Work/life balance and the relative importance of harmonising family responsibilities with earning a living wage have become issues of primary importance in many developed countries. Employers and employees have found innovative ways of ensuring that successful careers can be combined with lives enriched by recreational activities, parenthood, family activities and the care of elderly family members.
But in less developed countries, internal or cross-border migration can force family separations, often with parents not meeting each other or their children for years at a time. Extended factory or office working hours and excessive journeys to and from work-places can also mean that families can enjoy little or no social life together, losing out on most of what makes living environments happy and worthwhile.
This can also happen to highly-paid workers in major cities worldwide. Office lights burning late or even throughout the night in downtown commercial centres bear witness to the affluent misery of work/life imbalance. Is there no way to resolve this blight, bearing down upon the world of work?
Flexible working practices can come to the rescue. Flexible working has become an optional arrangement in many countries, and even a legal right in some of the most progressive human resource environments.
What is flexible working?
There are many options available to enable employers and employees to free themselves from the constraints of rigid working locations and time schedules.
These can be adopted without adversely affecting efficiency and productivity. Well-conceived flexible working arrangements can enhance workforce performance as well as encouraging moral and corporate solidarity. In cases where flexible working arrangements can be combined with home locations, travel time and cost savings also bring about great employee satisfaction.
Some of the main types of flexible working include:
- Part-time work: This can mean working several days per week or month, or reduced hours per day;
- Job-sharing: Two or more people may share a single job. This can mean allocating a designated proportion of the full-time responsibility, or else, allowing employees themselves to allocate their time sharing among their team;
- Flexible working hours: Employers and employees may agree on starting and finishing times to suit the requirements of the business and the convenience of the employees. Some people may need to start late and finish late. Others will prefer early starts and finishing times. These arrangements can also take account of traffic conditions and transport timings, thereby reducing travel time to and from work, and reduce general congestion conditions;
- Compressed or extended hours: The employee may work longer hours on fewer days, or have blocks of hours such as two or three weeks of daily work followed by a longer multi-day break. This may suit employees whose homes are remote from work-places, even in another part of the country or across borders;
- Work harmonising with education: This can either mean cases where the employee takes time off during education holidays, in order to care for children, or else arranges work-times to correspond with their own education course convenience;
- Annual or seasonal hour allocations: Employees may agree to work a certain number of hours per year or per season, which may also correspond with the seasonal needs of the employer;
- Production target or commission commitments: Employees have production targets or specific amount of incentive payments, with no specific time commitment;
- Zero hour contracts: Employees have no specific minimum hour allocation, but are required to be available when required by the employer. This arrangement favours employers and has become increasingly frequent in many countries, but has been much criticised by labour activists;
- Sabbatical leaves: Much favoured by academic institutions but not uncommon in commercial organisations, these arrangements permit an employee to take a year off work while retaining status in the organisation. Employees may undertake full-time education, but may also undertake charitable or other social work. Such leave may be fully, partly or not paid but usually counts towards long-term career benefits;
- Home-based work arrangements: This is the most popular form of flexible working, enabling employees to stay at home and work full or part time. This can be combined with child-care, elderly-care.
- Remote working arrangements: Unlike home-based work, this arrangement enables the employee to be mobile or work while travelling. Many door-to-door sales people work under these arrangements. Employers know and accept that the employee is neither at the work-place or the home, but out and about, whether necessitated by the job or by personal preference.
Benefits of flexible working arrangements
There are obvious benefits of flexible working for employees, but employers also gain many benefits. Some of the most evident benefits include:
- Saving of work-space, where employees work from home or from other locations;
- Better customer service, which can extend even to 24 hours per day and 7 days per week;
- Whether or not the employee is located at the workplace or at home, it has been found that flexible working arrangements result is better morale, reduced stress, longer permanence in the job, and general employee satisfaction;
- Employers offering flexible working conditions experience greater access to quality workforce who might not otherwise be available, thereby reducing labour shortages in many markets and sectors;
- General improvement in work/life balance enhances community harmony;
- Flexible work employers gain reputation and enhance corporate social responsibility.
Challenges to adopting flexible working arrangements
While there are undoubted benefits to flexible work, there are also many challenges to be faced when adopting such schemes. These include:
- Managers unused to such schemes may be sceptical and fear loss of control and creation of inefficiency;
- There may be doubts regarding ability to fulfil customer requirements using flexible work;
- Corporate cultures and traditions may demand more rigid arrangements;
- Performance measurement and evaluation need adjustment;
- Control and support of flexible working employees may be more difficult;
- Employees working at a distance need morale boosting and active enhancement of solidarity with the organisation;
- Flexibility may be seen as risking reduced diligence, efficiency and productivity.
Supporting flexible workforces
Especially in the case of flexible work away from regular work-places, additional support is needed:
- Workers must be provided with equipment and adequate communications to enable them to perform their work and keep in touch with recognised supervisors;
- Remotely employed workers may feel isolated and lack the encouragement and morale-building of fellow workers. Such workers should have the opportunity to meet and interact face-to-face with direct supervisors and colleagues;
- Supervisors may not have had previous experience of managing remote workforces. Remote workers may also not have experienced distant work styles. Appropriate guidance and training are essential;
- Remote workers are part of the workforce and must not be excluded from benefit entitlement, including health and safety issues;
- The legal situations of flexible workforces vary among jurisdictions. Some countries regard all workers as identical in rights and obligations, while others make distinctions. Employers and employees need to be clearly aware of rights and obligations.
Conclusion: Flexible working is well established in Thailand among home-based workers in garment or handicraft production, but exceptional in formal industrial or office environments. However, flexible working will become increasingly prevalent. Employers and employees will need to accommodate to new conventions.
Christopher F. Bruton is Executive Director of Dataconsult Ltd, chris@dataconsult.co.th. Dataconsult's Thailand Regional Forum provides seminars and extensive documentation to update business on future trends in Thailand and in the Mekong Region.