Definition of Contemporary Thinking on Employment Practices and Work Schedules

The traditional Practices of employment are fast shading into the behind with the new age practices taking up the stage with Globalisation in its full swing started ruling the globe. The term we use for contemporary practices are “flexible work place and flexible timings”. The major change is in the location where we work, changing up the basic of an organisatio – work place – itself. The next one is about throwing away the standard timings of work concept – flexi timings. The third is how the job is done-flexi process. So learners, welcome to the world of employee’s custom made office and official timings. Let us list them for your quick reference:

Flexible work place or location

Flexible timings

Flexible work methods

Work Place Flexibility

The definition of this term varies from place to place, country to country. Simply speaking, flexibility of work place is an arrangement between the employer and the employee

To enable a efficient performance from the employee even with the adjustments he expect in the work place to meet with his individual needs and

To enable the employer achieve the organisational goals even when he allows his employees the benefit of change in place and time of work.

In other words, flexibility enables both the employee and the organisation needs met with adopting changes in time, place and method of job. The success mantra behind is “give and take” and thus it provides a “Win- Win” situation.

Flexible Location

Dear learners, wondering why the activity is in the starting page before the concept? I gave the activity before the explanation of the concept in detail because, the choice you wrote above needs to be unbiased, without any preconditioning of mind. It takes to be a human with empathy towards the ecological environment to be a good Human resource Manager. The performance management is not only about increasing the performance of employees to the optimum level of their competency, but also about bring it to the optimum level with their personal and individual needs satisfied, where ever possible.

When you have answered the 2nd question that is “if you are that baby”, you could have understood that, employees not only work for the organisation, they are wanted in the personal life too. Organisations can-not hire employees without their attachments towards their personal lives. After all, the basic concept of a man to come to work is to lead his life hap-pily with his family, with the money he earns from the work. It is a bitter truth for the organisations that, employees are not born only to work for them and Organisations have started facing this truth of-late. That’s the point where the evolutionary thinking of flexi workplace has started.

Now, let us see what flexible location of work place is. The purpose of hiring the worker is to get the work done. The focus is on the output. Hence, if a job can be performed at a different place other than the place where the organisation functions, then it is admissible till you get the output as expected. The presence of the employee is secondary, and hence, flexi work place is justified. There are some few innovative models of workplace flexibility. They are

Remote Work Place

You could have seen a software engineer or a programmer who designs software for Computer Firm, working in a bank for some time to enable bank employees learn and work with the soft ware he designed. This is working from the client’s place. Like this, remote working has various forms. Let me list a few for better understanding:

A scientist working from a laboratory located at a different place

A purchase executive working at the supplier’s place to ensure prompt delivery of materials from supplier’s place to his organization

A sales person of a cosmetic company working in a Mall or Super Market at the special counter of their company products.

Working from Home

Working from home is easy to understand because the name itself is the meaning for that. When an employee work for his organisation from his home, than it is flexi work place. In the activity given above, you would have thought that “crèche” is also a good choice to leave the baby, when the mother is away at work. The question here is, “whether crèche will be a comfortable place for the baby to grow?” If the choice is given to the baby, the baby might choose home instead of crèche at the work place. The choice of baby would be the choice of mother. Hence, if the mother is allowed to work from home in the above scenario, she may perform better in her work, rather than the other two choices.

Moreover, this concept is well suited for the following kinds of jobs:

In case of expatriation problems – i.e., if the employee cannot be sent to other country for work due to some reason, he can be allowed to work from home the job he has to do there. He can use web cams and other technologies like video conferencing to keep himself present in the office where he is needed, instead of really going to that country.

Part-time jobs - For occasional job works which arise from time to time, frequency unpredicted and requires expertise to accomplish – Organisation cannot employ a full time expert in cases like this. Hence, an expert may be hired with flexi work place system, no matter where he lives, who can do the jobs for the organisation, whenever the need arises.

In the silicon valley of India, Bangalore, many software companies has successfully implemented the “Work from Home” concept, thanks to the extreme menace of traffic jams and hours of wait in the cabs on the roads. As a solution to overcome the problem of lost man hours, which is of a high value in those companies, the employees were allowed to work from their homes on their allotted modules of software programming.

Flexible Timings

Changes in the traditional concept of work timings are called as flexi scheduling or flexi timings in the globalization era. There are various models of flexi timings. Few of them are

Flexible working hours

Part –time work

Seasonal Employment

Let us see the models of flexi timings one by one.

Flexible Working Hours

Like the choice of place, if the start and finish time of the work is altered, it is called as Flexible schedules, or flexi timings. The one condition in the alteration is the number of hours of work per week or per day will not be changed. It is very common in USA that employees work for an additional of two hours four days a week, thus accumulating eight hours of work. Then, this will be substituted for Friday’s eight hours of work and thus an employee can take three days off for week end instead of two days. Confused? Look at the calculation.

How is it? Three days for weekend?

Part –Time Work

Part- time work is working for fewer or less hours than the normal working time of employees in the organisation. For example, working two days a week, working in evening hours, working night shifts etc. In high paid knowledge based jobs, like software development consultant, or Mathematicians in applied science or any other designation that pays in hours measurement, given with the current trend of importance to quality of work life and work life balance, likes to spend more time for their personal life. As the pay they get is huge for a month of 30 days, some people like to work for 15 days and are happy with half of their pay, and 15 days off from the job. The concept of part –time work being under paid and under estimated are gone and now, part-time is intelligent and a philosophical decision to enjoy your personal life along with career life. Looks like real work life balance, is it not?

Seasonal Employment

Depending on the demands of jobs that arise in particular seasons, employment is offered during those times. This enables the employee longer period of leave along with a guaranteed job and earnings. This is well suited for employees who likes

To have long vacations

To work on projects

To do simultaneously two occupations like story writers working for few months in publishing houses as proof editors for selected books, Researchers as visiting faculty in Universities etc.

Flexible Work Methods

The next flexible concept is changes in methods of performing a task. Let us see the important models prevailing in the present scenario.

Job Sharing

This is indeed a breakthrough in the employee favoured innovative concepts. Job sharing is about splitting the job among two employees and all the employer is concerned about is the output and performance of the job. The splitting may be on work modules, or number of days of work, or even half –days of work. Let us try to understand this with an example. A machine needs to be run for 8 hours a day. Two machine men can share the job among themselves on a deal of running 4 hours each a day, or three days each a week, or each one runs the machine every alternate month. The employer pays for one and they share it again. Employer gets the work done, worker gets his flexible time worked out, hence, win-win situation.

Phased Retirement

This is an arrangement for the employees who are facing retirement in the near future. They can have reduced work hours, reduced work days, or even part time work. This also includes post-retirement job for pensioners who wish to work after retirement. The added advantage is the experienced employee trains his successor during this phase and the organisation gets the benefit of training the employee at no additional cost involved.

Annualized Hours of Work

We have seen a calculation of increasing work hours for four days and getting a day off on fifth day in the previous model “Flexible work hours”. This is an extension of that. The employee working additional hours calculated for a year, instead of week. This results in long time leave eligibility for the employees.

Benefits of Flexible Work Place in Terms Of Performance Management

As for as our Performance management is concerned, flexi time helps people decide on their own timings of work according to their needs and this creates a lot of improvements in the performance of employees and also helps the employer in the following ways.

The arrangement and adjustment from the employer side creates loyalty towards the organization in the minds of employee. This results in low accession rate. Longer the employee works with the organisation, higher the experience and skill, and hence, improved performance.

Employee feels satisfied and worriless as flexi time helps him cope-up with his personal life’s needs. A self – motivated worriless employee can concentrate more on his work than a stressed employee.

As in the case of ‘Young mother” employee we saw in the activity, flexi time helps them to remain in the job without break for years. GDP of the nation often cites the unutilized women resource of the country. Major breaks in the career of the women are maternity breaks, and women tend to even lose their career for child rearing. Flexi -time is a good solution to resolve this issue of under utilization of human resource particularly for countries like ours.

A comfortable zone is defined by two level- physical and mental levels. Often, the place of work is below the comfort levels, like pollution and health hazards. Work from home helps an employee to feel stress free in his comfort zone and results in better performance.