What is Flexible Working: The Future of Work

For a long time by now, researchers have been debating on flexible work or flexi work becoming the future of work. However, it has become pretty obvious after the covid-19 lockdowns that flexible working while ensuring the well-being of the company is possible. As a manager or an office worker, you would have also seen how your organization got extensively divided between collocated workers and on-site workers during this period.

Upon evaluating how well companies have performed in remote working setup during this lockdown period, it will not be wrong to say that flexi work has become the new normal after coronavirus. Since this type of work setup has given a lot of freedom at both the workers' end and the managers' end, they all admire this system. Chances are, you have only heard about fancy names like flexitime working or flexi work, but you don’t know the details.

The good news for all those managers and office workers is that we have shared a detailed review of this working culture below to help you understand what is flexitime working, its benefits and shortcomings, and how you can add it to your business. So, by the end of this article, you will have complete details about this working culture and how far it can be successful for your business setup. Let's first discuss what is flexitime working.

What is Flexible Working or Flexitime Working?

You would have heard about this work culture that is often called Flexible Working/Flexitime working/Flextime Working. All these terms refer to one culture that mainly supports remote work. In this culture, you have the liberty to decide your working hours and your workstation. Although several countries like the UK had policies that supported flexible working for some workers, the lockdown has made this work culture a preferred option for most of us.

Having a feeling of being your own boss, workers often enjoy working in this setting. If you compare this work setup to the traditional work setup where people worked in offices, so it is the exact opposite; however, as a business owner or a manager, you can choose to modify this setup to adopt a hybrid work model by having a mix of both traditional; and non-traditional setups.

While working in a flexible workspace, you are not bound by the office-time boundaries of nine-to-five; in fact, you can use it as an opportunity to escape the rat race by having your own remote business as a side hustle. You can only adopt flexible working wisely when you have an idea of how far it is suitable for your job. We have discussed that below, so you should have a look at that to get an idea.

How Far is Flexible Working Suitable?

To judge whether flexible working is suitable for you and your team, it is vital that you evaluate its pros and cons. Therefore, we have shared them below to give you a clear picture.

Pros of Flexible Working

• You get an increased feeling of self-control and feel like you are your own boss.
• As a manager, you will see a reduced turnover of staff, as most of them like working in this setting.
• You get to spend more time with your family and deal with their emotional needs.
• You can cut down your traveling cost and save all the money that you previously used to burn buying fuel.
• Office workers often end up sending their children to certain daycares to safeguard their children when they are at work; this is quite costly for most of them. Flexible working can help you save that.
• As a manager, you can even cut down your real estate cost by downsizing your office and have a hybrid workforce.

Cons of Flexible Working

• Since working hours are not fixed, employees end up having burnout.
• The office-based staff is often unable to communicate effectively with the telecommuting staff.
• Your work-life balance is often affected when you adopt flexi work
• Managers often find it difficult to have better coordination with the remote teams.
• Having bad communication leading to a communication gap is quite common in this setting.

How Can Flexible Working Culture be Adopted in Your Business Effectively?

Since you are aware of both sides of the coin, you know that flexible working can be both beneficial and harmful for your team. So, it will be best if you do that wisely. For now, it is better to have a combination of an office-based team and an online team that works remotely. In this way, you can alter their working shifts and have a physical meeting with any of the two teams to have better communication.

Building an online portal where your office workers can interact with each other and know one another more to perform with better coordination would be a good idea if you want to adopt flexi work setup. You should ensure that both your teams are on the same page, so it will be better if you extract some time for your team's counseling or have certain sessions where you teach them effective time management through certain games or other activities.

As a manager, you have to take good care of your work ergonomics as well, because an unorganized workstation can make you feel exhausted and stressed too soon. Therefore, buying the best office standing desk and an ergonomic chair for your home office would be a wise decision.

EndNote

Since you are now aware of what is flexitime working, the benefits of flexible working, and the possible shortcomings that this setup might have due to poor communication, you are all set to make the right decision. You can devise your own team and plan it efficiently.