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Blog posts tagged flexible working
How your business is evolving
January 18, 2012
Work attitudes and practices are evolving rapidly, fuelled by advances in technology and widespread broadband connectivity.
Indeed, perhaps it’s the availability of fast internet connections which is enabling information, ideas and knowledge to flow freely.
Our world of work is being redefined. With it, the expectations of workers and managers in businesses of all sizes are being challenged.
The evolving workforce
To understand how working habits are changing and the impact this will have on companies across the globe, Dell and Intel commissioned a piece of research: The Evolving Workforce. We wanted to learn how the way businesses work is changing.
Part of the research involved polling the workforce itself – approximately 8,000 workers in 11 countries, 1,000 of whom were based in the UK. The results contain some interesting findings for smaller businesses:
- Smaller businesses offer better job stability. Worldwide, employees of small and medium-sized businesses feel their jobs are safe from external threats. They feel stable in their roles; only 25% feel that outsourcing is a threat.
- Smaller companies offer greater job satisfaction. Generally, employees of small and medium-sized businesses are happier at work than people in larger companies. Some employees say this is because they’re able to choose the technology they use. In small and medium-sized businesses, 39% of employees can choose their IT, compared with just 21% at larger companies.
- Employees in smaller businesses are more trusted by their employers. Results from around the world show that 55% of employees from small and medium-sized businesses say they feel their employer listens to them, compared to only 36% at larger companies.
- People working for small and medium-sized businesses have more flexibility and choice in the devices they use. 42% of employees at small and medium-sized companies in Japan believe they’re consulted about technology choices, yet only 31% had positive views of their IT support.
The figure is similar in Mexico, with 40% being more likely to choose their own devices, compared with half that (20%) in large enterprises. This shows how smaller businesses are able to offer more flexibility – an attractive prospect to employees who like to choose the technology they use every day.
Small and medium-sized businesses are blazing a trail in terms of employee-led innovation, but results from our survey suggest the UK lags behind. More than half (53%) of employees say they don’t have the freedom to choose how to work.
By giving workers increased freedom, offering flexible working and a choice of devices, small and medium-sized businesses will increase motivation and, in turn, boost productivity and creativity to stimulate further innovation and growth.
Kevin Peesker is General manager Dell UK and Ireland small and medium business
Could telecommuting get more out of your staff?
February 03, 2011
Research conducted at Brigham Young University has delved into data from over 20,000 IBM employees across 75 countries, with surprising results.
Employees who telecommute (or work from home) not only balance work and personal life better than ‘standard’ office workers, but they manage to work more hours too.
The researchers identified the point where 25% of employees report their work to be interfering with personal or family life.
In some cases, workers who utilised a mix of flexitime and telecommuting were able to work 50% more hours per week before hitting that point. That amounts to a whopping 19 extra hours work over the same seven-day period. Aggregate this over a year and you’ll run out of work for your staff!
So what is telecommuting?
Telecommuting is an arrangement which gives your employees the freedom to work where and when they please. This gives them big flexibility in their working lives, can remove the daily commute and ditches the idea of having a centralised place of work. It's all reliant on a technology network which allows an employee to work anywhere, at any time.
As a business owner, not only can you get more out of each of your employees, but you can also enjoy significant cost savings. Here are just a few benefits of telecommuting:
- Diminished office costs
- Lower travel costs
- A larger talent pool to pick from (telecommuting enable carers, parents and disabled people to be employed more easily)
- Reduced absenteeism.
Couple these benefits with higher employee satisfaction and it is hard to see any downsides to telecommuting. However, they do exist.
Telecommuting caveats
If your employees are to really benefit from telecommuting, they need flexi-time too. Because without some flexibility in working hours, most of the benefits of telecommuting are removed. You simply replace the effort of getting to work at a set hour with the effort of getting to a place of your choosing on time.
You also need to think through how to handle management and performance reviews. To assuage fears that employees would simply abuse the power to work remotely, a results-based system needs to be in place. Instead of individually monitoring employees, their work and goals must be measured solely by results.
You have to trust your staff. Any mistakes in implementing this kind of management style could have an adverse effect on employee productivity. After all, what is the point of getting 19 hours more work a week if they get half as much done?
Have you tried telecommuting?
Implemented correctly, telecommuting can be positive both for you and your team. As someone once summed up: 'work is something you do, not something you travel to'.
So how about it? Do you know of any companies or people that enjoy a telecommuting system? Or do you know someone who struggles and would prosper more in a structured office environment?
John Sollars is MD of Stinkyink.com
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