Creating Flexible Workplaces

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?

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?

For the past two years I have been privileged to be part of the judging team for the Australian HR Awards in the Health and Wellbeing category with Award finalists coming from a range of industry sectors. While these workplaces offered most of the more common flexible work arrangements such as part-time work, job-sharing and work from home, some innovative options were:

• Sensis introduced an option to purchase up to two weeks leave by reducing annual salary;
• HBA Health Insurance introduced 8 week’s paid parental leave and an additional six months of parental leave beyond the first 12 months;
• Main Roads WA’s provided an innovation day and phased retirement;
• Greenslopes Private Hospital (GPH) provided cultural leave and one week of extra leave for night staff.

Unfortunately all too many workplaces are still saying, “Well that’s OK in the ideal world but not in reality, not for us” or “We’ve tried it and it didn’t work”.

This is largely because organisations would prefer to stay as they are than face the challenges that confront them. So, they don’t reap the benefits of this new way of working. They’ll keep trying to fit “square pegs into round holes” by fitting workers’ around the jobs rather than making the jobs fit the best people for the work involved.

So how do we overcome the challenges of implementing these practices?

Every workplace culture is unique, has different barriers and needs different solutions to the challenges that present. The issues can be attitudinal, can be based on misperceptions, systems problems, workloads, fear of the effect on career, leadership and managerial blocks. The list goes on.

To address the barriers, Flexibility At Work developed a systematic culture change approach. This involves developing the business case; analysing organisation specific issues; developing strategies to overcome the challenges; engaging senior management; addressing management issues; targeted, consistent and regular communication; engaging employees; and evaluating the program.

Sounds straight forward, but the problem is that organisations only change if their people change and it has to start from the top. If leaders and managers are working excessive hours, not taking annual leave and not spending time in their outside roles, attitudinal and behavior change is extremely difficult to achieve. No amount of policy making, values statements and systems implementation will change that organisation to one that enables work/life balance.

New and innovative approaches are required. Usually organisations only deal with issues at the “tip of the iceberg”. The real barriers to change happen below the surface where behaviors, attitudes, beliefs and mental models do not reflect stated values and policy pronouncements.

So before you contract yet another HR agency to fill that much needed position, take a good look at whether or not, what you do, reflects what you say you do, and look at how you can make flexibility a reality in your workplace.

0 Comments

1. 

   formless777

   April 20, 2008 at 12:04 pm

   Childcare Availability/Affordability.
   For many families the biggest single issue is the availability and affordability of Child care. For some women entering the workplace was a form of economic liberation, however these days families increasingly find that they cannot make ends meet unless their women are employed. Women hold positions which are often worse paid than men which ultimately benefits no-one, but facing these constraints they find themselves increasingly unable to find care for their children. Childcare is either too expensive or too limited in capacity, let alone the potential for sysemic abuses. Some industries lead the way by engaging Child care services, but they are a tiny minority. Certainly workplace flexibility is susbtantially affected by issues of Childcare. As the social consensus is that we want our workplaces to progress with both parents as active participants, somebody has to mind the children. Unfortunately the free market is not picking up the slack, so perhaps government needs to take a role.

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