Flexible Working — A Legal Right?

The UK has recently adopted similar changes to flexible working; maybe it’s time for other countries to hop on board?

Jan 09, 2017

The UK has recently adopted similar changes to flexible working; maybe it’s time for other countries to hop on board?

Flexible working is a hot topic these days. I’ve been observing conversations taking place around Canada about whether the country should make flexible working a legal right. The Liberal government is considering a change to the Canadian Labour Code that will make it a legal right for employees to request more flexible working conditions (eg. flexible working hours or the ability to work from home) without fear of negative repercussions from their boss.

What does flexible working look like?

Flexible start and finish times or the ability to work from home
Compressed work weeks: working for longer periods of time per day or shift over a defined period of time in exchange for a day off
Split shifts
Time swaps: An employee requests time off for personal reasons and offers to make it up by working longer than usual hours on another day
Time off in lieu: Overtime can be compensated by time off with pay at the rate of 1.5 hours per overtime hour worked

Here’s the catch… many businesses follow provincial employment standards legislation, not federal. This would likely not apply to many, although the federal government says that they’d help the provincial governments implement the legislation if interested.

Why Flexible Working is a Good Idea

Flexible working can help to improve employee retention rates and increased productivity. I know that I am at my most productive from 8am until about 1pm. When I worked a full-time 9–5 job the last few hours of my workday were quite often unproductive and quite honestly a waste of my employers money. I left my last salaried position because I felt as though my wings were clipped.

Other people have indicated that it would allow them to spend some of their daytime hours pursuing side projects or working at second jobs.

Another obvious benefit of flexible working arrangements in companies is the ability for parents to attend their kids’ sports events, take them to doctors’ appointments, etc. My ex-husband works in the public sector in another city and is supposed to be there by 8am — the only issue is that our daycare opens at 7:30am and it is impossible for him to arrive at work on his parenting days before almost 9am. Thankfully, his managers have been flexible with his schedule and have allowed him to make up the difference on his non-parenting days.

Some companies are exploring a sliding scale of remuneration based on what level of efficiency the employee is able to sustain — this provides the opportunity to retain a good employee who is not able to work at 100% for whatever reason.

When Flexible Working is not a Good Idea

Some companies find that flexible working is easier in some departments than others. “In production development, we run an agile-scrum model. This involves daily stand-ups and a group of coders working on the same code at the same time for efficiency. We have found it difficult to retain this level of efficiency when one or more of the programmers are in a different location.” ~ Sascha Williams, COO of Unbounce.com

For myself, working from home is a love-hate relationship. I love not having to sit at the same desk in the same office for 8 hours, but I do find that it’s easy to get distracted and do housework when I’m at home. If you’re like me and struggle with self-discipline, co-working spaces can be really effective.

Other concerns raised by employers include potential additional costs, disruptions due to having to reorganize work amongst existing staff, decreased productivity when the employee says they’ll be working and the challenges of hiring extra staff to make up any shortages.

At the end of the day, maybe the idea is to encourage businesses (both in the public and private sectors) to keep an open mind when it comes to flexible working and to consider requests from employees on a case-by-case basis. OpenWork is a fantastic resource for encouraging employees and employers collaborate to reinvent how work is done, for the benefit of all.

Citations

Flexible Working — A Legal Right?

The UK has recently adopted similar changes to flexible working; maybe it’s time for other countries to hop on board?

The UK has recently adopted similar changes to flexible working; maybe it’s time for other countries to hop on board?

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