Flexible friends

Since 30 June 2014 every worker, full- or part-time, with at least 26 weeks’ service has been able to apply for flexible working hours, to improve their work-life balance. Previously this arrangement was only offered to parents and carers. At the time the decision was lauded by both politicians and union leaders as a sensible and modern approach to work that could improve the lives of everyone.

However, over the last two years, surveys and articles are saying that workers are more stressed than ever thanks to flexible working hours promoting an ‘always on’ culture with workers ‘grazing’ their emails at all hours which keeps stress hormones at high levels.

“I think an ‘always on’ culture is a factor in today’s society,” said Dunstan Power, director of Bytesnap Design. “However, I don’t think - and wouldn’t expect - anyone working here to answer an email I sent them after 10pm, for example.”

Bytesnap allows all its staff to work flexi-time as long as they are in at the core hours of 10am to 4pm (2pm on Fridays) and work 40 hours per week. “Flexible working promotes a more relaxed and productive working environment because everyone is working hours they are comfortable with,” Power added.

He conceded that the main downside of flexible working is that because most of Bytesnap’s customers work earlier in the day, his employees who work later in the day may miss phone calls from clients with questions that they could have the solution to. It can also work the other way around, Bytesnap’s employees may need to ask a question of the client, but can’t as some clients’ offices close around 5 or 6pm.

This is a view shared by DC White’s managing director, Jenny White, who said that having people start and finish at different times during the day presents a challenge as you can’t always rely on who will be there and when.

White said: “As engineers, we need to interact with each other as and when needed on our projects.”

DC White offers flexible hours but tends to find that its engineers use them mainly when they need extra time to work on a project or time out of the office. “We find that flexi-time works very well for our staff who have family and child care commitments,” she said. “But, it doesn’t work for everyone.”

However, Power added that the positives of flexible working outweigh the negatives: “We effectively have a longer working day where there are experts on hand to help customers for up to 12 hours per day, which wouldn’t be the case if we had a 9 to 5:30 set-up.”

Andrea Pybus, HR director at Team Consulting, said that she has found that employees on flexible contracts tend to show higher commitment to their roles. She believes that the fact that their employer allows them to work hours that suit themselves, means that when the company requires extra hours to be worked, staff are happy to be flexible as well.

Flexible working is something that Pybus is familiar with: “My children are young, so it has been important and motivational for me to take on a part time role with the company. It has also encouraged me to progress within the company and encourages me to be flexible too.”

She admitted that some companies she has previously worked for have shown differing levels of encouragement when handling requests for flexible hours in the past.

Encouragement and an open and honest dialogue that strikes a balance between the needs of the employee, the business and, more importantly, the customer when considering a request is something all three companies think is important. They say they all have low levels of sickness and stress, despite reports in the media to the contrary. However, none of them have tested whether this is specifically due to flexible contracts.

Plextek has gone further than this, however and has relaxed its dress code as well as introducing a flexi-time system.

“This has really helped with morale and allows people to be flexible for their families and social lives,” said Nicholas Hill, CEO of Plextek. “This is really important to allow staff to enjoy a work-life balance that can makes people happy in their work, and therefore more productive.”

According to Hill, the social element of the organisation is key to engineers having time to unwind. At the end of every month work finishes early and the employees can indulge in pizza and beers. In November, Plextek holds a fireworks night and barbeque where the families of the engineers are also invited along.

Flexible working has its pitfalls, but having a clear agreement between employer and employee seems to reap the best results and appears to promote a healthy, happy workforce.