More than ever, employees are struggling to manage the pressures between work and life, and when that balance slips, productivity often falls with it.
But if an employer is open to flexible working arrangements, it can avoid a decline in productivity while improving employee engagement, argues Carol Sladek, partner and work-life consulting lead at Aon Hewitt, a human resources consulting firm in Chicago.
For some employees, shuffling children to school can cause them to be late while other employees have to look after older parents. Employee demands can vary, but they exist for almost every type of employee, Sladek says. By having a plan in place that allows employees to adjust their schedules, they can accommodate those challenges but also have the time to finish their workplace responsibilities.
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"Everybody has a component of their lives that they're trying to juggle with work and having flexibility in the hours that you work or the place that you work gives you that much more control in terms of how you integrate all those components in your life," Sladek says.
Flexible working arrangements are also attractive to employers because they are an inexpensive benefits option, Sladek says. While health care costs continue to sky rocket, employers can offer flexible working arrangements as another benefit without much of a budgetary effect.
"An employer can offer flexible work arrangements without really any cost or very little cost, depending on the arrangement, and it's a huge benefit to employees," Sladek says. "It's a big bang for very little buck from the employer's point of view."
In some cases, employees prefer traditional work hours in the office environment, but just having the option available is a morale booster, Sladek says. Those employees may not take advantage of the flexible work arrangement on a consistent basis, but there are occasions when the option is useful.
"When we've done surveys and focus groups of employees who are in flexible work arrangements, they tend to report higher engagement scores and higher satisfaction scores," Sladek says. "I do believe that it's in part because you're giving those employees more control over how they run their lives overall. It can be casual flexibility that isn't on an assigned scheduled or used every day. That still improves morale."
Moving forward, Sladek expects to see flexible working arrangements continue to grow in popularity. Just in the past four or five years alone, flexible working arrangements have exploded in the benefits world as they are helpful to both employers and employees.
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