A recent study by the Society of Human Resources Management advices that the traditional workplace with a nine-to-five schedule is fast becoming a thing of the past. This can be attributed to several reasons:
• Technological advances (e.g., PDAs/smart phones, VPN access, virtual desktops, etc.).
• Increase in global competition/economy.
• Dual-income households.
• Increased number of employees with caring responsibilities (e.g., child care, elder care).
• Varying needs of the different generations in the workplace (e.g., employees under 35 years of age tend to value greater workplace flexibility).
• Single-parent families.
• Sustainability (e.g., an organization’s ability to balance financial performance with contributions to the quality of life of its employees, the local community and society at large).
Currently, Marten Printing and Office Supplies (Marten Printing) has ten employees who work in various roles (see Appendix A for organizational chart). Their offices are above their store location at 9564 Maxwell Street, in Madison, Wisconsin and there is no room for expansion. Marten Printing wants to ensure they can enable their employees to achieve a balance of their employee work along with other responsibilities. Marten’s is proposing adopting a flexible work environment.
Types of Flexible Work Environments
There are various number of types of flexible work environments. For this assessment, the following was considered:
• Number of employees.
• Age segmentation.
• Work responsibilities.
• Employee’s home locations.
The most common work flex environments are telecommuting, compressed work, and part-time/job sharing.
Telecommuting
Telecommuting enable employees to work from home rather than coming to the office. This...
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...where staff would only work four days rather than the typical five days. Employers may request that the employee work longer hours to enable the employee to continue to be classified as full-time employee. For example, an employee may work four–ten hour days, and then have three consecutive days off.
Works Cited
http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/capitalbusiness/career-coach-the-pros-and-cons-of-telecommuting/2013/03/22/fee86bfa-9196-11e2-bdea-e32ad90da239_story.html http://humanresources.about.com/od/employeebenefits/f/flex_schedules.htm http://www.shrm.org/HRDISCIPLINES/BENEFITS/Pages/workflex.aspx http://www.insperity.com/blog/weighing-the-pros-and-cons-of-a-flexible-work-arrangement/ http://hrcouncil.ca/hr-toolkit/workplaces-flexible.cfm http://sshl.ucsd.edu/intranet/policies/awst/AWST_Report.htm http://www.flexibility.co.uk/flexwork/general/SMEs.htm
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