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Workplace Flexibility

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Flexibility is a critical component used largely for workplace effectiveness. Organizations are using it as a tool to improve recruitment and retention, management of workload, and employee diversity. Providing flexibility also shows improvement in employee engagement, job satisfaction, and stress reduction. Employers, who not only encourage but also empower their employees to use flexible work schedules as well as simultaneously affording the opportunity to advance in the company, employees, and employers gain a predisposition to profit. Human Resources are using flexibility as an organizational strategic asset. This provides a considerable competitive advantage to companies who are aware they need to adopt rapidly to market changes. A flexible organization uses a specific or a combination of available scheduling strategies. “In May 1997, more than 27 percent of all full-time wage and salary workers in the United States – about 25 million – had flexible work schedules that allowed them to vary the time they began or ended work. The proportion of workers with such schedules was up sharply from the 15 percent recorded when the data were last collected in May 1991 and from the 12.5 percent tallied in 1985. The increase in flexible work schedules was widespread across demographic groups, occupations, and industries, reports the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) of the U.S. Department of Labor (1998, June 1)”. Flexible work arrangements originally derive from flex time that plainly means sliding time. Whereas a traditional work arrangement requires employees to work a standard nine to five work day, which as of the present time is considered a thing of the past. Usually credited to William Henning, flexible arrangements is a core phase when employees projected to be at work approximately 50% of the time, whereas the rest of the

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