Citrix Systems South Africa spearheads discussions and debate in its launch of a Flexible Working Campaign. Chris Norton, MD of Citrix, outlines what flexible working is and the benefits thereof for both organisations and its employees.
Organisations are constantly considering various methods of flexible working. These range from part-time work, flexi-time, short-term work and even contract work. However, all of these methods have the same aspects in common: an office with a desk, a chair and tethered communication equipment.
In the past, work flexibility has been defined by the number of hours you work; in today`s technological age it extends to the location that you work from. As technologies advance, so too does the practice of flexible working. People are fast becoming familiar with terms such as virtual offices, hot-desking and teleworking. In a nutshell, work is no longer defined as a place that you have to be at, but rather as something that you do, as long as you have reliable access to the Internet.
In so saying, however, many South African companies still seem to have a relatively immature perspective of flexible working, with companies resisting change and the adoption of alternative working styles. Business managers tend to equate the performance and quality of an individual`s work based on a time-and-attendance model, rather than a productivity and deliverables based model. Many managers are still stuck in the mindset that if you are not in the office where you can be monitored and seen to be working, then you must be skiving and lazy.
Consider a practical example, the Ben Schoeman highway between Johannesburg and Pretoria. There are approximately 100 000+ motorists who choose to live in Pretoria, but who make a living working in Johannesburg. They spend approximately three hours a day in traffic, which collectively equates to almost 300 000 man-hours a day. How much more productively could businesses be run if those man-hours could be used actively working from a remote site under a flexible working principle? If these hours could be reclaimed, it would increase productivity and output and lower company costs by reducing the amount of office space needed.
The benefits of a flexible working principle
A flexible working principle has numerous benefits in terms of the impact that it has on personal employee satisfaction. Not only do employees feel that management trusts them to "get the job done", but also that they understand that employees need a balance between their work and personal life.
For an organisation, the main benefit of a flexible working policy is that it can retain skilled staff, thus reducing recruitment costs. For example, employees that are forced to leave their job to look after their children have the opportunity to stay in their jobs as they can work from home. This can further reduce the need and associated costs of recruiting and training replacements.
In the UK, where flexible working is now part of legislation, it has been proven to raise staff morale and decrease absenteeism. This also means that employees are less stressed, as they no longer have to commute through heavy traffic, thus ensuring they are happier, healthier and far more productive.
Aspects to consider
As with most process-changing initiatives, before introducing a flexible working policy, a number of aspects have to be considered. These include the need for change management, the costs involved in securing and upgrading IT infrastructure and the expenses of new computer hardware to ensure employees have the correct tools to work from a remote site. This said, if an organisation wishes to remain competitive, a flexible working policy is an imperative consideration and thus, so too are the aspects above.
The question that comes to mind now is: "Are South African companies ready to change their views on the subject of flexible working - is it a matter of shifting current perceptions or are the practical implications causing the barrier to its adoption?"
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