Management issues had posted another article (see the previous one here and my comments on the topic here) topic titled “Still suspicious of flexible working” that discusses a newly released study by HR consultancy Hewitt Associates. An excerpt follows:
The survey of 90 U.S. employers also found that two thirds believed that flexibility increased employee engagement and boosted employee retention, while half believed that it helped their recruitment efforts.
But despite this, flexible working still seems to be something of a corporate Cinderella, with barely more than a quarter of those surveyed having company-wide, formal written policies and almost the same proportion not even formally communicating the flexible working options they offer to their employees.
Four out of 10 companies have policies or guidelines that vary by location, business unit, department, or job class, and a third only offer flexibility at the discretion of individual managers. Moreover, seven out of 10 admitted they don’t measure the effectiveness of their programs in any way.
It’s good to see this type of research coming out and I hope that more organizations start looking at flexible working arrangements. As you probably know, I’m a big proponent of this type of work…a person doesn’t need to be sitting in their office to do their job (for the most part).
Viva la flextime! 🙂
[…] His boss, and the company that he had worked for, were a classic example of the ‘old school’ business management mindset: You must be in your chair for 8 hours a day to do your job. This is so wrong…especially with the research studies that are coming out left and right (see this post and this one). […]
Thanks for the comment Cali & Jody.
The key there is to ‘trust your employees’….and the key to that is to hire the right people…which most companies don’t do. Think about how much time, energy and money and organization wastes every year monitoring employees time and efforts…how about freeing up the employees to do their job (and possibly falling in love with what they do) and thereby freeing up resources to improve the business?
You’ve got a great blog http://caliandjody.com/blog/…keep up the good work over there!
Eric – we’re with you! When are more companies going to see that trusting employees to do the work vs. monitoring the hallways is a better business decision? It doesn’t matter where people are, as long as the work is getting done.
Cali and Jody
http://www.caliandjody.com/blog
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