The Flexible Working (Procedural Requirements) Regulations 2002 established details of the ways in which businesses and employees can change their usual working practices to achieve various objectives. This is definitely not a one-sided piece of legislation as companies may gather as much benefit in business terms as the workers do in having more leisure time or making time for their personal arrangements such as child care. In some circumstances, mostly involving the need to provide care for children and the disabled, the regulations compel the business to ‘seriously consider’ requests from employees for flexible working but generally it is firm to establish whether it is applicable to their particular business. Studies have demonstrated that those small businesses which have embraced flexible working have done so predominantly through the offer of part-time working, the implementation of a flexi-time or job sharing system and the opportunity to Work From Home.

Deep analysis of a firm’s needs is imperative prior to the introduction of flexible working practices. It is important to make certain that all employees are seen to be treated as equitably as possible and are given reasonable access to the options which are offered to them. For example, while flexi-time could be ideal for parents of schoolchildren it has no benefit to those with pre-school. These parents could use job sharing, part-time working or the opportunity to Work From Home to cut or remove childcare costs. In an ideal world there should be an option available to fit everyone’s circumstances but this might be hard to do. The part-time, job share and flexi-time options should have a wide appeal to employees and provide no disruption to the employer as the work and its location will not change.

However, the option to Work From Home will not be accessible to all employees as not all jobs are suitable to be carried out away from the firm’s premises. The manufacturing process is obviously a typical example as automation has reduced unit costs hugely and to reintroduce manual assembly by homeworkers would be commercial suicide. While this is clearly an extreme example it centres attention on which jobs are suitable to be performed at home. To give an example of the opposite case, a newly-formed, high-tech Internet Business utilising the latest technology could probably function with most of its employees doing Online Jobs working from home. The more conventional businesses need to consider carefully which roles can be carried out with equal effectiveness from home. The obvious jobs would be the non-customer facing kind, mostly telephone-based involving sales or customer service. Depending on the capability of the communication technology to be utilised at the worker’s home then most departments should have some roles which would be suitable. Although these would possibly be mostly clerical, there could be different roles within the accountancy, personnel or marketing functions which perhaps involve the preparation of reports or management information which could be carried out equally as well from home.

A British Chamber of Commerce survey pointed out that 38% of small businesses offer the opportunity of flexible working to their employees. They do so because it enables them to hang on to experienced people who would otherwise be compelled to finish work due to changes in their domestic circumstances. The company does not become an Internet Business as the majority of its operations continue as they were before. The only alteration is that some people now have Online Jobs and are at the end of a telephone line instead of at the end of the corridor.