Question

Looking ahead, do you believe that job flexibility options—from flextime, to telecommuting, to job sharing—will continue to grow at American businesses? Explain your answer.

Answer 1

Yes. I do believe that flexible working arrangements will surely continue to grow because the characteristics of the American workforce are changing. People are now placing more value on personal time rather than only financial gains and would most likely have options to work at a convenient place and time that suits them.

Looking at today's business scenario and of course for the up coming future, options such as flextime, job or work sharing and telecommuting will continue to grow, in large measure because the data and feedback from the companies who has adopted this practices are positive. This not only improves the productivity of the workforce, it also benefit the companies to reduce their operational cost and salary expenses. With the option of job sharing, two people can voluntarily share the duties and responsibilities of one full-time position, with both salary and benefits divided between them. Employees would be more happy and satisfied as a result of such options and in turn they would be more loyalty to the company.

Apart from that, with the rise of the Internet in houses and offices alike, the tools necessary to make flexible work programs successful are multiplying . More "virtual organizations" will be the new fundamentals for the businesses going forward and this would mean that telecommuting would be the easiest and most efficient method to do business

Thus, according to me business owners should practice continuous improvement or fine tune their workplace flexibility programs, just as they do with other aspects of their operations and this is definitely the need of the hour.