Defining Flexibility
The term workplace flexibility usually means employers and employees working together to agree the times employees work, where they work from and whether they work a full week or not. It involves thinking innovatively about the way employees’ working lives are structured and whether there is a better way to do it.
These are the most common types of flexible practices. Make a selection:
1. Part-time work
2. Job-share
3. Working from home
4. Flexible working hours
5. Part-year employment (or Purchased leave)
1. Part-time work
Part-time work involves working fewer hours than the standard full-time weekly hours in your workplace. Flexible part-time work arrangements might be:
- a few days per week
- two days one week and three days the next week
- two and a half days per week
- ten days worked over a four-week period.
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2. Job-share
Job-share involves two people agreeing to share the roles and responsibilities for one full-time equivalent job.
This could be arranged on a 2/3 day split or 2.5 days each. This can work very well if the two people are both at work for a regular period each week.
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3. Working from home
Working from home, or anywhere other than the normal workplace, (sometimes called teleworking) can involve either working for a certain agreed period each week (eg one day a week) or working from home occasionally on an 'as needs' basis.
Some people like to use working from home as part of a more general flexible working arrangement – eg leaving work at 3pm to pick up children from school and then making up the hours at home later the same night.
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4. Flexible working hours
Flexible working hours usually involves varying the start and end times of the working day, for example, working 8am to 4pm one day instead of the normal 9am to 5pm. Some workplaces require that people who vary their hours must be at work for a specified core period (eg 10am to 3pm ).
Providing employees with some control over their start and finish times where possible is a very cost-effective way to implement flexibility in the workplace.
Working condensed hours is another way of arranging working hours. For example, someone might do their full-time hours in 4 days working 9 hours each day.
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5. Part-year employment (or Purchased leave)
Part-year employment, sometimes referred to as purchased leave, is where a person takes an additional 4 weeks leave without pay (eg during school holidays). In these cases their pay is usually averaged over the entire 52 weeks.
Part-year employment is also sometimes referred to as “48/52” - that is, 48 weeks in 52 weeks.
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