Flexible Work Arrangements

In business and industry, flexible work arrangements are workplace programs that give employees more control over their schedules and how they perform the tasks and responsibilities of their jobs. Employees have leeway to decide when and where they do their work to meet their individual and family needs. The schedules may vary from the traditional workday and workweek.

Several forms of flexible work arrangements exist. Primary practices include flextime, compressed workweek, flexplace, part-time work, job sharing, banking of hours, gradual retirement, and leaves.

Flexible work arrangements benefit employees and employers. The flexibility allows workers to better manage the demands of their work obligations with their family life, known as "work-life balance." Offering flexible work programs helps businesses attract and retain workers, lower absenteeism, and increase job satisfaction, leading to a high-performing workforce. However, the arrangements can negatively affect employers who are ill-prepared to deal with the challenges.

A renewed focus was placed on flexible work arrangements following the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, which caused many employers to shift their business practices due to quarantine and social distancing measures enacted to fight the spread of the global illness.

Background

Flexible work arrangements are also referred to as flexible working, atypical work, and family-friendly options.

The dynamics of working families shifted in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. More families include couples in which both partners have careers and the number of single-parent households has risen. As families spend more time working, they struggle to balance the obligations of their jobs with the responsibilities of caring for children and/or older relatives.

Employees are seeking more flexibility at work as they strive to achieve a better work-life balance. To meet the needs of a changing workforce, more employers are providing flexible work arrangements.

A traditional work schedule is a five-day, forty-hour workweek, from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday, and usually requires an employee to report to a workplace.

Generally, flexible work arrangements give employees options to work alternate days, hours, and places. The workload remains the same, but employees have greater freedom in how they accomplish their tasks.

Depending on the job, employees may select from a variety of schedules as long as they reach forty hours. Some opt to work fewer hours. Employees may work remotely or telecommute, usually from home, rather than at the location of their employer or office. In other cases, employees can take a hybrid approach that divides their days into both remote work and in-office work.

The concept of flexible work hours originated in Germany in the 1960s as a solution for traffic congestion. In the 1970s, technology firm Hewlett-Packard became the first company to implement flexible hours in the United States. The firm started a program at its Massachusetts plant, which caught on with employees. The success of the Hewlett-Packard program helped loosen the rigors surrounding traditional work schedules.

Following the COVID-19 pandemic that began in 2020, many companies began offering work-from-home arrangements due to quarantine and social distancing measures enacted to combat the spread of COVID-19. According to the United States Census Bureau, the number of Americans who primarily worked from home increased from 5.7 percent in 2019 to 17.9 percent in 2021. That same year, the World Economic Forum conducted a survey of 12,500 people employed in twenty-nine countries to gauge worldwide trends in remote work. This survey found that while the share of people working mostly from home worldwide was approximately 24 percent prior to the pandemic, by the summer of 2021 39 percent reported working mostly from home and another 22 percent reported working outside of their homes but not in an office.

The state of remote work and other flexible work arrangements continued to vary across countries as the COVID-19 pandemic went on but lessened in severity. While some companies, including in the United States, began to reverse course and require employees to return to the office or commit to more traditional hours, others made such flexible arrangements permanent policies. Surveys of global workers indicated that they largely continued to favor the flexibility of options such as remote work even as some employers' concerns about productivity and company culture grew. In some countries, governments implemented new labor laws or changed existing ones to legalize rights concerning flexible work arrangements.

Overview

Employers have instituted a variety of flexible work arrangements to cater to employee needs. The most common is flextime, or flexible work hours. Flextime allows employees to choose when they begin and end their workday. Workers may select from a range of hours based upon a "core" time, during which the majority of work is performed. For instance, if a company sets its core hours from 9 a.m. and 3 p.m., then an employee has leeway to start between 7 a.m. and 9 a.m. and finish between 3 p.m. and 5 p.m. Flextime has become a standard practice in many industries.

During a compressed workweek, an employee works fewer than five days in the workweek and receives an additional day off. The shifts are longer than the average workday. For example, an employee may work four ten-hour shifts and receive three days off. In another arrangement, an employee may work an extra hour or two a day over the course of two weeks and receive an extra day off in that span.

Flexplace refers to an arrangement in which an employee works from home or another location outside the workplace. Advances in technology—phones, cell phones, computers, and other electronic devices—have made it easier for employees to perform their regular tasks outside the office environment.

Part-time work gives employees the option to work fewer hours. Depending on their individual situations and needs, workers may seek this option as a short-term or long-term arrangement.

Under job sharing, two or more employees share the responsibilities and tasks of one job. The pay and benefits of the position are split among the people sharing the job.

Banking of hours is an arrangement that allows employees to decide the maximum number of hours and days they will work within a given period. The period may last a week, month, or year. By banking hours, employees blend flextime with a compressed workweek.

Gradual, or phased, retirement permits employees to scale back their hours over a set period before eventually retiring. The arrangement eases the employee's transition from full-time work to retirement.

Leaves allow employees to take extended time off from work without giving up their employee rights. The leaves can be paid or unpaid. Employees can request leaves for several reasons, including family, health care, sabbaticals, education, community service, or leisure.

Flexible work arrangements offer many advantages for workers. Employees can arrange to work during quiet times and avoid rush-hour traffic. By having more control over when and where they work, employees can spend more time with their children and families. When problems or emergencies occur, workers can alter their schedules to attend to them. Through flexible work arrangements, employees can find work-life balance.

Employers also reap the benefits. Businesses that offer flexible work arrangements appear more attractive to potential employees. Workers with flexibility are less likely to call off, which reduces absenteeism. Employees are often happier and satisfied with their jobs, which means they are more likely to stay with their employers. Happy employees perform at their full potential, which increases productivity.

Flexible work arrangements may not be suitable for all workplaces. Some employees may fail to accomplish a full day's work if they give in to distractions at home, such as television, surfing the internet, or video games. Employees may choose start and end times that hinder their tasks. As flexible work arrangements cater to the specific needs of employees, managers may end up treating some workers differently than others.

To address most of these problems, employers should establish clear rules and guidelines for flexible work programs. Businesses should do research to determine whether the arrangements are appropriate for their environments. If so, they should ensure the program's policies work within the employer's objectives and adhere to fair standards.

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