The variety of ways of working flexibly

As previously described, flexible working includes the dimensions of hours worked, location and patterns of work.

Over recent years with the advent of technology and communications, there are many more choices in where, when and how people work, and these are all part of the emerging modern working cultures and practices.

Typical constructs of flexible working include the following:

• • Part-time working: work is generally considered part-time when employees are contracted to work anything less than standard full-time hours.
• • Term-time working: a worker remains on a permanent contract but can take paid/unpaid leave during school holidays.
• • Job-sharing: a form of part-time working where two (or occasionally more) people share the responsibility for a job between them.
• • Flexitime: allows employees to choose, within certain set limits, when to begin and end work.
• • Compressed hours: compressed working weeks (or fortnights) don’t necessarily involve a reduction in total paid hours or any extension in individual choice over which hours are worked. The central feature is reallocation of work into fewer and longer blocks during the week.
• • Annual, monthly, fortnightly hours: the total number of hours to be worked over a period is fixed but there can be variation during the period in the length of the working day and week. Employees may or may not have an element of choice over working patterns.
• • Working from home on a regular basis: workers regularly spend time working from home.
• • Mobile working/teleworking: this permits employees to work all or part of their working week at a location remote from the employer’s workplace.
• • Career breaks: career breaks, or sabbaticals, are extended periods of leave, normally unpaid, which may vary from weeks to months or even years.
• • Commissioned outcomes: there are no fixed hours, but only an output target that an individual is working towards.

• Zero-hours contracts: an individual has no guarantee of a minimum number of working hours, so they can be called upon as and when required and paid just for the hours they work.

Whilst the list shows many different ways of flexible working, it isn’t exhaustive. Flexible working can include other practices, for example employee self-rostering, shift-swapping or taking time off for training. Indeed, the list cannot be exhaustive. A flexible working arrangement is characterised as much by what it is not (full-time hours or regular, fixed hours or at a fixed workplace), as by what it is.

Many flexible working arrangements therefore require a significant degree of trust between employer and employee and may need to balance or compromise on the needs of both. Whether a particular working practice is judged as ‘good’ flexibility (mainly in the interests of employees?) or ‘bad’ flexibility (mainly in the interests of employers?) depends on who is making the judgement and on how the arrangement works in practice. We will come back to these points in the discussion about implementing flexible working practices.

For flexibility in working hours, the most common form is part-time working. In terms of flexible working arrangements, the most commonly provided and exercised is around more flexible start and finish times for work, as shown in Figure 2.5 below for UK data.

As already noted, working reduced hours has seen little change in either availability or take-up during the last decade. In 2017 in the UK, 27% of employees

Figure 2.5 Percentage use and availability of different forms of part-time working in the UK proportion of categories of flexible working.

Source: CIPD UK Working Lives survey 2019.

had one of a set of specified flexible working arrangements (as defined in the Labour Force Survey), and 18% of employees worked part-time without one of these flexible working arrangements. In 2012, the comparable figures were 23% and 21% respectively. Some flexible working arrangements, such as job-sharing, seem to have become less widely used since the last recession.

However, given that many of the forms of flexible working do not require contractual change or formal reporting by employers it is hard to get an accurate picture. Most anecdotal evidence suggests that many employees make use of informal arrangements to work flexibly, either alongside or instead of more formal arrangements. The UK Labour Force Survey indicates a slow but steady increase over time in the proportion of employees who say they work mainly at or from home, from around 4.5% in 2002 to 5.6% in 2017. The majority of these said they work in different places, using home as a base.