Question

What are the options that might be considered in relation to introducing flexible work practices? What are any barriers to change and the pros and cons of possible changes?

Answer 1

1st part:-

To make flexible work practices it is necessary to position certain options in the work-driven structure. The options are being stated below:

1. Flexible working hours: The working hours for employees need to keep up to a certain time. As working for long hours makes the work process ineffective and the standard of delivery gets hampered. With stable hours it will help the employees to keep balance in work and a better structure can be developed.          

2. Reduced work targets: Some time the employers put heavy work targets to the employees that becomes difficult for them to make it fulfilled. To make work practices flexible, it is necessary to keep minimum work targets so that it should be comfortably done.           

3. Job sharing: To make the practice of work feasible, the job-sharing process is required to be introduced. It will make the work easy as distributing work among or between members may lead to fulfilling the task within a short span of time and high efficiency can be gained.        

4. Remote working: Sometimes due to unavoidable circumstances and illness of employees they cannot come to the office. To keep the work consistency the employees need to allow remote working procedures. It will make the work done correctly and employees get the opportunity to fulfill their tasks.                         

2nd part:-

Sometimes to adopt flexible work practices it needs to adopt many new changes to drive the course of the work process. To enable such things employees are required to take training and need to learn the process to make it functional into the work. It becomes a barrier for them because the change can be from different perspectives like technology, skill improvement, etc. To make the process of work easy, variable areas are being adopted and employees need to take participation to learn those things. It becomes a problematic situation for some employees as they get aquatinted with the former work structure and learning new things can create a barrier for them. On the other hand, employers need to plan for conducting training and guide them in all possible ways to make them efficient with the change. It takes a lot of time and cost is important that need to incur on the same.

Pros and Cons of the possible changes:

Pros:

1. With changes the organization's work development can be enhanced with improved procedures and better outcomes will be achieved.

2. New clients can be attracted to the latest work process and more revenues can be generated.

3. For the business perspectives, competitive advantages can be gained and it will lead to heighten the reputation of the organization.        

    Cons:

1. Change is an important barrier for organization workers. To adopt the change they need to learn the process of work methodologies that create difficulties for them.

2. Due to the fear of making mistakes, the employees may resist the change and the organization faces difficulties to fulfill the task of the clients.

3. The organization needs to plan on several areas to make the change to be mandated in the work-driven structure. The organization needs to plan accordingly, such things required time, cost, monitoring, and controlling on areas like training and development, introducing the latest machinery, material, etc. It is not an easy task to make such changes and may not fulfill with desirable results.