The Impact of Flexible Work Agreements - Essay Example

Acknowledgement Fist at all, I would like to acknowledge my deepest feelings of gratitude to the people who have extended full support to me and helped me to attain this stage in my life. Honestly, it has not been an easy process to stand up to the academic requirements in Raffles College of higher education. However I feel honoured for this opportunity to have studied under the guidance of the most renowned faculty in Singapore, who are very fair-minded and helpful person. I am especially thankful to my teachers Mr. James Huang Romeo, Ms Agatep Hope, and Mr. Vikram. Secondly, I would like to thank Mr. Isaac, my tutor and supervisor of this project, who brings original and unique experience from the business to my study and has helped me to understand reality of business, as well as taught me the theoretical aspects. I also owe him for the guidance and advices provided for the completion of this work. In addition, I would like to thank my DAP panel Ms Hope, Mr. Lawrence and Mr. Isaac Leung for facilitating the chance to write this work. Thirdly, for such a big step in my life, I feel grateful to my parents, who have always believed in me and gave me the opportunity to study abroad, so far from my home country and I will remain obliged to them forever. Last but not the least I would like to thank my husband Konstantin and my son Ernest who were always next to me in those nights and days when I studied my modules, preparing for exams. I thank both of them for their patience and support. The research I have done is about “Impact of Flexible Work Agreements on Workers Productivity in Service Sector” There are four factors of flexible work agreements that I have explored, which may influence workers’ productivity more than other factors. These are: (IV1), Flexi time (IV2) Part time work, (IV3) Compresses work week, (IV4) Tele-working/ Telecommuting. This concept will be introduced in six chapters: Chapter 1- “Introduction,” Chapter 2 - “Literature Review,” Chapter 3 - “Research Design”, Chapter - 4 Data Analysis, Chapter - 5 “Findings and Discussion” and Chapter 6 - “Conclusion and Limitation.” The purpose of the study is to understand the impact of flexible work agreements on workers productivity under in service industry companies in Singapore. It also attempts to rank the factors that affect more on flexibility and worker productivity in the service sector. Besides, it also aims to enrich the Singapore content of studies by examining specific case of such research linking between flexible work agreement and workers productivity. Finally, the study provides recommendations and appropriate proposals to managers in the service industry to achieve a better level of performance and increase workers productivity. From the findings of the study, it can be construed that flexible work agreements have a positive effect on workers’ productivity in service sector and it helps improve family life balance. Such arrangements could be more positive as employees are better able to balance work hour requirements and family commitments. Besides, it is highly popular among employees with young school-going children. These factors in the findings are supported by hypothesis testing. 1.1 Introduction and Research Background Nowadays, Flexible Work Agreements are widely being implemented and practiced in many countries as a one of the progressive tools in business. Flexible work agreement (FWAs) can benefit from organizational perspective both for the employers as well as the employees (Ministry of Manpower Singapore, 2001). Today, in a competitive world, people are working for longer hours, which can damage family and work balance with negative impacts on health, psychological well being and quality of sleep (Rossy Anna Maria Campbell Quick James, 2009) Many researchers, however, believe that flexible work agreements can mitigate these problems to a great extent. The most common of such agreements are: flexi time, part time work, compressed workweek and tele-working (Ministry of manpower of Singapore, 2001). This study demonstrates the result of an investigation of the impact of FWA in service industry workers that include business service sector such as real estate services, professional services and administrative and support services and their effect of in Singapore. (Zodgekar, 2009) The use of flexibility on a work place could have positive effects on the employees and benefit the employer through reducing absenteeism, creating a positive impact on productivity, enabling greater flexibility and saving costs. This practice can also be very attractive and beneficial for employees with greater ability to meet family commitments as well as increased life satisfaction apart from providing a solution for those who cannot do full-time work (Queensland Goverment , 2008). Each of the flexible working agreements (FWAs) can be successful depending in which the type of industry it is used, in relation to flexibility of the work practice itself as well as the culture of the organization in accepting different types of agreements (Stavrou & Kilaniotis, 2010). On the side of the coin, attaining productivity which is critical for long-term competiveness and profitability of organizations can also be increased. Productivity is the link between the quantity of output and the quantity of input. It primarily determines the effectiveness and efficiency of an organization in generating outputs with resources available (SPRING Singapore, 2011). 1.2 Research Motivations Reports suggest that labour productivity in service sector has decreased up to 8,6% in some sectors like information and communication industry in 2011 and continuing to decrease in first two quarters of 2012 (Singapore Department of Statistics, 2012). Singapore’s service industry is the most important as it because contributes to more than 70% of the GDP (Economy Watch Content, 2010). Singapore must keep competiveness for the future economical growth and success to maintain its position as the third strongest economy in the world and to improve it further. According to Singapore Ministry of Manpower Yearbook of Statistics Singapore 2012, women workforce is lower compared to other countries. It is only 57% (Singapore Department of Statistics, 2012) as compared with other countries such as 71% in Japan, 76% in US and 79% in UK. This means that accepting some flexible working agreements will allow organizations to attain flexibility, which is an important aspect to be a competitive employer, looking to attract new talents and keeping the most valuable employees (FlexiWerkz, 2012). Flexible work agreements can be used as the tools that aim at achieving a balance between the interests of the organization and individual employees to improve productivity and to provide employees better choices to achieve balance between their lives, personal obligations and work (The Queensland Department of Justice, 2009). There is no research done in Singapore about the impact of flexible work agreement on workers’ productivity in the service sector in the past, which makes this topic very interesting to investigate and test in Singapore. After many years of government support, it would be great if employees in Singapore are given more flexibility to set up their own starting hours to work so long as the organizational needs are not compromised. Feedback on the scheme could be more positive as employees are better able to balance work hour requirements and family commitments (Gronroos, 2004). Such work arrangement are extremely favorable among employees with young school going children. (Ministry of Manpower, 2000) FWA sprovide employees and employers with better opportunities to manage better work and life balance. In addition, it also facilitates them the leeway to make a choice when, where and how long to work and complete specific tasks. Popularity of this type of agreement has grown dramatically for the last year around the world, due to the reason of workforce demographics and employee’s work-life balance (Al-Rajudi, 2012). Flexible working can act as the tool for employees’ retention and recruitment. Besides, it will also reduce employees’ absence. Moreover, as an employee incentive, it has also been found that flexible working help drive high productivity (Employee benefits, 2007). Flexi-Time is a flexible work agreement which usually refers to work the same number of hours per day, as full time employees. However, the arrangements allow choosing an employee’s starting and finishing time within a certain limit of time. Some employees may choose a time to be present on work and cover a “core time”. For example employees need to be in a office from 10:00 am to 3:00 pm. In flexi-time an employees can work from 7:00 am to 4:00 pm while another worker can work from 10: am to 7:00 pm as per their choice. In today’s society, flexible working hour is highly valued, because this system helps to improve performance and increases the productivity of workers (Kleynhans, 2006) 2.2 Productivity 2.2.1 Introduction Productivity receives notable consideration in the economic growth because if its significance in the social economic and cultural aspects. Productivity is counted as a base that shows growth in the national economy and national income, which both developed and underdeveloped countries seek as an aim to measure success (Al-Rajudi, 2012). “Without productivity objectives, a business does not have direction. Without productivity measurement, a business does not have control.” Peter Drucker. This section will introduce a different definition to productivity, types of productivity, importance and difficulties of productivity in economic growth of service sector, measurement of workers productivity. Last but not the least it will also examine the factors that drive flexibility to increased productivity. (Smith, 2002) 2.4 Hypothesis development After identified the importance of variables in situations and established relationship with consideration of logical reasoning in the theoretical framework by testing these relationship scientifically through appreciate statistic analyses or through negative case analysis in qualitative research, information is derived about what kind of relationship exist among the variables operating in the problem situation (Sekaran and Bougie, 2009, p.80). Based on the literature review and theoretical framework stated earlier, there are four variables derived from the statistics, which are most popular in flexible working agreements. There are independent variables and one variable formed as a dependent variable. 3.1 Propose of the study This work base on the similar past research of one Palestinian research journal: Impact of the Flexible work Arrangements on workers” productivity in Information and Communication Technology Sector (Al-Rajudi, 2012). The purpose of the study is to use hypothesis testing to explain the nature of some relationship or to show the differences among the group as well as independence of some factors between workers performance and link to the productivity. Hypothesis testing has been used to prove the factors of impact of flexible work agreement on workers productivity in service sector in Singapore or reject it. 3.2 Type of Investigation According to the Sekaran and Bougie (2009), there are two types of investigations: Causal Study and Correlation Study. The study where the researcher wants to describe the cause of some number of problems is called a causal study. Another type of study where researcher wants find out the importance of variables associated with a problem is called a correlation study. (Bougie R, 2010)For this research generally uses the correlation study to investigate the impact of flexible work agreements on workers’ productivity in Singapore that has four independent variables such as: IV (11) Flexitime, IV (12) Part Time Work, IV (13) Compressed Workweek, IV(14) Tele-working. The IVs will affect independent variables that ID (DV) productivity in this research. 3.3 Unit of Analysis For this research will be individual employees who had worked or working now in service sector in Singapore with flexible work agreement (Flexitime, Part-time, Compressed Work Week or Tele-working). The research will consider 384 individuals as sample size for population over 1 million people, who work in service sector (Bougie R, 2010) Survey will be done by filling up paper-question-questionnaires and web based questionnaire. 3.4 Time horizon for the Research Study According to Sekeran and Bougie (2009), if study research gathered one period of time, ether days, weeks or months it is called Cross Sectional or One-shot. ID is very suitable for this research with approximately duration of three month. (Refer to appendix p) 3.5 Study Settings The study will be in the natural environment where workers work normally but familiar with a flexible work agreement, that makes the study settings ‘no contrived settings’ for this research (Bougie R, 2010). 3.6 Data Collection “Data can be collected in variety of ways. Data collection methods are an integrated part of research design” (Bougie R, 2010). This research will use questionnaires, which contain a written set of questions for respondents, who can write their answers according to their opinions. All research questions were taken from previous research and adopted for this research, according to the literature review. The researchers are: Kefan Olyan Al-Rajudi. The questionnaire was filled up in two ways: online and offline. People did survey by the internet through the email request and personal contacts. Read More