Flexible Work Arrangement Week on May, 2025: What flexible work and family arrangements has your workplace introduced?
Flexible Work Arrangement Week 2025. 2010 May Flexible-Work-Arrangements
My work place has some of the following and the rest are personal opinions.
1. Flexible start finish times to allow people to meet outside commitments (kids to school) or just take advantage of personalities. Earlybirds should be able to start early and the night owls start and finish later. As a night owl .. I dont go out and party but by nature I am not much of a morning person and am most aware and on the ball (whether I get up early or late) after lunch through to 11pm. I actually work 11am to 8pm.
*Flexible hours allow the business to to operate over extended hours allowing staff of 9-5 businesses to deal with us at slow times or attend to personal business without having to take time off work or loose lunchtime.
2. Flex time.. (the abilty to "bank" unpaid overtime hours and take that time off work at a later date). This is really good for covering inconveniences such as transport problems making you late for work, or people who just want to manage their personal life better by being able to take time when its needed (attend a school sports carnival, dentist appointments etc).
3. Parental leave. Women are often disadvanteged in the work place due to pregnancy and young children. Many workplaces still consider woment unreliable if they are of child bearing age for that reason. There is a definite preference for men in mangement as they are seen as being "reliable"(wont be off work for long periods of time). Long periods of leave is disruptive as the business must find a casual/short term replacement and often has to train someone. Guys shoudl be allowed the same amount of leave as women and both types should be flexible to allow periods of on and off leave so that the mother can come back early on part time basis rotating with the father who can periodically stay at home with the child. Both parent then get to enjoy the early days of the child and reamain working with a reasonable salary to reduce mortgage pressure.
4. Purchased leave. This is where people can in effect take paid unpaid leave... (What??). We do have this and (people with children & a few grandparents- use this a lot to cover holiday periods) the person can buy 2 -6 weeks of leave and their salary for that period is averaged out over a year to get a weekly amount that is deducted from their pay. Its also good for high stress jobs as you can take a month of wrk every 6 months for a bit of a break.
One complaint that I and others have had is that our and other workplaces wont train people or let them develop higher levels of skill incase they leave for a better paid job. My arguement is that skills make the workforce more flexible and better able to cover for people on leave. There have been numerous instances of people not being able to take leave because the lack of skilling meant no one could be found to cover for the person going on leave. (particularly noticeable when a lot of staff want to go on leave over school holidays the numbers are there but not the skills)
Does your organization use any alternative work arrangements?
1. Telecommuting (working at home by connecting through the internet).
2. Flexible schedules, for example 10 hours per day four days per week, varible start times, etc.
Careers that have flexible working hours and still good pay?
The occupations you list have very long hours, not flexible hours! Physicians (once they complete med school, residency, etc) in private practice work on average 60 - 80 hours a week. Bank managers stay until the day's books are completely reconciled, whether it's done by 6 pm or 2 am. PR - loads of events, etc, and you may have to start by 6-7 am after wrapping up at 2 am. I suppose you can call that "flexible" but YOU have to be flexible, not the job. Somehow I suspect that's not what you want.
Until you have worked your way up with several years of experience, you are not going to have any flexibility. You work when your employer needs you and no excuses. The one thing where you have some range to choose your hours is nursing. Once you have completed your education and have some experience, you have your choice of shifts, full- or part-time, hospital or clinic, or private practice. For example, one woman I know, after taking all her accrued vacation & sick leave to have a baby, chose to work 3 night shifts per week so hubby took care of baby from 6 pm to 6 am; she was home with baby every day + 4 nights/week. Takes some schedule juggling, but they were very happy with this arrangement until baby started kindergarten.
Basically, until you complete a good education and get several years experience in your career field, your life IS your work. Put in that effort, and you can have more choices - and better! - down the road.