There should be no doubt that the advent of the Flexible Working (Procedural Requirements) Regulations (2002) triggered the beginning of a slow change in working practices in the UK. There have been a lot of regulations recently relating to employment conditions, many of which have their foundation in the European Community. Some examples include the Working Time Directive (WTD), launched in 1998, which restricted the number of hours to be worked to 48 per week, and the introduction of the National Minimum Wage (NMW) in 1999. While these rules all form part of the UK’s employment law, there are definite differences in how they are applied. For example, the National Minimum Wage applies to each person who is working or seeking work, whereas the Working Time Directive is optional due to a mechanism whereby the employee can opt out. The application of the Flexible Working Regulations is for the most part optional for the employer. Only in a small number of circumstances involving the care of children or disabled family members can the employee request an amendment to their working conditions. Even when these circumstances exist and a request is made, employers are only compelled to “seriously consider” it.

While no decent firm would unreasonably deny such a genuine request, there are many who saw the regulations as a means of achieving some operational improvements for their businesses. There are several ways to use flexible working and some are more obvious than others.
In almost all cases the work continues to be done at the company premises so the flexible working options can be applied to all workers regardless of whether they have factory, office or Online Jobs.
The most common options revolve around doing the same work but adjusting the length of time spent doing it. These options would typically be part-time working, job sharing or the one which is used frequently in schools, term-time working. All of these can enable employees to find an improved work/life balance by making time for them to give some attention to demanding issues in their personal lives or to enjoy more leisure pursuits.

Other flexible working methods retain full-time working but alter the times at which the work is performed. Flexitime is the most utilised of these, with many public sector employers installing the system whereby staff can work a varying number of hours per day. Normally, a fixed working period applies, say 9.30am to 3.30 pm, but, outside of this, workers are able to work any hours within an expanded working day, say 7.00am to 7.00pm. This has benefits to the administrative or information processing industries where there are mainly computer-based or Online Jobs and the flow of work is regular rather than seasonal. Variations of this need for increased hours to be worked at particular times include “annualised hours”, “compressed hours” and “staggered hours”. “Annualised hours” is really self explanatory as it requires the employee to contract to an annual, rather than weekly, number of hours to be worked. This could be beneficial to a retail Internet Business where there is a seasonal element to their trading. “Compressed hours” is more a weekly system and could involve working 4 days of 10 hours each in place of 5 days of 8 hours. “Staggered hours” is just a condensed version of shift working which would normally cover an extended working day rather than a full 24 hour period with, for example, some workers working from 7am to 3pm and others from 11am to 7pm. Again, this would suitan Internet Business where a sales or customer service function covering more than the normal working day is needed.

To Work From Home is viewed as the most flexible of the options and is definitely the most difficult for a business to implement due to the limited number of tasks that may be appropriate for home working within their particular business. Additionally the employer will be loathe to risk losing some productivity if theworkers who want to Work From Home are not ideally suited to doing so, and many are not.

If flexible working is to be deemed a success then both employers and employees need to achieve some benefit from it. For some workers this could be as simple as knowing that they can finish or start work earlier or later if they should ever need to. For others, being able to Work From Home to reduce childcare costs or to care for an elderly relative can make a substantial difference to someone’s life. At the very least the employee should recognise the employer’s desire to create better working conditions for their people.

By offering flexible working the employer will want to achieve a more loyal workforce yet still retain operational control when the business needs a temporaryincrease in manpower. Ultimately, it could enable experienced staff to carry on working when a change in their personal lives takes palce which would otherwise have compelled them to stop working.