Making flexibility work should not be the sole responsibility of the employer. Employees should be provided with a business case proposal that prompts them to think about issues such as work gaps as a result of reduced hours, and the impact it will have on clients, team members, and the organisation. 

Research shows that it's not just the traditional students and working parents that are demanding workplace flexibility; generation Y through to Baby Boomers want more time in their busy life schedules to pursue other interests apart from work. This has led to an increase in organisations adjusting their workplace policies to specifically and separately address flexible workplace arrangements. What is sometimes missing is the acknowledgement that students, generation Y, working parents and baby boomers are all at different life stages and there are subtle differences in the needs, challenges and requirements of each group.

Let's consider women returning to work. Most women, after they have children, want to return to work. The top three drivers include income, social interaction with adults, and career goals.  Conversely, the top three barriers to returning to work are the lack of flexible roles, the cost of child care, and a lack of self confidence.

With a rich mix of work tools and capabilities, you can be as productive in the office, at home, in hotel rooms and airport lounges all around the world. 

The nature of work is changing and consequently we're witnessing a proliferation of workstyles that reflect new demands for flexibility, balance and autonomy. Organisations in all sectors confront the need to respond urgently to a bunch of demands that include the ability to work in less predictable patterns of time and location and to work in new and more complex patterns of collaboration and co-presence. 

Some days you need to work on your own, some days you need to work with a team of people who are all in the same physical space and the next day you need to work with team members who are all on different continents. On top of that, people are juggling professional ambition with personal commitments to family and community. 

Maintaining personal good health and looking after the health of the planet are dimensions of life that can't be conveniently forgotten or pushed to one side in the face of work demands and routines that are physically, emotionally and environmentally unsustainable.

Implementing flexibility is a challenge and may require some "hand-holding", especially for managers who have not gone through their own flexibility experience.

Flexibility - just do it! That's the message I hear from the "converted".  As though managing a flexible workforce were the easiest thing to do, and not the challenge that it is. 

A little acknowledgement that flexible work practices require a new way of thinking about work, and some assistance with making practical changes, would go a long way. 

Yesterday I heard a senior leader express his commitment to embedding flexibility into his business (it was one of Australia's leading banks), his acknowledgement of the demographically driven economic imperatives of flexibility (read here: the increased number of women in the workforce and ageing population) AND an acknowledgement that managers may need some hand-holding when entering this brave new world. What a relief. Now managers in his business can ask for a helping hand. 

When we acknowledge that implementing flexibility is a challenge, especially for managers who have not gone through their own flexibility experience (eg working in a job-share - and frankly, how many people have done that?), we can create a space for a more open conversation about what managers need to implement flexible work practices. 

Smart companies are getting staff by getting flexible, according to Kerry Fallon Horgan.

Current skills shortages, combined with globalization, technological advances, an ageing workforce, new workplace values of Gen X and Y's and diversity in the workplace have all "upped the stakes" as employers scramble for an increasingly scarce resource: people.

The key for many lies in becoming "Employers of Choice", organisations that are able to attract and retain skilled staff often because they have established a workplace culture that supports flexible work practices.

There are real bottom-line incentives to do so including increased productivity, better customer service, enhanced legal compliance, improved morale, reduced absenteeism, greater overall effectiveness, and an ability to adapt readily to market changes.

There's also that very profitable, but less concise notion of "discretionary effort" - where workers go that extra mile because they believe that employers are doing the right thing by them.

So what flexible practices do employees want?