Flexible Working boosts your business

Who else benefits?

Your employees

Today many people have domestic commitments such as caring for children or elderly relatives. Flexible working is particularly helpful to these people and those living in rural communities. If you can help employees to work from home or stagger their journey, then commuting time is reduced. This takes hours out of an employee’s day – not to mention cutting costs and stress

. Taking away the traditional nine-to-five grind gives employees more options and employees can enjoy more flexibility in their lives. The facts speak for themselves: •

• Flexible working has lead to a 7% improvement in job satisfaction.
• 37% of men and 34% of women would be prepared to sacrifice part of their next pay rise if they could work from home.
• As seen by a major UK Plc, flexible working encourages more mothers to return to work from maternity leave – 99% compared to the national average of 47%

Your customers

Customers notice if your people are happy and motivated. Motivated employees will make your customers feel more valued, loyal and likely to recommend you to others.

The environment

By embracing flexible working, your company will also be helping the environment – with fewer commuters on the road, congestion is reduced and carbon dioxide emissions are lower. With flexible working in place, a £1.9 billion reduction in congestion costs in the UK is predicted by 2010.

Is it really that easy?

Flexible working does not suit everyone – for example, not all roles are suitable for home working or flexitime and some high level jobs cannot necessarily accommodate flexible working. Some employees simply prefer to work nine-to-five from an office.

There are some organisations that find it easier to adopt flexible working than others but taking up the challenge of introducing a flexible working approach can be rewarding for all sizes of companies.

Facing the challenges

If you are committed to embracing flexible working, your business may need to change its culture, adapt its management style and make some investment in technology. However, short term investment will produce long term productivity gains and you could soon be reaping the rewards offered by flexible working. Adopting new ICT and flexible working quickly will improve the bottom line even faster!