Increasing flexible working with Covid -19, and the benefit of flexible working environment

 





Introduction

Covid-19 has had unprecedented implications on human resource management in organisations across the world.  One of the major HR issues in the context of Covid-19 involves responding and adopting to the changing working conditions that are bounded by social distancing and lockdown restrictions (Carnevale and Hatak, 2020).  Minimising physical contact as well as maintaining social distancing has raised the issue of how organisational workforce can continue with their traditional working arrangements (Van der Lippe and Lippényi, 2019).  HRM is playing a crucial role in navigating the vague present, as well as the unforeseeable future, by supporting people to cope with stress and continue with remote and flexible working, thereby enabling organisations to continue business operations with more agility during these uncertain times.     

The concept of flexible working to support adopting to Covid-19 working conditions

The concept of flexible working commonly refers to non-traditional arrangements of working which particularly take into account the personal needs and circumstances of individuals; it often involves a certain degree of work from home (Peasley et al, 2020).  This concept is of particular significance in relation to the issue of organisational workforce adapting to changing working conditions with covid-19.  While supporting social distancing and limiting physical contact as required by covid-19 restrictions, this concept enables the workforce to adapt and continue their regular work under covid-19 uncertainties, and helps organisations build their resilience.  Therefore HR has a dominant role in increasing the adaptability of the workforce towards more digitalised, remote working models and developing relevant HR policies (Carnevale and Hatak, 2020).   

Key challenges of flexible working and strategies to overcome the same

·         Flexible working has attracted criticism for difficulties in monitoring and evaluating employee hours and productivity; to overcome this, the use of real-time HR software is becoming increasingly popular.

·         Mixing of work and personal life under the flexible working environment is a core challenge of HRM (Singer-Velush, Sherman and Anderson, 2020); to overcome this, for example in a study carried out on Microsoft’s employees, managers support workers in setting priorities to maintain appropriate work-life balance

Benefits of flexible working in the present and post-Covid 19 era

The flexible working environment supports in reskilling or upskilling of the workforce to become more digitally competent, which is of essence for the future more digitalised post-covid 19 era (Van der Lippe and Lippényi, 2019).  Moreover, a flexible working environment supports organisations in navigating through current covid-19 uncertainties by considering the needs of maintaining employee physical and mental wellbeing as well as skill development, thereby supporting business continuity in the post-covid era as well. 

References

Carnevale, J., and Hatak, I. (2020). Employee Adjustment and Well-Being in the Era of COVID-19: Implications for Human Resource Management. Journal of Business Research, 116(1), pp. 183-187.

Peasley, M., Hochstein, B., Britton, B., Srivastava, R., and Stewart, G. (2020). Can’t leave it at home? The effects of personal stress on burnout and tele salesperson performance. Journal of Business Research, 117(1), pp. 58-70.

Singer-Velush, N., Sherman, K., and Anderson, E. (2020). Microsoft Analysed Data On Its Newly Remote Workforce. Available at: https://hbr.org/2020/07/microsoft-analysed-data-on-its-newly-remote-workforce [Accessed: 22 March 2021]

Van der Lippe, T., and Lippényi, Z. (2019). Co-workers working from home and individual and team performance. New technology, Work and Employment, 35(1), pp. 60-79.      

Comments

  1. Ruwan Herath27 March 2021 at 20:51

    Flexible working is the mostly discussing topic in currently specially due to the Covid-19 pandemic. Author has elaborated what flexible working, benefits & disadvantages as well. Also there are lot of references are there to refer for readers. It's worth to read.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Janashi Lamahewa9 April 2021 at 08:46

    Recently the concept of “Flexible working hours”(FWH) has gained a lot of attention from HR managers. FWH is a vital tool of HR strategy .Author has clearly explained the topic by referring lot of journal articles. If author could include the practical approach of FWH to a specific organization, will help readers to get more understanding.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Hasitha Dissanayake2 May 2021 at 01:52

    The flexible working hours given for the workers affects positively on the employees and this previlage make the employee stress free and give hand to the employee to emerge as a powerful personality.When the employees are stress free they have the eligibility to perform well and it will positively affect on the productivity of the organisation.The HR department has a sharper grip over this issue and they have to toil a lot to adjust the flexible hours,the author has nicely brought out these facts in a descriptive manner.

    ReplyDelete

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