Do Workers Benefit from the Use of Flexible Working Practices - Literature review Example

Labour flexibility Labour flexibility Labour flexibility has been defined as the ability to respond to economic shocks, HM Treasury (2003). Further definition shows that labour flexibility is a situation where labour can adjust smoothly and freely to equate supply with demand. Labour flexibility is reflected in the employer’s ability to hire or dismiss labour as per the needs of the firm (Reilly, 1998). The concept of Post-Fordism is associated with flexible, adaptable business procedures and processes that are able to respond fast to changing circumstances such as variation in consumer demand, which requires personal and general employee flexibility. Labour flexibility assist firms to tame their labour costs at a precise level; that satisfy the firms need for labour and respond to possible fluctuations to labour requirements by providing a strategy for the firm to act flexibly and adjust to fluctuations to labour demands (Fleetwood, 2007). Labour flexibility has drawn the attention of employers and employees concern in recent times. There has been an immense upsurge in interest, in labour flexibility arrangements due to the need to screen work potential of new entrants to labour market, to adjust to labour market shifts and lower redundancy costs (Golsch, 2003). According to the HM Treasury, Flexibility in the UK economy, “a flexible and efficient labour market can adjust to changing economic conditions in a manner that retains high employment, low inflation and real income growth.” Employers regard external and internal work flexibility as a key strategy for firms to be competitive in a global business sphere (Muller & Scherer, 2003; Reilly 1998).The ability of a given firm to hastily respond to changing business environment is the flexibility and adaptability of its employees. (Erlinghagen, 2004 p. 104), Describes internal flexibility as increasing the functional flexibility of employees within the firm. In many work scenarios, firms develop and broaden the staff’s work tasks through rotation and job enlargement mechanisms so that they may deploy the skills and capabilities of their employees more flexible. Employees are thus expected to assume wider duties and responsibilities. Approaches to labour flexibility Functional flexibility It is the ability of workers to perform various tasks either horizontally or vertically. A distinction is made between multi-skilling (providing worker with a range of transferable skills) and multi-tasking (associated with extending tasks and duties without an equivalent improvement in reward). Functional flexibility deals with the ease at which labour can be redeployed to new jobs or tasks, its ability to adapt to new requirements, respond to demand and changes in technology. Financial flexibility It is also known as wage flexibility. Employee reward is associated to individual, team, department and organizational performance through mechanisms such as individual or group related pay, commission and bonuses. Wage flexibility aims at enhancing the creation of an association between the individual and organizational goals. Financial flexibility may be approached in two ways; real wage flexibility, this is the ease at which income can adjust to fluctuations in aggregate demand for labour and relative wage flexibility; this is the point at which income from different labour inputs adjusts to structural shifts in the economy. Financial flexibility influences employees work especially in companies and firms where financial rewards are a key driver to employee mobility and flexibility. Numerical flexibility It is also called external flexibility. Numerical flexibility is associated with the use of casual, temporary, agency and self-employed workers during outsourcing and subcontracting different types of work. It deals with the ease with which workers can adjust labour inputs i.e. people or time worked in response to changes in demand. Numerical flexibility addresses how companies recruit or dismiss staff. Factors such as global economic crisis and constraints make companies more reliant on temporary employees, short-term contracts so that they can adapt to changing global business environment (Glottlieb, Kelloway, & Barham, 1998). Temporal flexibility Temporal flexibility describes the ability of workers and the company to vary the number and duration of time worked. It is associated with no-standard patterns of performance that steer away from the 9-5, 38 hours working week. The firm can, therefore, opt for part time workers, flexi-time, and weekend work; stand by, overtime and call-out arrangements, cycle working and compressed hours. Distancing flexibility Distancing flexibility describes how a company resorts to the use of external employees who are under contractual agreement to undertake a particular task. Distance flexibility is meant to help firms control labour costs, satisfy its demand for labour and respond to fluctuations in worker demand. Spatial flexibility It is also known as location flexibility. It describes the flexibility of the place of work e.g. working at home, desk-sharing, teleworking and engagement of freelancers. The configuration of telework has enabled individuals to work from home by accessing the network through a laptop, tablet or desktop. Examples of telework include mobile teleworking, individuals who spend much time with customers. It is the ease of the labour movement from one geographic region to another in response to structural shifts in demand. Spatial flexibility is important when a company intends to lower overhead costs to the employer or respond to work-life balance demands of employees and their wellbeing. Flexibility of work space is closely related to the physical structure of the firm especially where employee mobility constitutes a core principle. Atkinson (1984) provided a useful model known as the flexible firm to describe the different approaches to flexibility firms can adopt depending on the nature of labour employed. The design comprises of the core group (internal labour market, functional flexibility, first periphery group (secondary internal labour market, numerical and functional flexibility) and the second periphery group (numerical and functional flexibility e.g. temporary workers). The core group has highly skilled workers who are also highly valued by the firm and their skills are firm specific. They are limited in the external labour market and are key to group activities. Their flexibility is in their continuous development and deployment of their abilities. The first peripheral group comprises workers who have the skills required by the firm, but differ in that they are not firm-specific. The company thus depends on the external labour market, to fill the job openings and to put up with some extent of labour turnover. The second periphery group consists of employees who work under non-contractual agreements. They provide functional and external flexibility. According to Grimshaw et al., (2008), labour market players are finding it difficult to predict with certainty their position within a segmented market. In a labour flexible market, employees work on part time basis employed on need basis by organizations. However, they face discrimination from firm management in terms of training, on job experience and remuneration. Organizations are unwilling to incur additional costs to train staff who are on a temporal basis then offload them. Organizations thus prefer to sponsor permanent staff to training seminars and workshops to gain work experience. Part time workers are exposed to much overtime work hours. Employers want to exploit their skills before letting them go. McGovern et al. (2004) suggests that temporary and part time employment exposed workers to poor work conditions such as low pay, poor benefits, zero commission and allowances, lack of pension scheme and lack of a recognized performance appraisal tool such as promotion ladder. Agency workers are a temporary cover to oversee special tasks one-off projects. Firms also endear to acquire skills from the agency professional (wright, 2003; Felstead and Gallie, 2004; Gray, 2002; Moshavi & Tergorg, 2002). The use of agency workers is a flexible strategy meant to solve problems of recruiting staff. Employer’s preference to agency workers is due to their ability to recruit and dismiss and adjust wages (Buultjens and Howard, 2001). Firm management uses agency workers on an open-ended basis, exploiting their functionality to the maximum. Wintour (2008) argues that in May 2008, it marked the end of a six year battle to give temporary workers and agency workers equal rights with Britain’s permanent employees. Fixed-term contract describes a firms contract with an employee, to perform general or firm specific tasks and upon the execution of the task, the contract expires. Fixed-term contracts end on a particular date. They are contracts for temporary jobs and are restricted to a fixed tenure. Mostly the service is of a minimum of six months and a maximum of three years. Fixed-term contracts involve low dismissal costs and workers under id are not protected by any provision from abrupt firing, they do not comprise severance payment in case of any dismissal. Zero-hour contracts are tailored for casual workers where the employee is willing to recruit the individual on ad hoc basis. Zero hour contacts do not require employers to provide the casual laborer with the minimum amount of work indeed the casual worker will be paid for the amount of work done. Zero hour contracts require that employees be flexible enough and be available according to employers need basis. The contracts have a significant downside towards the employees as the employer has total flexibility to the workers work time. Workers may be overexploited by the employers since they do not have time to maintain decent living standards. The over exploitation can also be due to lack of security by labour laws leaving them vulnerable to employers whims. As a result, casual workers have been exposed to; unfair dismissals and redundancy. A study conducted by Dundon et al. (2004) concluded that the employee voice could impact positively in three major ways; first, their voice is a way of appreciating their confidence. It eventually leads to improved worker attitude and behavior and cooperative relations. The second impact relates to improved productivity and the third is improved management systems. Voice techniques are aimed at providing employees with a say over work place and firm decisions (Dundon and Rollinson 2004). Job satisfaction can be derived from job security, contentment and skill utilization and good working conditions. Clark (2005) found out that the job satisfaction is supported broadly by the quality of the work. Employee job satisfaction is closely related to salary, benefits, training opportunities and possibility of personal and career development. Intensification of work is related to increasing in work load without the commensurate increase in salary level or benefits. Green (2006) shows increase in job activity in the UK in 1990s due to the required speed and need to meet tight deadlines. Labour flexible model shows how effort to develop a more adaptive and flexible workforce can have an immense impact on job content, job security and loyalty of different teams of employees. Fleetwood (2007) suggest that where there are mutual gains from both the employers and employees, flexibility cannot be vied as equivocally good from an employers Reference List David Jawahar (2009), Contemporary issues in management research. pp. 196-203. Dundon T. & Rollinson D. (2011), understanding employment relations. pp. 73-79. Juan J. & Luis T. (1994), unemployment and labour market flexibility: Spain. pp 91-96 Hollinshead G., Nicholls P., Tailby S. (2003), employee relations, pp 469-481 House of Commons (2004-2005), Trade and industry report, UK Employment Regulation: Seventh report session. pp. 110-111. House of lords (2006-2007), modernizing European Union labour law: has UK to gain anything? pp. 155-157. Nick Wilton (2011) an introduction to Human resource management pp 103-114 Simone R. Kiprpal (2011), Labour market flexibility and individual careers: A comparative study. Pp 35-37. Read More