for the Travelers Co., estimates that with cost savings, related expenditures, and productivity gains, the company saves as much as $11,600 per telecommuter per year. 15 Part- time telecommuting programs may also result in cost benefits from the ability to retain highly skilled workers who, due to such factors as family demands, health problems, or distance, can no longer work in an office environment. Allowing these people to work from an alternate location allows the company to increase retention and minimize the costs associated with hiring and training. Environmental Concerns When the concept of telecommuting was first introduced, it was estimated that for every 1 % of the workforce who gave up urban commuting by car, the United States would save 5.4 million barrels of oil per year. If one in seven commuters opted to work full time from home, the United States would have had no need to import oil.

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  Managing Boundaries in Organizations

  Multiple Perspectives

  • N. Paulsen, T. Hernes, N. Paulsen, T. Hernes(Authors)
  • 2003(Publication Date)
  • Palgrave Macmillan

    (Publisher)

  While flexible employment contracts is the favorite topic of employer associations and private business, flexible hours is the preferred topic on the agenda of labor unions and leftist politicians. The latter connects to, and is dressed in the language of, a continuous con- cern for the quality of working life, placing primary stress on flexibility for workers, not of them. Flexible working hours is seen as an important part of a more democratic, productive, and fulfilling mode of governing work, compatible with a more expanded notion of the role of the worker. It is generally regarded as promoting women’s participation in the labor market, whilst flexible and contingent contracts are viewed as threaten- ing to gender equality (Garsten and Turtinen 2000). This chapter addresses the issue of social boundaries among flexible employees, defined here as temporary employees working through tem- porary staffing agencies. By no means does this pragmatic definition exhaust the variety of flexible employees in contemporary labor mar- kets. But it does provide a particular empirical material “to think with”; one that is suitable for the variety of ways in which its actors conti- nuously challenge established organizational boundary-lines. In rela- tion to employment contracts, flexibility is understood to mean work arrangements other than full-time, permanent contracts. Here, we are interested in a more limited category in the flexible workforce; employ- ees who are involved in what is loosely referred to as “agency work.” Boundaries in Flexible Work Arrangements 245 246 Christina Garsten This means that a temporary employment agency places an employee on short-term contracts, during which he, or more commonly she, is assigned to work for and under the control of the establishment making use of his or her services. This category of employment constitutes a small proportion of the labor force, but one that is growing in importance and numbers on a global scale.

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  International Review of Industrial and Organizational Psychology 2003, Volume 18

  • Cary Cooper, Ivan T. Robertson, Cary Cooper, Ivan T. Robertson(Authors)
  • 2003(Publication Date)
  • Wiley

    (Publisher)

  Other studies have suggested that the impact of flexible working arrangements on organizational outcomes may depend less on the objective extent of flexibility than on psychological factors such as preferred working schedules (Ball, 1997; Barnett, Gareis, & Brennan, 1999; Krausz et al., 2000; Martens, Nijhuis, van Boxtel, and Knottnerus, 1999) or the extent to which flexibility provides autonomy and control (Tausig & Fenwick, 2001; Thomas & Ganster, 1995), as discussed later in this chapter. The possibility of having too much flexibility is, however, raised in re- search focusing on teleworking, that is, working from home for some or all the week, which has produced mixed results. There is some evidence of positive work-related outcomes such as higher job satisfaction, organizational commitment, and lower turnover among teleworkers than office-based workers and of enhanced flexibility and integration of work and non-work roles in some circumstances (Ahrentzen, 1990; Dubrin, 1991; Frolick, Wilkes, & Urwiler, 1993; Olsen, 1987; Rowe & Bentley, 1992). However, other research reports negative outcomes such as lower job satisfaction and organizational commitment, less positive relationships with managers and colleagues, greater work–family conflict and more tendency to overwork such as working during vacations (Olsen, 1987; Prutchno et al., 2000). Many studies imply that teleworking can be a double-edged sword with the potential for both positive and negative outcomes (Hill, Hawkins, & Miller, 1996; Steward, 2000; Sullivan & Lewis, 2001). The tendency to over- working may be regarded as symptomatic of the increased blurring of work and non-work boundaries that appears to be becoming widespread, facili- tated by developments in information and communication technologies (Haddon, 1992; Steward, 2000; Sullivan & Lewis, 2001).

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  New Challenges for European Resource Management

  • C. Brewster, W. Mayrhofer, M. Morley, C. Brewster, W. Mayrhofer, M. Morley(Authors)
  • 2016(Publication Date)
  • Palgrave Macmillan

    (Publisher)

  101 Dirk Buyens et al. more and more supple (Reveley, 1995; Anonymous, 1996; Wallace, 1997). Sliding working times, a flexible working week or overtime are some examples of the working day becoming more flexible. According to the alliance of Belgian companies the number of wage-earners per- forming irregular hours is increasing every year (VBO Bulletin, 1997). When we look at the Belgian figures, we see that 46 per cent of the participating organisations makes use of flexible working hours/time. Almost half of the participating organisations (46 per cent) increased their use of this kind of flexible working arrangement over the last three years. In 52 per cent of the organisations the use of this method stayed the same over the last 3 years. Only 2 per cent of the participating organisations decreased their use of flexible working hours/time over the last three years. Home-based working and teleworking Home and teleworking, sometimes also called `flexiplace', have been promoted as the working method of the future (England, 1996; Raghuram, 1996; Guthrie 1997; Nilles 1997). Among the factors driving the growth of telecommuting are economic trends towards downsizing, increasing market competition, faster and better technology, and a greater emphasis on hiring and retaining qualified workers (Anon- ymous, 1995). Information and communication technology provides organisations with a whole range of new possibilities for performing work and structuring the organisation (Lindstrom, et al., 1997). Tech- nology can be used by companies so that the work doesn't have to be carried out at the office or in the immediate environment of the office. Employees don't have to waste their time and energy in traffic jams, which fosters their efficiency. Research conducted in the US has shown that advanced technology and its use has a small role in telework (England 1996). According to England (1996), telework has more to do with HR planning and task design than with technology.

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