A longer official proposal

FLEXIBLE WORKING HOURS

An Initial study of ABC Ltd

By

Swapan Chakraborty

An initial study

 

Objective

To identify the factors involved in introducing flexible working hours, to examine their benefits and disadvantages and to recommend the best approach to take.

Summary

At present, almost all employees of ABC Ltd work from 9:00 to 5:00.A handful work from 9:30 to 5:30.

Many, though not all, staff are unhappy with this and prefer a more flexible arrangement. Some are working mothers and would like to be able to take their children to and from school. Some, particularly the older employees, have sick or elderly relatives who make demands on their time do not fit comfortably with their working hours.

For the company itself, this dissatisfaction among staff leads to low morale and reduce productively. It also makes it harder to attract and retain good staff.

There are three basic options for the future:

1. Leaving things as they are. This is obviously less demanding on resources that implementing a new system. At least we know it works even it isn’t perfect.

2.      Highly flexible system. Employees would clock on and clock off anytime with a 12½ hour working day until they have ‘clocked up’ 35 hours a week. This would be the hardest system to implement.

3.      Limited flexibility Staff could start work any time between 8:00 to 10:00 am and work through for eight hours. This would not solve all employees’ problems but it would solve most of them.

Proposal

Introduce a system of limited flexibility for now, relating the option of increasing flexibility later it this seems appropriate.

Position

The current working hours at ABC ltd are 9:00 to 5:00 for most employees, with a few working from 9:30 to 5:30.

Problem

Although the works up to a point, it does have certain disadvantages, both for the organisation and for some of the employees.

The organisation: The chief disadvantage of the current system is that many of the staff are dissatisfied with it. This has become such a serious problem that it is becoming harder to attract and retain good staff. That staffs who do join the company and stay with it feel less motivated: this, as research has shown, means they are less productive than they could be.

The employees: Some employees are satisfied their current working hours, but many of them find the present system restrictive. There are several reasons for this but the employees most strongly in favour of greater flexibility are, in particular:

• parents, especially mothers, who would prefer to be able to take their children to and from school, and to work around this commitment.
• Employees, many of them in the older age range, who have elderly or sick relatives who they would like to be more available for.

A more flexible approach would make it easier for many staff to fulfill these kinds of demands on their time.

An initial study questioned nearly 140 employees in a cross-section of ages. A large majority were in favour of a more flexible approach, in particular the women and the younger members of the company. It is worth nothing that minorities of staff were against the introduction of flexible working hours. Appendix 1 gives the full results of this study.

Possibilities

Since this report is looking at the principle and not the detail of a more flexible approach, the options available fall broadly into three categories: retaining the present system, introducing limited flexibility of working hours, and implementing a highly flexible system.

Although the system is not perfect, at least we know it works. The staff all signed their contracts on the understanding that the company worked to standard hours of business, and while it may not be ideal for them it is at least manageable.

Better the devil you know.

Implementing any new system is bound to incur problems and expense, consequently retaining the present working hours is the least expensive option in terms of direct cost.

Highly flexible system. A highly flexible system would mean keeping the site open from, say, 7:30 am to 8:00 pm. All staff are contracted to work a certain number of hours a week and time clocks are installed. Employees simply clock on and off whenever they enter to leave the building, until they have reached their full number of hours each week.

This system has the obvious benefits that it can accommodate a huge degree of flexibility which should suit the various demands of all employees. They could even elect to work 35 hours a week spread over only three days. A further benefit to the company would be that doctors’ appointments and so on would no longer happen ‘on company time’ as they do at present. This system does have several disadvantages, however:

• Many staff regard occasional time off for such things as doctors’ appointments or serious family crises as a natural ‘perk’ of the job. With this system they would have to make up the hours elsewhere. Not only would they lose the time off, but many would also feel that the company did not trust them. This would obviously be bad for company morale.
• It would be difficult to implement this system fairly. The sales office, for example, must be staffed at least from 9:00 to 5:30 every day. What if all the sales staffs want to take Friday off? How do you decide who can and who can’t? What if the computer goes down at 4 o’clock in the afternoon and there are no computer staff in until 7:30 the following morning?

Limited flexibility: This would make asking employees to continue to work an eight hour day, but give them a range of, say, ten hours to fit it into. They could start any time between 8:00 and 10:00 in the morning, so they would finish eight hours later – between 4:00 and 6:00.

On the plus side, this would give the employees the co-operation and recognition of their problems that many of them look for, and would therefore increases staff motivation. For some it would provide a way around their other commitments.

Proposal

Given the number of staff in favour of more flexible working hours, and the importance of staff motivation, it seems sensible to adopt some kind of flexible approach. But it is probably advisable to find a system that allows the significant minority who prefer to stay as they are to do so.

So which is the best system to choose? It is harder to go backwards than forwards in developing new systems; if the highly flexible approach failed it would be difficult to pull back to a less flexible system (in terms of keeping the staff happy). On the other hand, a limited degree of flexibility could easily be extended later if this seemed appropriate.

So at this stage it seems that the most workable system, which contains most of the benefits required by the employees, is the limited flexibility of working hours.

Appendix 1:

Table of employee response to the proposal for flexible working hours.

AGE GROUP	MEN Total number consulted	MEN Positive response	MEN Negative response	WOMEN Total number consulted	WOMEN Positive response	WOMEN Negative response
18-30	20	19	1	18	18	0
30-40	23	19	4	29	27	2
40-50	15	8	7	12	8	4
50-60	12	2	10	8	7	1
	70	48	22	67	60	7