People and Organisations: Principles and Practice in Global Contexts. MN7181. Lecture 5 HRM and the Design of Work


Why Organizations seek flexibility in work patterns?

 
The flexible working option is attractive to many employees. Flexible working is changing full-time work to a part-time arrangement. Employees in this era don’t like to stagnate for one job or fixed time jobs. They prefer the quality of work-life balance more than anything (The Equality and Human Rights Commission, 2019)

Flexible working is a working arrangement, which gives flexibility, immaterial of how long, where, when and the time frame your work. Flexibility can relate to three areas

  1. Work time (Part-time or Flexitime)
  2. Working place (House working)
  3. The pattern of working (Job Sharing)

According to Armstrong, (2014) work design is done to enhance organizational effectiveness and productivity. Organizations create a system of work and the environment for it as a better place to work with safety and health.

Even though organizations look for more safe and healthy environment for its employees, employees feel that they are stuck and caged and that has led to low productivity, high absenteeism, and labor turn-over. To have a solution for these issues, organizations try to change their work patterns which more flexible to employees. Therefore the organizations can,
  • Minimize the human resource cost
  • Protect the core from the short term, because of fluctuating market demands
  • Respond to the demand of an increasingly diverse workforce in terms of legal compliance and to retain core employees


According to Henderson, (2017) there are three main flexibility in work patterns
  1. Functional Flexibility – multi-skilled employees who can have used easily for a new task
  2. Numerical Flexibility – can increase or reduce the number of employees according to market demand
  3. Financial Flexibility – pay system of performance-related or pay for flexible skills


According to these patterns, employees seek alternative flexible work patterns, those are,
  • Temporary working
  • Part-time working
  • Job sharing
  • Homeworking

In terms of the Sri Lankan context, flexible work patterns are being used currently. And the trend and the interest of this work pattern is increasing rapidly.

Temporary works like Nursing, Elder care-takers are very popular.  In Garment Industry they used temporary jobs on storing goods, unloading goods and loading goods for containers. Earlier days garments industry works only for general shift patterns, but now it has changed to two shifts or three-shift patterns, where employees work on Job Rotation. When it’s come to Forces officers, they were given two employees as drivers and they share their work during the month. One employee work as a driver and at the same time the other one working as a buddy member.

When it comes to IT jobs, in the year 2000, all the manual work done by an employee was changed to computerized work, then all the ledger work being changed to computer system work. Then the total system work sends to the central location called Main Frame computers and reduced more people with waste elimination. Nowadays IT is some software development done in one country and sell it to use it in another country as a Free Lance member, therefore this It jobs now changed from office work to home working job.


References

Armstrong, M., (2014). Armstrong's handbook of human resource management practice. 11 ed. London: Kogan Page.

Henderson, I., (2017). Human resource management for MBA and Business Masters. 3 ed. London: CIPD - Kogan Page.

The Equality and Human Rights Commission, (2019). Equalityhumanrights.com. [Online]
Available at: https://www.equalityhumanrights.com/en/working-forward/flexible-working-how-create-and-champion-flexible-culture
[Accessed 19 09 2019].

Comments

  1. JinendranSeptember 20, 2019 at 12:37 AM

    Work, life balance is a most common and very demand topic in present busy schedule, your article describe some important topics about balancing work and life such as work flexibility. Now in Srilanka, banks are also practicing this flexi hours concept but those are only in back office departments and most of branch banking activities are already centralized. Thanks for sharing.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. AchalaSeptember 20, 2019 at 6:02 AM

      Thanks Jinendran connecting banking sector with your valuable comments.

      Delete
  2. Wasantha ArunasiriSeptember 20, 2019 at 5:50 PM

    good explain Achala. we can get knowledge about Why Organizations seek flexibility in work patterns.Thanks for sharing your knowledge..

    ReplyDelete
  3. Razi JalaldeenSeptember 20, 2019 at 9:12 PM

    Thank you Achala for giving us some practical aspects of Sri Lankan garment sector.

    ReplyDelete
  4. KasunMBASeptember 22, 2019 at 6:32 AM

    we need to focus new strategies like this.this is a great thing to reduce the sress,appreciate your effort.

    ReplyDelete
  5. KasunMBASeptember 22, 2019 at 6:32 AM

    we need to focus new strategies like this.this is a great thing to reduce the sress,appreciate your effort.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Malintha GannileSeptember 24, 2019 at 8:58 AM

    Interesting article , nicely explained about HRM and the Design of Work , we can easily get the idea from this article. thanks for sharing this practical scenarios of Sri Lankan garment industry.

    ReplyDelete
  7. NamilaOctober 2, 2019 at 12:17 AM

    "In terms of the Sri Lankan context, flexible work patterns are being used currently. And the trend and the interest of this work pattern is increasing rapidly" In this case sri lankan part time workers not getting high salaries when compare with Europe countries so I think sri lankan people always trying to find a full time jobs.

    ReplyDelete
  8. Jehan RahimanOctober 5, 2019 at 9:33 PM

    Even though we have advantages, in Sri Lankan context flexible work patterns can be manipulated by employees & need to monitor in a regular basis. Ethics and discipline should be there at a high level.

    ReplyDelete
  9. Milhan - MBA BlogOctober 7, 2019 at 1:03 AM

    Achala its a good explanation about job design in Sri Lankan Context.
    You have related the job rotation with shifts in the apparel industry, but job rotation defines developing employee skills and knowledge by moving within positions, departments and geographic locations. Do you believe that work shifts fulfill that?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. AchalaOctober 9, 2019 at 3:32 PM

      Yes, as you said work for shift basis has helped to job rotation and flexibility to employees. Thanks Milhan for your comments.

      Delete
  10. Upendra BatagallaOctober 7, 2019 at 2:25 AM

    Nice article Achala. You have provided more information than we learnt in our academic studies. Application the theory in to present context is very appropriate and looking forward for your blogs.

    ReplyDelete
  11. PrasannaOctober 10, 2019 at 11:24 AM

    Flexibility in the workplace allows employers and employees to make arrangements about working conditions that suit them. This helps employees maintain a work / life balance and can help employers improve the productivity and efficiency of their business. Specially this going to be a influencing factor in future on job designing. Thanks for sharing

    ReplyDelete
  12. Damith NeelawalaOctober 11, 2019 at 11:21 AM

    Important article achala. thank you for explained through more garment sector,one of the most important sector in sri lankan economy.you points out about modern day working life's like part time and work from home,that is worthy effort.

    ReplyDelete
  13. Anupama KankanamgeOctober 12, 2019 at 7:05 PM

    Agree that flexibility in working patterns improves the work-life balance. I believe even in banking sector in higher positions can have flexible working hours and work in anywhere system as they mainly involve with internal customers.

    ReplyDelete

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