With Christmas over, business leaders will be turning their minds to the New Year and ways in which to strengthen their company output over the next 12 months. One initiative they may wish to consider introducing, however, could not only benefit their firms but also the wider economy, according to a new report from the Centre for Economics and Business Research (CEBR).
Flexible working has become immensely popular in recent years, with more Britons than ever before managing to return to full or part time work thanks to the scheme. This allows not only allows parents and carers to ask their employer for a little more flexibility in their working hours but, thanks to a change in UK law, means that from this summer any employee who has been in their current position for more than 26 weeks has the right to ask their boss for a change in work patterns without having to give an explanation for the reason.
According to the CEBR’s study, businesses embracing the demand for flexible working could add around £90 billion to the country’s economy, determined using a “best case scenario” hypothesis based upon a survey of 1,272 British residents.
Citrix representative Jacqueline de Rojas has called for British businesses to implement “a mentality shift” for the good of the economy.
She says; “It is time to move on from judging workers on how long they spend at their desks to evaluating them on the work they actually deliver.
“Those that choose not to enable workplace mobility will lose out in the war for talent.”
The survey found that seven in 10 Britons currently unemployed due to becoming retired or disabled, acting as a carer or choosing to remain in the home as a full time parent would consider returning to a workplace if flexible working was offered.
Similarly, current employees in “thinking jobs” including engineering, law or medicine would welcome the introduction of flexible working in their business – something which would add £11.5 billion to the economy thanks to the improved use of their time.
So the question is, how can your business adapt to flexible working as a means of benefiting employees? There are a number of different options, such as allowing workers to begin their shifts outside of the usual 9 to 5 office hours, or splitting shift patterns into shorter blocks as a means of allowing parents to split childcare without the need to pay nursery costs.
Additionally, depending on the business type you operate within, your firm could offer workers the chance to work from home on certain days of the week and return to the office periodically to attend meetings. Along with cutting commuter costs for your employees, this could also save on utility bills.
With 9 in 10 UK workplaces currently offering some sort of flexible working scheme for their employees, the question is whether your business could find a way to implement these changes. And with New Year just around the corner, this is the ideal time to make a fresh start.
