A flexible workplace allows you to work with your employees to decide on working arrangements such as hours of work, work location and the way work is carried out. It involves thinking creatively about how working lives can be better structured to match individual and business needs.
Benefits of flexible work practices
Flexible workplace arrangements can assist you and your employees improve the way your workplace operates. Creating a flexible workplace is good for business and has a number of advantages:
- improving your ability to attract skilled and motivated employees
- recognition as an 'employer of choice' with a competitive edge in recruiting
- creating greater staff loyalty and higher return on training investment
- increased trust and respect
- reduced stress levels and improved morale and commitment
- a better match between peaks and troughs in workloads and staffing
- reduced absenteeism and staff turnover
- increased management skills and finding creative ways to work
- improved productivity
- potential for improved occupational health and safety records
- assisting compliance with anti-discrimination and workplace relations laws.
With the ageing of the population and skills shortages, adopting a flexible approach to work will assist in attracting a diverse workforce including people with disability.
Steps to introducing flexible work practices
While implementing flexible work practices may at first appear difficult, all it takes is some planning, a little consideration and a willingness to try something new.
Introducing flexible work does not have to be expensive or involve radical change to current practice. It does however require planning ahead so that you can canvass all your options, assess your business needs and develop strategies for implementation.
Here are some suggestions to get you started:
Step 1—Needs assessment
Flexible work practices need to cater to the differing needs of your employees. If you focus on the individual needs of your employees and then ensure that your workplace caters for those needs, it will be a better environment for everyone, whether or not they have disability. For example, a flexible workplace can assist employees:
- with fluctuating periods of health
- attend medical appointments
- fit in with their carer’s timetable
- with responsibilities for care of children or other relatives.
Needs assessments can be completed by talking to your employees individually or by:
- having discussions and consultation at staff meetings
- holding focus groups
- using tools such as staff surveys.
Exit interviews with staff who are resigning or leaving to work elsewhere are a good tool for determining if there are gaps in your work practices.
Remember that communication is essential in developing flexible work practices that are well tailored for your organisation and for your employees.
Step 2—Understanding your options
Once you have conducted a needs assessment, you will have a better understanding of the kinds of flexible work practices that would be most beneficial to implement.
Understand your options by thinking about the range of flexible work practices available as well as those which are already in place in your organisation.
Flexible working hours
These may include flexible start and finish times, part time work, job sharing and consulting employees about rostering and compressed hours. Introducing make-up time allows employees to make up hours if they need to attend medical or other appointments.
Match tasks to your employees’ varying capacities
Encourage employees in multi-skilling and job rotation. Offer training and transfer opportunities to meet capacities. If an employee is having difficulties with a particular task, allocate it to another person. When an employee returns after extended leave, provide support and appropriate training.
Flexibility with sick, carer and other types of leave
Allow employees leave flexibility. This could include taking leave in single days, taking leave without pay, and extended or special leave. You may also consider hiring casuals to temporarily replace employees on extended leave.
Home based work (telework)
Consider employing people to work from home (teleworking). Teleworking is a flexible working arrangement where employees work away from the traditional office, such as at home or in a remote location, with the assistance of information technology.
If you use teleworkers you can employ people who find it difficult to participate in the traditional workforce, such as people with disability, mature age workers, carers and workers in rural and regional areas. As well as the benefits to your business, the benefits to your employees are many—fewer mobility problems, reduced travelling time and cost, better work-life balance, and greater flexibility in working hours.
Discussing flexible work practices with your employees will assist in developing and determining what practices are most suited to their needs. Your employees may have other suitable ideas on how to create flexibility then those listed here.
Step 3—Negotiation
Decide with your employees what flexible work practices would be suitable and reasonable for both of you. As part of this process you should:
- determine key implementation issues, such as communication, attending staff meetings, working different hours in emergencies, and access to training
- consult with the employees' co-workers and supervisor to understand their views on perceived barriers and strategies to address them
- decide on specific performance measures so that you and your employee can evaluate if the arrangement is working
- finalise the flexible work arrangement once negotiated and accepted by preparing a written individual flexible work practices agreement with the employee.
After discussing suitable arrangements you may like to draft a workplace policy on flexible work practices. This will clearly communicate rights and responsibilities in relation to flexible work arrangements and steps for putting them into practice.
When thinking about introducing flexible working practices in your business you will need to consider whether the industrial instrument provides enough scope to achieve this or whether it would be better to negotiate either an individual agreement with an employee (Australian Workplace Agreement) or a collective agreement with all employees, through a trade union or directly with employees. Agreements generally provide greater scope for workplace flexibility.
When considering flexible working arrangements, employers should bear in mind that minimum entitlements in the Australian Fair Pay and Conditions Standard cannot be undercut, and that under the new Fairness Test, workplace agreements must provide fair compensation for the modification or removal of protected award conditions.
To find out your rights and responsibilities as an employer visit the Workplace Authority web site. Alternatively you can call the Workplace Infoline on 1300 363 264.
Step 4—Implementation
When implementing flexible work practices, consider:
- using a trial period to ‘test drive’ how the arrangement works in practice
- regularly consulting with your employee and other co-workers so that issues can be discussed as they arise
- reviewing the arrangement to see whether it has been successful, perhaps once in the first week, then once a month for three months, then after six months.
Step 5—Monitoring and evaluation
It is not always possible to predict what impact increased flexibility will have on business outcomes and on other team members. Monitoring and evaluating the effectiveness of flexible work arrangements means you can track progress and make amendments or adjustments as needed.
Plan to evaluate the flexible work practices on a regular basis, by:
- setting up a confidential feedback process for your employee and co-workers to evaluate the arrangements and their supervisor’s ability to manage flexibility
- assessing specific flexibility training needs for all employees
- surveying stakeholders to determine their perception of the impact flexible work practices are having
- checking that individual and team performance measures and objectives have been achieved.
Using the information you obtained through the evaluation, analyse the overall strengths and weaknesses of the flexibility options and put in place strategies in response. A possible strategy may be to provide additional training or resources for your employees, co-workers or supervisors to better facilitate the working arrangements.
More about flexible workplaces
To find out more, visit some of the following sites (please note that the links will take you to an external site in a new window):
For fact sheets about the importance of a flexible workplace:
To complete a health check to gauge the flexibility in your workplace:
You can also contact the JobAccess Advisers to talk about creating your own flexible workplace by calling 1800 464 800.