Flexible working to be extended to more parents in Britain
Can Web 2.0 technologies and online community moderating skills help businesses manage a virtual team? The answer would be yes. We now have an array of technologies and online collaborative processes that enable a business easily to manage a staff working different hours, in different places and at different times – truly flexible workers.
The Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform (not a Ministry I’d heard of before today!) announced today that 4.5 million more parents in Britain will gain the statutory right to request flexible working. Extending this right to all parents of children under 16 is a major recommendation of a flexible working review led by Imelda Walsh, the HR director of Sainsbury’s.
Business Secretary John Hutton said that not only will this move “give a big boost to busy parents who need more help balancing work and family life” but that “it can also help employers who often find they get the best out of mums and dads when they allow them to work flexibly.”
Some business representatives have not necessarily welcomed this move: the Federation of Small Businesses chairman Alan Tyrrell said: “The announcement puts small businesses in an impossible position.” Yet the review found that small businesses are often more able to offer their workers flexible working arrangements than are larger organisations. Big organisations are often stuck in a culture where working patterns are inflexible and unchangeable. Nine to five must be best!
I worked in an organisation that prided itself on its home working arrangements, but although the staff worked long hours at home at different times of day – which suited the demands of the job far more than working limited core hours – the managers expected the staff to be at their desks at home from 9-5. It’s possible they missed a opportunity to get the best out of the workers!
In a forward-looking small business however, one can practice flexible working, taking advantage of the skills and expertise available from people who might otherwise not work – because they can’t or don’t want to work 9-to-5. Part-time – or prime-time – working, virtual teams, home-working, teleworkers in small local hubs, flexible hours – there are so many strategies to deliver business goals while providing a better work/life balance for the individual.
Imelda Walsh said “This change would offer an important opportunity for parents to have extra flexibility at key times in their children’s lives.” Perhaps there is a case for offering flexible working even more widely – one may ask why should it be restricted to just parents? In a rapidly changing marketplace, a small business needs to use all the technological and human resources it can muster to keep up, and flexible working practices could enable the business to call on an engaged and committed workforce that can respond to both individual and business needs.
With a group of partners Reach Further is looking into the kinds of technology, training and management practices that will enable business to plan beyond 9-to-5. We’ll be blogging more on this