The Business Case for Flexible Working Hours

When you open up flexible working hours as a possibility to your employees, are you just giving them more time off? Or are you creating new possibilities for your business? Allowing your workforce the freedom to decide how and when they work can come in a variety of different ways – and they have a variety of different benefits too.

In this article, Panthera will explain how using flexible working hours can improve your business.

What is flexible working?

Flexible working is, generally speaking, a work pattern outside the normal 9-5. Usually, you and your staff will decide between you which hours they work. It’s normally offered to either provide a boost to your employee numbers during busy seasons or to provide alternative ways to use the talent in your business.

Types of flexible working

Here are 4 common ways that employers implement flexible working into their businesses:

1. Part-time working

This should be a familiar concept to you. This is where you create a contract with your employer to work a certain number of hours a week, usually to a set schedule. This can be effectively used for specialised roles in your business who you may only need a few days a month, such as an in-house IT technician.

2. Location independence

This is where you allow your employees to work from home, or wherever else they choose. Naturally, not every industry is suited to allowing this sort of working. If you do have a role that can be completed from home, flexible working can be used to offer your staff more hours if space is at a premium in your office and to allow employees to fulfil family and other care duties.

3. Flexi-time contracts

These contracts normally contain a certain amount of core hours that are set to a specific schedule (typically around 50%) with the rest of the working hours being completed when you, the employer, chooses.

4. Compressed hours

This works by taking the amount of hours that an employee works in a week, and putting them all into fewer days. For example, working 20 hours in 4 days instead of 5. This can be used to fit work around an employee’s other responsibilities while the business remains as productive as it was without them.

What are the benefits of flexible working?

Flexible working will not only be a more desirable choice for many of your employees but your business as a whole can gain from implementing some of these working ideas.

Higher levels of employee satisfaction

Flexible working hours allow your employees a greater work/life balance. They shouldn’t have to stress about sticking to a restrictive schedule. Flexible working hours could allow them to rearrange their schedule if they have something planned, as opposed to asking for time off months in advance.

Lower staff turnover

A by-product of high employee satisfaction is lower staff turnover rates. Your employees will be less inclined to leave if they are more comfortable in their roles. Not every workplace will offer these kinds of benefits to their staff which can mean that they will think twice before leaving your company.

Higher productivity and new business possibilities

Allowing people to work when it suits them means that you will only be getting the best of your employees. Naturally, this will mean that their productivity will increase. You will also be able to provide your services for longer during the day if your staff prefer to work during those hours. This can be especially important when dealing with areas such as customer service.

We can help

If you would like to discuss how you can budget for flexible working hours in your business, contact our team. Not only will we be able to make sure that your cash flow is stable enough for this move, but we can also make you tax efficient in the process.

Call us today on 01235 768 561 or drop us an email to enquiries@pantheraaccounting.com – we’ll be back in touch with you shortly.