Flexible is the new rigid
In the future, companies cannot expect to attract and retain talent without offering teleworking, flexitime and compressed workweeks
Illustration:
K.B. Jawaharr
Twitter is buzzing with tweets on workplace
flexibility. While Expert360 tweeted ‘Workplace flexibility should be a
strategy, not a perk’, PwC US careers tweeted ‘#PwC gives you the #flexibility
you need to work and pursue passions outside the office’.
To say the least, flexibility is trending big
time and for me, it is the new stable. Gone are the days when employees looked
for rigid and well-planned work schedules. These days, the demand is for being
the architect of not only one’s career, but job as well.
Flexibility — the ability to be easily
modified, has become a unique Employee Value Proposition which helps attract,
motivate and retain talent in the marketplace.
According to the Trends in Workplace
Flexibility Report of September 2015 by WorldatWork, workplace flexibility is
believed to have a positive effect. More than half of the participants
anticipate that their workforce would say there is a positive or extremely
positive effect on employee engagement (60%), motivation (57%) and satisfaction
(68%).
Most often, the flexibility programmes are
not formally offered to most employees and it’s observed that some managers do
so, but not explicitly, or they are encouraged to find mutually beneficial
solutions that best fit their specific workforce, which may go beyond formal
flexibility programme offering.
So, how does one describe workplace
flexibility? To each his own — while for a few, flexibility would imply
teleworking, flexi time schedules, part-time, compressed work week; for others,
it may mean phased return from leave, phased retirement and job sharing.
In my opinion, flexibility is the new stable
and is taking centre stage.
Here’s a look at why different yet connected
perspectives, which when woven together, provide a holistic view about
workplace flexibility.
The socio-economic landscape
Think about how drastically the
socio-economic landscape has changed over the past few years, and there will
not be an iota of doubt about the importance of flexibility. Nuclear families,
working parents, dominant millennial workforce, rising inflation, incessant
traffic jams, increasing carbon-footprint, mounting stress… the list is
endless.
Organisations would need to understand how
these levers are impacting their business and their implications, to be able to
come up with a flexibility programme that is tailor-made for their
organisation’s needs.
Customisable flexibility options, rather than
broad-based generic programmes, should be offered so as to reap maximum benefit
for all stakeholders.
The business demands
We operate in dynamic business environments
and there is business pressure to do more with less, have higher utilisation
and support clients round-the-clock or in different time zones.
Flexibility programmes need to be developed
in response to these business demands. For instance, most IT companies
currently work with clients that demand 24/7 presence and troubleshooting
support, which can be made to seem less of a hassle for employees when
flexibility is offered through better planning of work schedules in the project
and sharing a shift roster well in advance with the project team.
The cultural lens
Flexibility has moved from being non-existent
to existent, and in the future, will be deeply embedded in the organisation’s
culture.
After a few years, it will be the basic ask
of employees rather than a benefit. It will be a way of life that will
seamlessly integrate into every aspect of work. Often, in employee connect
interactions, the HR fraternity gets to hear that flexibility extended by the
company has helped them perform optimally and has kept them motivated to keep
giving their best. The trust invested in employees in such a culture will be
returned in terms of intangible aspects such as more loyalty, higher morale,
talent pool that is diverse in geography and demography and in tangible aspects
such as jump in productivity, cost reduction and will also contribute to
environment sustainability to a fair extent.
The technology imperative
As per an IBM report on flexible workplaces,
74% of CIOs prioritise flexible workplace investments over all other IT spends.
So what does this mean from a technology standpoint? It translates into
offering high speed Internet, virtual private network (VPN), remote desktop
access, mobile enterprise strategy, voice over internet protocol (VoIP), video
conferencing, communication tools such as Web-Ex, GotoMeeting and Skype, and
collaboration tools such as Yammer and Google Docs. While security is rated as
a top concern, there is a lot of work being done in this area to ensure that
the future of the flexible workplace is not in jeopardy with regard to
technology.
Companies can make it effortless for their
employees to access files through cloud storage services which are extremely
scalable, based on pay as per need, and where the issue of lost files is a
thing of the past. Desktop as a Service (DaaS), for instance, can be used to
create a virtual desktop network with corporate-level security.
It all boils down to this: To be an employer
of choice, workplace flexibility will be a deal-breaker. Dan Schawbel, founder
of WorkplaceTrends.com has summed this up appropriately,
“In the future, every company will have a
flexibility programme and those that don’t, will lose the battle for the top
talent.”
(Fiona Rohinton Wadia is Lead – Business
Partner HR at Infosys, Hyderabad)
Source | The Hindu | 27 July 2016
Regards
Pralhad
Jadhav
Senior
Manager @ Library
Khaitan
& Co
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