In the hustling world where employees struggle to manage and pull up their personal and professional lives, flexible work arrangements emerge as effective solutions to maintain adequate work-life balance. These setups allow professionals from varying backgrounds and conveniences, to work actively and enjoy their personal lives with similar energies.
Gone are the days when stringent on-site work hours were crucial to be labeled as employed. In current times, with the facilitation of a digital solution like an automatic time-tracking tool, flexible working styles foster a more productive work behavior, enhancing performance, incorporating work-life balance, and allowing employee retention.
This blog explores organizations’ diverse working styles and how these systems benefit employers.
Let’s get started.
What Is a Flexible Work Arrangement?
A flexible work arrangement is a working system that allows employees to stay flexible with their working hours and schedule. For example, a flexible work arrangement enables employees to break the monotonous and exhausting 9 to 5 or 10 to 6 work shifts. With such flexibility, employees can decide which arrangements suit and ease their social lives.
With a neverending array of work-related issues, flexible work arrangements are pivotal in engaging employees and sustaining optimal productivity. Furthermore, employees have started prioritizing their mental well-being over stressful work schedules, leading to a noticeable surge in job switches. The COVID-19 tragedy illustrated a perfect use of virtual presence, intensely fueling work flexibility.
These current scenarios where employees desire an idyllic work-life balance, a less stressful workplace, and high flexibility are great signs of understanding why it is essential for organizations to adopt flexibility at work to maximize employee potential and boost productivity. Collectively, flexible work arrangements are slowly emerging as norms to attract employees effortlessly, increase productivity, and maximize business potential.
Advantages of Flexible Work Styles for Employers
Flexible work styles were conceptualized to deliver advantages that traditional and fixed work styles could not provide. With the increase in the competition to succeed in all domains and compromised social life due to stringent work hours, an increase in mental stress has been reported in employees of all industrial disciplines. Whether field workers or desk job holders, workplace stress has become a major concern with 79% affected by work-related stress.
Increased Productivity
Flexible work arrangements maximize productivity by giving more control and reducing stress levels, and burnout. Additionally, with comfortable adjustments in commuting and work settings, employees can experience more positivity, fostering a productive environment. According to the Human resources consulting firm Robert Half, approximately 23% of the 2,800 surveyed Americans across 28 major U.S. cities quit a job because of a bad commute.
What employers gain: ‘Providing a remote or hybrid work setup allows employers to enhance the productivity and performance of employees. This not only contributes to organizational growth but increases the rate of progress significantly.’
Attracting Talent
Organizations that offer flexible work setups such as remote work or hybrid often stay on the top of the list of job seekers. These companies assure not only a peaceful and conducive environment to work but also a poised work-life balance. Moreover, in today’s post-COVID-19 scenario, employees plan to pursue companies that are flexible in approach.
What employers gain: ‘Offering a relaxed and flexible environment works as honey to bees. It simplifies the process of finding the right talent and convincing them to join your organization.’
Employee Retention
Retaining employees is a major problem for companies. Flexible work arrangements help organizations retain top talent by providing a pliable work culture. For instance, a working mother will always prefer to work at an organization that provides flexitime. This allows her to contribute equal time to her children and professional obligations. Moreover, studies have shown that employees nowadays are more inclined toward companies that prioritize employee’s mental health over anything else. With flexible work arrangements, organizations can build healthy workplaces, affirming the value their employees add to their business growth.
What employers gain: ‘Retaining employees who are well learned of the work culture and systems is crucial. To prevent devastating skill gaps, flexible work arrangements emerge as effective strategies.‘
Reduced Costs
Organizations can significantly reduce the operational costs of running office spaces, utilities, travel and fieldwork, parking, electricity, water, snacks, and meals. These saved costs can be used to provide fringe benefits to employees such as health and dental packages, gym memberships, ergonomic desk accessories, short vacations, and company trips. However, these perks do not contribute to the wages of employees, these enhance employee engagement and reinforce productive work environments.
What employers gain: ‘Employers can utilize saved costs in fulfilling business requirements such as planning and strategizing core competencies. Moreover, it bolsters employee advocacy where employees appreciate their organizations within their social network.’
Reduces Burnout
Recognized by the World Health Organization, burnout can be seen as a syndrome causing anxiety, physical illness such as heart issues, suicidal thoughts, and even self-harm. An exhausted employee tends to seek jobs with higher job satisfaction and less mental exhaustion. Gallup survey discovered that almost three-quarters of employees experience job burnout at some point in their careers. Long work hours at the office are one predominant cause of employee burnout. For instance, an individual employed in a call center may feel overwhelmed with annoying customer calls and rotational shifts. Their burnout may increase manifold if they have to commute for long distances and deal with strict work hours. Consequently, call center staff and employees who work for extended hours and stress-inducing calls develop ‘Call Center Syndrome’ which is a serious mental disorder. Flexible work arrangements reduce job burnout and exhaustion by offering employees to adjust their stress and replenish mental peace.
What employers gain: ‘Allowing employees to work from a comfortable place instead of an on-site workplace helps them maintain a balance between stressors and duties. For example, employees can perform more effectively in stressful situations if they are allowed to work from home rather than stress-inducing workplaces.’
Types of Flexible Work Arrangements
The growing trend of flexible working arrangements has given rise to multiple approaches. From remote to hybrid work styles, different types of flexible work styles enable employees of diverse backgrounds and requirements to select the best-suited work schedule.
Remote
Although remote work had been in the knowledge of the corporate world, the COVID-19 tragedy globally spread the concept like wildfire. Remote work allows employees to stay at home and work remotely and virtually. Proving to be a boon for people with movement disability, nurturing mothers, single fathers, aged employees, and employees with commuting challenges, remote work styles secure the top place in the employee list. Additionally, remote work saves traveling expenses and eases commuting problems for employees who stay far away from the operating office location. However, using a robust time-tracking tool is essential to ensure efficient performance tracking and productivity measurement.
Hybrid
Hybrid work is an intelligent blend of remote and on-site work styles. It may include working from home on some days and working from an office on others. Giving benefits of both working styles, hybrid work styles allow employees and employers to address issues like commuting problems, taking care of dependents (children, pets, and seniors), regaining mental strength, and preventing job burnout. A hybrid work style is also beneficial as it provides both on-site and off-site working opportunities. For instance, when communication barriers and crucial tasks line up, employees are available on-site to discuss duties and responsibilities in person.
Telecommuting
Telecommuting is a different version of the remote work style. In this arrangement, the work setup is not limited to homes. Telecommuting may allow employees to work from any place, be it a library, cafe, or park. This flexible working approach is beneficial for employees who have issues in their home space like more family members, children, toddlers, pets, or network problems. However, following company policies is crucial to ensure sharing official data and information over public wi-fi doesn’t give rise to security vulnerabilities.
Compressed Workweeks
Compressed workweeks is another unique yet powerful working approach. It allows employees to complete the working hours of 35 to 48 in less than a typical 5 weekdays. Compressed workweeks empower employees to enjoy extra time off from work by lending extra effort to finish tasks and completing their work hours within a lesser number of days. The typical 9/80 work schedule is a popular example of a compressed work week which offers employees three off every second week. Compressed workweek systems are helpful when employees have urgent tasks pending in their personal lives that can be addressed only on weekdays, such as running errands, attending children’s parent-teacher meetings, or visiting a bank.
Flexitime
Flexitime culture is a common work style arrangement these days. It allows employees to work from the office as well as continue working from home for the rest of their hours. Usually, companies with a flexitime approach provide essential work equipment like laptops, headphones, and mobile phones to enable employees to connect and continue work at their convenience and efficiently manage projects. With flexitime, employees can commute timely and minimize stress incurred due to disrupted lifestyles and untimely commutes.
Part-Time
Part-time jobs enable employees to work less than usual work schedules with lesser pay. For example, an employee can work 3 days a week or 4 hours per day if they are working part-time. Part-time working provides a different set of benefits to people with diverse needs. For instance, students like research scholars can effectively earn and pursue studies simultaneously. New parents can also enjoy more time with their newborns without giving up on work completely, bolstering financial independence.
Work Sharing
Work sharing is an intriguing concept in which organizations distribute work among two or sometimes more employees on a reduced-time basis, decreasing the per-employee income. This working style is highly effective during emergencies such as financial distress or economic downturn. Organizations can adopt and implement work sharing to avoid layoffs and demonstrate loyalty toward employee retention.
The Bottom Line
Flexibility is much needed in today’s time of uninvited work-related stress. Work-related stress contributes majorly to affecting the personal life, eventually degrading the overall quality. Flexible work arrangements are crucial in regaining balance and preventing burnout that emerges from long hours and the inability to adjust work hours. Organizations can maximize their productivity by allowing adequate flexibility to employees and fostering a positive work culture. Furthermore, multiple approaches to attain work flexibility empower organizations to implement the most suitable system.
FAQs
Why flexible work arrangements in organizations are important?
Flexible working arrangements like remote and hybrid work styles help employees manage work stress effectively and perform optimally. Employees often lose optimal productivity levels with extensive work hours. It is crucial to employ flexible work arrangements to make the workflow lenient.
How can employers monitor their hybrid and remote teams?
Time tracking tools like KonarkPro are perfect tools for employers to monitor employee performance and activity. These tools possess features such as automatic time tracking, productivity measurement, screen tracking, and performance metrics. Covering all aspects of an employee’s performance and work delivery, time trackers have become core for providing a flexible and adjustable work culture.