HCS Business Matters
25 June 2010
A bonus or flexible working?
A recent survey of UK professionals has found that flexible working is employees' most valued benefit with bonuses falling in second place. Both male and female employees think flexible working is a priority. The survey also found that large numbers of employees are looking for a better work-life balance in the future. Interestingly, 50% of the employees interviewed stated that they would rather work for themselves. The third most popular benefit after flexible working and bonuses was a good company pension plan.
This survey was carried out in the UK and in 112 other countries. UK employees put greater priority on a good pension than employees from elsewhere. The breakdown of the UK survey was as follows:
Flexible working - 47%
Bonuses - 19%
Pensions - 15%
Paid time off to do social/humanitarian work - 7%
Exposure to advanced networking/social activities - 6%
Paid training/development - 6%
The results of the survey are interesting in light of the new Government's promises to extend the right to request flexible working to all employees. It certainly appears that flexible working is something which is going to continue to be important to all employees.
HCS Top Tips for flexible working to benefit both your business and employees:
· Have in place a flexible working policy that ensures fairness and equality in application for all employee
· Offer various options for flexible working practices including:
- part time working and shorter hours
- job-sharing — one full-time job is split between two employees, with hours and days worked agreed between the two
- homeworking — workers spend all or part of their week working from home
- variable start and finish times — enables a business to operate for longer hours
- term-time working — work is carried out during term times, but the salary is spread across 12 months
- compressed hours — employees work their full hours each week, but do so over fewer than five days, for example, four long days a week or nine long days a fortnight
- annualised hours — employees manage their working time over the course of the year, working longer some weeks and shorter hours other weeks, averaging out over the year
- time off in lieu — staff take time off to compensate for extra hours worked
- shift swapping — employees arrange shifts among themselves, providing all shifts are covered.
Remember! Requests for flexible working have to be operationally effective for the business in order to benefit both parties.
25 June 2010, webeditor
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