Managing Flexible Work Force

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Workforce flexibility refers to an organization's ability to adapt its human resources in a manner appropriate to increasingly changing environmental conditions. To be flexible, an organization has the ability to adapt its workforce to new organizational structures, and workers have the background and ability to learn new skills and adapt to new functions ( Dalton, 1998 ). This means two things; first, that firms can quickly and effectively meet human resource staffing needs with qualified and capable workers; and second, that workers have multiple skills, both technical and interpersonal, with the ability to learn more as new demands require. Moreover, workforce flexibility requires that employees have the ability to adapt with relatively little management supervision, instead relying on self‐managing mechanisms. Closely related to workforce flexibility are the concepts business process reengineering, cross‐training, contingent workers, and organizational cultures. In defining workforce flexibility we first examine the transformation of organizational contexts which creates the need for workforce flexibility, and then we review some of the human resource systems that need to be put in place or modified in order to support a flexible workforce.

Flexibility has always been present in the way employers answered to market demands, but it was in 1980 due to the many changes that were taking place in the world when the term started to appear in the literature and being theorized by authors.

Some of the main facts in the development of flexibility were the economic crisis of 1980s and 1990s and the introduction of women in the labor market, needing to combine their role as workers and careers and, therefore, not being able to work in the traditional full-time patterns.

Companies realized that the old-fashioned way to organize their workforce has become less effective to meet the competitiveness and delivery of fast and appropriate responses in the changing global market. They had to face uncertainty and short term results efficiently in terms of costs and profits, for that they needed a flexible and easily adaptable workforce.

The common characteristics of flexibility among most of the definitions are uncertainty, temporality, low incomes and inferior positions in the organizational hierarchy.

Despite all this adverse terminology, there are as well many defendants of the positive aspects of flexibility. The most aforementioned author in all the consulted literature is Atkinson and his “flexible firm” model.

Atkinson (1984) stated that there are three kinds of labor flexibility:

* Numerical flexibility: employers seek it so that the number of employees can be quickly and easily increased or decreased depending on the temporary necessity.

* Functional flexibility: is needed so that employees can be able to perform different tasks and activities.

* Financial flexibility: the interest on it is for pay and other employment costs to reflect the state of supply and demand in the external labor market.

A lot of importance has been given to flexibility as an advantage for the organization, but it is also necessary to discuss the effects of flexibility from the employee´s point of view.

Blyton and Jenkins (2007;80) stated: employees “have an interest in achieving greater flexibility, particularly if this means gaining additional skills and variety in their job…and having some discretion or choice over their working time pattern, either through formal systems such as flexible working hours or informal arrangements they establish with their co-workers or supervisors”. As a result of the growing importance of flexibility for employees´ lives, the concept of work-life balance was introduced.

Flexible workforce can be important to many organizations however, it comes with challenges that can very hard to manage. The requirements to manage and adopt new techniques can be very simple. Some of the methods that can be helpful to management are as follow:

Performance: management of any organization is highly advised to view the performance of an employee based on how he or she perform the duties of the job rather than based on office politics and the time spent in the office.

Pay for work done: emphasis for employee compensation which is on the performance of the employee.

Provide employees' time management as a reward: employees are able to control their time only if their results are productive. Which involves choosing their working days, hours, working station or even when to have time off. Focusing on the management is on the output, rather than the employees who will make sure their work is complete.

“There are numerous changes that are being experienced both in the work force and in organizations. The workforce environment is characterized by dynamism. There to meet organization's objectives maximizing profits, the companies must adapt to the changing workforce environment. The flexibility in the work force has been caused by high rates of unemployment. The numbers of jobs are not increasing at the same rate as the increase in the laborers. Employers are forced to relax the labor laws and start to employ on a temporary or contract basis. With improved technology, employees can work from anywhere. The flexibility in the market has led to high turnover of employees in organizations.”

Management has to use tactics like organization's commitment, optimization of the workforce, accessing job knowledge and engaging the employee. In addition, the organization has to combine the above methods with those to deal with workforce flexibility. When effectively implemented, workforce flexibility can benefit both the company and employees. The benefits include employer of choice, increased firm productivity though employee satisfaction, improvement of work and social life above all, the organization will realize a rise in its output.

References

Blyton, P. and Jenkins, J., 2007. Key Concepts in Work. London: SAGE Publications LTD.

Read more: http://www.oxbridgewriters.com/essays/management/managing-the-flexible-workforce.php#ixzz2crAVrcDl

http://www.nhsemployers.org/planningyourworkforce/flexible-workforce/pages/flexible-workforce.aspx

http://www.blackwellreference.com/public/tocnode?id=g9780631233176_chunk_g978140511697826_ss1-25

http://www.forbes.com/sites/meghanbiro/2013/08/18/5-reasons-why-workplace-flexibility-is-smart-talent-strategy/

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