Advantages and Disadvantages of Work Flexibility from the Perspective of Employers and Employees - Assignment Example

Personnel Management Q1. Explain the different types of flexibility. Flexibilities refer to those employers' initiatives that directly affect the work employees do or the way they are employed. They are divided into functional, numerical, temporal, locational and financial. These flexibilities are categorised under: working time arrangements or numbers employed. Initially flexibilities were perceived as theoretical contrary to organisations behaviour which revolve around problem solving rather than theories. Workforce flexibility is a key element to organisations which wish to pursue a human resource approach to the employment relations. However, this relation seems to be replaced by commercials ones in the application of flexibilities at work. Employers may resort to flexibility strategies due to a series of factors such as increasing competition, market uncertainties, technological change, government policies and labour supply factors (Blyton: 1996). Flexibility at work place is characterised by dynamism and adaptability in contrast to negative rigidity that have been the case with companies in the past. The reason why employers have been opting for flexibility at work does not favour employees in terms of bargaining for their rights in the work force. This is because, the prevailing labour market characterised by high level of unemployment put employers in the driving seat in this endeavour to decide who to hire, how and under what terms. The following are types of flexibilities used by employers:- Functional flexibility: In this type of flexibility, the organisation, segment its labour force into 'core' and 'peripheral' groups. The core work force is permanently employed and is particularly employed in the firm's continuous activities and enjoys greater and generous pay pack and career development including promotion. As a payback, they provide functional flexibilities that go beyond their job description to serve the company and accept multi-skilled roles in carrying out their assigned tasks (Bain & Gareth, p3). Numerical flexibility: In this case, the firm strategise on the number of employees it want to employee for particular tasks and in what terms in order to maximise the output and reduce labour cost. It mainly does this by dividing the peripheral workforce into three groups; the first peripheral group may consist of firm workers who carry out routine, low-skill tasks and their employment is more susceptible to fluctuation in product demand compared to core workforce. The second peripheral workforce mainly drawn form external labour market provides specialised skills which are only required by firm on temporary basis. The third group comprises of workers located in the secondary external labour market who are mainly low-skilled and carry out poorly paid functions like cleaning or garbage collection and catering (Bain & Gareth, p2). Financial flexibility: This is where the employer engages in a performance-related pay system so as to reward employees in the core workforce who meet the targeted output. It is also used to secure long-term commitment from staff to the firm and thereby countering the problem of retention brought about by other flexibilities. Temporal flexibility: In this approach, a firm will make decision on how and when to employ temporary workforce. This is done by the firm strategising on the optimal time of the season and day when their services is needed. This involves among other thing peak times and elimination of non-productive prospective workforce like mothers and socially committed individuals. This flexibility is very important to the organisations as it is used to cover for sick leaves and maternal leaves of core and permanent employees. Locational flexibility: This is the strategic locationing of the firm operations or sourcing the service from outside its premises in order to gain the technological advantage. It also involves restructuring the whole supply chain logistics. Manufacturing firms may close some of its plants and consolidate its operation in one centre. This help to cut cost such as rent, business rates and transportation thus reduced operational cost. This type of flexibility have been phenomenon in the service sector due to advent of information technology that facilitate transfers of duty and tasks to another contractor but still networked as if working directly from the company's office. Q2. From the perspective of employers what are the advantages and disadvantages of the different types of flexibility Employers utilise flexibilities in their organisations in order to cut unit labour cost and maximise returns. The employment of above flexibilities by employers has their own advantages and disadvantages. The following are some of the employers' gains from utilisation of various flexibilities:- They reduce labour cost to the firm. By making sure that people are there when there is something to be done. Temporal flexibility attract well -qualified people who due to child care or other commitment are looking for less than full-time work each week. In temporal and numerical flexibility, there is no payment of pension to 'temporary' and 'casual' employees. The saving made out of this flexibility can be used for firms' expansion and other profit making ventures. The company may also save the high premium rates it pays to overtime and avoid paying workers for just being at work even when there is nothing to be done. The firm would also avoid raising the expectation of its employees when future is uncertain. The company is also assured of the temporary workers' service whenever it's needed. In locational flexibility, the firm would save on the office rent, business rates and heating and lighting expenses which could otherwise be realised if the firm carry out the activity within its premises. In nutshell employers resorts to various flexibilities in order to gain in terms of: Organisational adaptability to expansion and change in product market. Improving productivity and cut unit cost of labour and Adjustment to unpredictable fluctuations and introduction of new manning practices to match new technology (Reilly, 2001, p28) However, these flexibilities have a number of disadvantages to the employers, they include:- Functional flexibility diminishes employee's efficiency by constant shifting in job roles and handling of more than one task. This can lead to poor service delivery which can result in company losing its market to other competitors. Again, there are cases of disappointment from the employees who doesn't earn more rewards as expected from extra tasks and those who could not be available due to personal reason on off-normal working hours. This have demoralised employees motivation towards performance thus lowering their output. Functional flexibility involves retraining of employees in order to handle tasks outside their line of professionalism. In this case the company may at the end of the day spend more than it will gain in the long run out of this strategy. Locational flexibility may lead to low morale among the employees who work at home or away from office due to isolation from co-workers. It also requires a new kind of supervision which sometimes proves difficult since it's very hard to monitor individual employees located in isolated location. To counter this, companies are now turning to technological invasion that can enable them to monitor these workers through networking of these work stations. This is an additional cost to the company and it might at the end of the day not translate to improved output. In temporal flexibility and numerical flexibility, the organisations find it very hand to inculcate commitment from the employees. This is made worse by the fact that they do not expect any promotion from the company and this is not their first choice job (Bajzikova & Sajgalikova, 2004, 6). Temporally workforce is inflexible in hours they work. This is because they choose this job due to its flexibility in hours and it demanded less time from them. This means the company have no control over the hours they work. Q3. What types of flexibility are utilised in the company Give an example! These flexibilities overlap and complement each other in the advantages they posses to the organisations. It is often difficult to draw demarcation on their specific area of usage and application as individual flexibility (Reilly, 2001, p28). Therefore companies at one given time may employ a combination of these flexibilities in order to maximise their comparative advantage. Most companies have been using functional flexibility reward schemes, where employees are rewarded for well accomplished tasks target achievement. Attractive pay has been also used to induce 'core' workforce to work over Christmas and holidays. Other companies have used the holiday hour bank through point earnings which can be taken later on as extended holidays. In addition, locational flexibility has become phenomenon with the advent of information technology. Many companies are now opting to closing some of their premises to consolidate their operations in one central point. There is also hiring of outside contractors to company jobs and home-office working scheme. This has been facilitated by sophisticated monitoring equipment available today that makes it possible to supervise and measure workers' performance. Locational flexibility is common in service industry especially where telephony and computers are key tools of business. Companies in this sector employees temporally employees and in shifts so as to make sure that they are able to serve their customer 24 hours a day, seven days a week Moreover, the companies in the 21st century are taking the advantage of high unemployment level to outsource workforce. Through this company engage in hiring of temporary and casual employees to save on pension and other workforce related liabilities. Hospitality industry including tourism industry is a good example where workers are hired on temporary and casual basis to avoid redundancy during low season. References Bain, P. and Gareth, M, (2002), 'Workforce flexibility in call centres: Stretching to breaking points' Unpublished paper, University of Strathclyde, Glasgow. Bajzikova, L, and Sajgalikova (2004), The Challenges HRM Must Face Under Flexible Work Arrangement: A Case Study of Slovak republic, Ekonomika, (67) Blyton, P. (1996) 'Workforce Flexibility' in Towers, B. (ed.), The Handbook of Human Resource Management, Blackwell Publishing Inc. Emmott, M and S. Hutchinson (1998), 'Employment flexibility: threat or promise' in P. Sparrow and M. Marchington (eds), Human Resource Management: the new agenda. London: financial time's management. Legge, K (2005), Human Resource Management: Rhetoric and Realities, Anniversary Edition. Basingstoke: Macmillan. Proctor, S and Ackroyd, S (2001), 'Flexibility' in Redman, T and Wilkinson, A, Contemporary Human Resource Management: text and cases(ed). Harlow: Pearson education. Reilly, P.A. (2001), Flexibility at Work: Balancing the Interests of Employer and Employee, Gower, Publishers Ltd. Read More