Flexiplace!

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Flexplace is a system which allows employees to work in alternative places instead of traditional office. Instead of employees coming to traditional workplace, the work can be brought to employees (flexplace/flextime policy & procedures 2008).

Dynamic business environment related to human resources management makes flexplace implementation in organisation more feasible. Some of the factors that encourage flexplace are:

Demographic changes

Growing number of female participation in labour force causes the number of family with both husband and wife working to increase. Robertson (1999) stated that the percentage of married women with children under 6 participating in workforce rose from 18.6% in 1960 to 62.7% in 1999. This increases demand for more flexible work arrangements to allow employees balancing the complexity of work and personal life. Flexible work arrangements also needed for aging employees to continue to work as they become more prone to illnesses or disabilities that prevent them to leave home. Flexplace provides the flexibility needed for organisations to cope with the changing demographic (Kunkle 2000, 12).

Technology changes

Technology developments allow people to communicate without having to meet face-to-face. Technology changes allow for more advanced flexplace implementation. Technologies such as internet, email, voicemail, and video conferencing enable people to interact with each other from different places. They also enable faster data and information sharing, which make businesses to perform more efficient (Kunkle 2000, 12).

Organisation changes

External factors such as global competition and changes in workforce force organisations to change their structure from hierarchical, control-based management structures to more team-based, leaner, and more flexible structure focused on innovation. Tighter competition often requires companies to downsize in order to reduce cost and increase efficiency. While diverse workforce requires companies to have more flexible work arrangements to satisfy employees (Kunkle 2000, 12).

Labour market competition

Tight competition in labour market makes it harder for organisations to recruit and retain talented people. Flexplace can help companies in this department. For example, flexplace enables companies to expand their recruitment pools. Talent search will not be limited to certain geographic locations since candidates can work from any location and do not need to relocate to work in the company. Flexplace can also be used to retain existing employees who need to relocate due to family/personal reasons (Kunkle 2000, 26).

Regulation

Equal Employment Opportunity and Americans with Disabilities Act are some of examples that have the employers to be more aware of the rights of employees and job applicants with different backgrounds, as well as disabilities. Flexplace allows companies to comply with government regulations by providing flexible work arrangements to accommodate various employees’ needs (Mello 2007, 249).

Effects, Advantages, and disadvantages of flexible working on work performance

Flexplace

According to Plante (2002), good flexplace program has desirable effects such as lowering absenteeism rate, increasing productivity, and reducing employee relations problems. Igbaria and Guimares (1999) have noticed that employees involved in flexplace have an overall higher job satisfaction and commitment to the organisation compared to those who are not involved. Perez, Sanchez and Carnicer (2003) also found out in their study that 82% of organisations that use flexplace gains positive productivity.

For employees, flexplace could minimize interruption that may occur during work in office such as calls from family, gossiping colleagues, irrelevant emails, and so on. A survey by US information technology research firm Basex shows that interruptions can take up over two hours of work, this include work-related interruptions that may also disturb workers’ flow. It is estimated that those interruptions costs the US economy $588 billion a year. Furthermore, interruptions in office may cause attention deficit disorder to employees. Reports show that patients are distracted, forgetful, impulsive and disorganized. However, those symptoms are disappeared when the patients are on holiday (Motluk 2006, 46). Other benefits include more family time, especially for employees who have children to take care of, flexpace will enable them to work while taking care of their children, and hence, reducing the cost it takes for childcare. There is also little formality involved in using flexplace, participants may wear any clothes they are comfortable with, and create their own schedules. It keeps the participants to be employed when they need to relocate due to personal/family reason. It also saves them transportation costs and provides more working time since the time that were used for commuting can be used for working (Sounds like a dream, but is working at home for you? 2008).

Problem may occur when the participants lack the discipline required. There are lot of temptation to do anything that isn’t related to work. Family may divide workers’ attention, and some workers may fail to organize working and leisure time. Working at home will also increase personal bills to compensate all the equipment needed such as internet connection, electricity, office supplies and others which may not be covered by organisation. Lack of face to face interactions with co-workers might make participants feel isolated, and lack awareness of organisational issues (Rasmussen and Corbett 2008).

For organisations, flexplace can improve financial and organisational success. It has been estimated by C. Grantham institute in US that for every $1 spent on flexplace facilities, there is $2 worth of productivity improvement gained (Clement 2007). It enables employer to lower overhead costs, as it will reduce building rent and occupancy needs. It also provides an additional tool for recruiting and retaining employees. It enhances customer and client services since it allows employers to break geographic and time clock boundaries, and reach customers at various place and time due to its flexibility. Flexplace is also proven to increase organisations’ survivability against unexpected circumstances such as natural disaster. Roitz and Jackson (2006) found that in aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in 2005, AT&T a telecommunication company, could still continue its business since most of employee home-based work sites were unaffected by the disaster. Flexplace also helps company to promote social benefits. Flexplace gives people that cannot travel far due to physical disabilities the chance to be employed. It also has positive effect on air quality since traffic at rush hours has major contribution on air pollution (Mello 2007, 250).

The drawback of flexplace is its reliance on technology. Implementation of flexplace require organisation to invest on necessary equipments to communicate and retrain the participants, which might be too costly, and often become barrier in flexplace implementation. Another issue is how to maintain solid teamwork without having much face-to-face interactions. Participants must learn to trust someone they rarely met; the managers must learn how to motivate via internet, and so on. Result from Virtual Leadership Study conducted by Institute for Corporate Productivity shows that 25% of organisations don’t have any training regarding virtual leadership skills and that people don’t always feel ready to work in virtual environment, and the skills and knowledge to use new tech devices don’t guarantee effective teamwork (Shriberg 2009, 1).

Guide for implementing flexplace

Firstly, manager should determine which types of jobs are suited to do away from office. There are jobs that need frequent presence of the employee or special equipment that can only be accessed on the office (Washington 2001, 5). After determining which jobs are suited for flexplace employment, manager should decide the performance standards for those jobs; which level of performance is acceptable and which are not. This is necessary because it is hard to monitor the progress of the work from afar (Washington 2001, 5). The next step is to develop work guidelines for both employees and managers on how the system should work. The guidelines should be agreed by local union(s), and in compliance with regulations such as environment, labour-management relations, occupational safety and health, fair labour standards, equal employment opportunity, etc. The reason is the same as the second step, the work is hard to be supervised, so employers must ensure that the work process is in accordance to organisation’s preferences and not violate any regulations (Washington 2001, 5). Next step is to train those who involved in the program. The employees and supervisors need to develop new skills on how to work separately and interact with one another. Employees will be more self-reliant on operating their hardware and software; they need to learn necessary skills to solve problems on their own. Supervisors must learn how to manage employees from afar (Washington 2001, 5).

Employers should also examine the site that will be used by employees to work. Each site has to meet all requirements, such as the necessary equipments, safety and security issues, and suitable environment (Washington 2001, 6). Those who involved with the program must have frequent communication to maintain solid teamwork. The tools that can be used to maintain communication are teleconferencing cameras, emails, or softwares such as Microsoft Netmeeting, which allows users to see the same documents and live changes that are made by other users (Washington 2001, 6). Lastly, managers should change their view about work. Work performance should be evaluated by the output (result oriented), not by the work processes (process oriented). Managers should also increase their trust to the employees without intensive supervision. According to Washington (2001, 4), it will take months to a year for both managers and employees to successfully implement flexplace system, because it requires changes of mindset and work habits for all the participants.

In a dynamic working environment, both employer and employee often struggle to reach agreement that can satisfy their demands. Employer wants to gain maximum profit with minimum cost, while employee wants comfortable job that pays well. The problem is, most jobs that pay well are rarely comfortable, and getting to comfortable at work often results in loss of productivity. The potential solution to these organisational concerns is flexplace.

Flexplace is seen as organisational management practice that provides lot of benefits for employer, employee, and also larger society. Employer will enjoy reduced operational costs, and higher productivity as flexplace can increase employees’ morale and commitment. It is also beneficial for society since it reduces traffic at rush hours, which resulted in less air pollution.

However, implementing flexplace does not guarantee that the company will gain profit. Flexplace that is not planned designed and implemented with a full understanding of the issues and limitations can result in more loss than gain.

reference list:

Plante, D. E. 2002. Managing the workplace in the 21st century. WINOC. Ohio: Mahoning valey labor management council.

Motluk, A. 2006. Got a minute? Proquest. www.proquest.umi.com.dbgw.lis.curtin.edu.au (accessed January 20, 2010)

Sounds like a dream, but is working at home for you? 2009. Washington: tribune business news. Proquest.

Shriberg, A. 2009. Effectively and managing a virtual team. Cambridge: the business review. 1-2. Proquest.

Rasmussen, E. And G. Corbett.2008. Why isn’t teleworking working? Auckland: New Zealand journal of employment relations. Proquest.

Mello, J. A. 2007. Managing telework programs. Proquest.

Roitz, J., Jackson, E. (2006). Alternative work arrangement: AT&T adds business continuity to the long list of telework’s advantages. Journal of Organizational Excellence, 25(2), 3–12, Spring 2006. Quoted in mello 2007

Washington, W., A. 2001. Telecommuting program is “flexplace” suited to your organisation? BNET. Pg 1-8. http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0KAA/is_1_30/ai_78399295/?tag=content;col1 (accessed January 21, 2010)

Kunkle, R. 2000. Perspective on successful telework initiatives. Washington State University. http://www.wsdot.wa.gov/research/reports/fullreports/485.1.pdf (accessed January 22, 2010).

Robertson, K. 1999. Work transformation. New York: HNB Publishing. Quoted in kunkles 2000