Nowadays, the flexible work options are available for employees for better-balanced work life. Flexible Work Options are supported by federal law in the workforce. Both employees and employers are benefits from the flexible works and 5 types of flexibility forms (numerical, functional, temporal, locational and financial) are analyzed. The pluralism theory are also used to develop the argument whether these forms are offered to all employees or used as an employer prerogative as a new form of control.
Recommendations are also provided for a flexible manager, employees and union. Flexible work option can be known as flextime, compressed workweek (48/52, 26/52), Annual Hours or Hours Averaging, Permanent Part-Time Work, Job-Sharing, Phased and Partial Retirement, Voluntary Reduced Work Time (V-Time), Work-Sharing – Stc (Short-Time Compensation), Flexiplace – from telecommuting, working from home; hot-desking; outsourcing; remote sourcing; home sourcing. Many employers have already adopted flexible working arrangements because they see them as making good business sense. They can help:
- Retain skilled staff and reduce recruitment costs.
- Raise staff morale and decrease absenteeism.
- Meet the labour market changes more effectively.
For employees, the opportunity to work flexibly can help them strike a better balance between their paid work and other responsibilities. Flexible working arrangements benefit everyone—employers, employees, and their families 5 forms of flexibility:
Numerical Flexibility (Employer)
Numerical Flexibility is where an organisation has the power to change the size of its workforce as the level of work required or labour requirement changes. For example; businesses tend to get busier during the Christmas period so therefore more people are required which means a larger workforce.
Functional Flexibility
Functional flexibility is where an organisation have the ability to switch their employees from job to job as the requirements change. For example; In supermarkets, a supervisor might rearrange the stocking on the shelf as well as supervise. The individual worker can profit, organizations the opportunity for improvements in quality and innovation.
Temporal Flexibility (employer)
Temporal flexibility is where an organisation has the ability to alter the working hours of employees for example; changing the working hours of some employees due to overload of work.
Locational flexibility
Locational flexibility is where an organisation has the ability to alter the place where an employee works. For example; a business can ask an employer to work from home at a certain point. locational flexibility could also be appealing for employees
Financial Flexibility
Financial Flexibility is where organisations can make changes to their wages. For example; full-time workers might get better rewards than those working as part-time. Mainly serves the organizational interests because in its truest form it often could be found in wage cuts (sometimes as one-off events) in response to company downturn caused by economic circumstances
Pluralist Perspective
The General philosophy is that an enterprise contains people with a variety of different interests’ aims and aspirations. From an organizational point of view, the interests for flexibility often outweigh the flexibility interest of workers. To say it with other words, organizations that are interested in improving their performance through labour flexibility first look at their own flexibility interest instead of looking at the flexibility repertoire of their employees. This implies that organizations probably confront their (core) workforce with certain flexibility demands which they could not handle with their actual flexibility. Power is diffused among the main bargaining groups in such a way that no party dominates others. Pluralism suggests the employment relationship is open-ended, and indeterminate, creating an underlying structural antagonism that has the potential to produce conflict in both the labour market and workplace. It sees the role of the state as to guard public interest, protect weak, restrain the power of the strong.
Management should not expect blind obedience of suppress any ideas or aims that conflict with its own. The aim is to reconcile conflicting opinions and keep the conflict within acceptable bounds so that the conflict does not destroy the enterprise. Unions are viewed as the legitimate representatives of employee interests at work with the right to challenge the right to manage, but also with the responsibility to seek compromise.
Pluralism sees conflict as inevitable and a legitimate consequence of the variety of interests in the workplace. From a managerial perspective, the most important implication of pluralism is that the autonomous expression of workers’ views is seen as legitimate. Moreover, taking account of these views is an effective method for employers to manage the tensions inherent in the employment contract.
Organizations often want to react as fast as possible and ignore the process of streamlining their flexibility demands with actual and to be developed employee flexibility. Furthermore, it could be that “old” (unused) employee flexibility, which is already present within the organization, gets “lost” because employees are not stimulated to make use of their in-house flexibility. Such a rigorous and fast top-down approach may have detrimental effects as for example a loss in employee motivation
Pluralists encourage that a particular system is followed in the interest of the organization. It opines that power is nicely dispersed rather than concentrated in the hands of a few individuals. Pluralism gives ample opportunity for employees to voice out their opinions.
Pluralism is also the perspective most easily reconciled with the notion of labour rights as human rights. Simply put, pluralism is the view that conflict is inevitable in the world of work. Conflict is inherent in the nature of the employment contract and in the different objectives of workers and employers – workers want a share of the profits as wages and employers want profits to be either distributed as dividends or retained for investment. Furthermore, workers want to be recognized as citizens in the workplace, they do not accept that they surrender their rights when they arrive at work.
Conflict is not something introduced to workplaces by trade unions – it is present everywhere. All unions do is give these differences of interest organised and coherent expression Pluralism, on the other hand, is not paternalistic in its approach and hence, it does not expect the loyalty of the employees. These are the important differences between unitarian and pluralism in the arena of human resources development.
