Flexible working FAQs
2. What are the benefits of flexible working?
4. How much does it cost to implement?
5. What are the health and safety implications?
7. Will flexible working affect employee's tax or insurance positions?
8. Are there any other considerations?
1. What is flexible working?
Flexible working means thinking afresh about the way you and your staff work, making the most of advances in I.T. to help you achieve both business and personal objectives.
At a very simple level, examples could include:
- making more use of teleconferencing rather than spending time and money travelling to meetings
- enabling your staff to carry out some of their work from home rather than travel into the office every day
- adopting a more flexible approach to when work is done. Perhaps it would suit some of your staff and the business better if some of the work were carried out in the early morning, in the evening or at weekends?
Some businesses will want to invest in technology to realise even greater benefits from flexible working. Examples include:
- installing a Virtual Private Network so that your staff can all work from home just as efficiently as they could in the office
- supplying staff with wireless enabled laptops so they can use broadband hotspots as they travel around and so minimise downtime
- having staff working from a number of different locations around the UK - or even around the globe - connected together by broadband
- using Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) telephony to save on the costs of calls between employees working remotely and the office
Some businesses even decide that they no longer need a permanent office at all - with dramatic cost savings!
2. What are the benefits of flexible working?
Today many people have to combine work with family care commitments. And, of course, in Cornwall and across the South West, many people live in remote locations and have a long journey to the office. If you can help employees to work from home or stagger their journey, they can enjoy more flexibility in their lives, saving time, money and stress - and your business will gain as a result:
- some of the time saved on traveling to the office can be spent productively
- if several of your staff work flexibly you could share desk space and reduce your overheads or expand without the need for more office space
- you can attract higher caliber staff by offering a good work-life balance or allowing them to work remotely without having to move house
- motivated staff are more productive and less likely to take sick leave
- staff retention is increased, as is the proportion of women who return to work after maternity leave.
In today's business world, true competitive advantage is the ability to anticipate change, react quickly and be available 24/7. With flexible working in place, you can do just that.
3. What technology do I need?
You may need no new technology - flexible working could just mean coming into the office later or using existing equipment such as laptops and mobile phones.
At a simple level, you could just save in travel time and costs by making use of teleconferencing instead of physically going to a meeting.
Applications sharing allows two or more people to view and edit the same file or document on screen at the same time from different locations.
Secure remote access or use of a Virtual Private Network (VPN) gives employees access to files on your network from a remote location, so they can work from home as easily as they do from the office.
Terminal services is an advancement to VPNs, where the software application being used runs on a remote server and the person just sees a screen image of what is running remotely. This allows quicker access to work and processing at speeds exactly as if working in the office.
For more information on the technology you'll need, see our working from home or working on the move pages under IT advice.
You can also save the costs of phone calls and allow seemless transfer of calls between employees working from home and the office by communicating over the Internet.
4. How much does it cost to implement?
Obviously the costs depend very much on your individual flexible working situation and the technology you choose, but as a rough guide, the main types of technology cost in the region of the following:
- conference calls £10's
- applications sharing £10's
- secure remote access (VPNs) £100's
- terminal services £1000's
actnow can advise you on your particular situation - contact us to find out more.
5. What are the health and safety implications?
You are still responsible for your staff whilst they work, be it at home or otherwise. Risk assessments should be carried out as normal for example on display screen equipment (DSE), and other provisions you may have for accident reporting, first aid, training, etc will still apply. A 'place of work' is usually designated in the home so that the employee is covered say in a certain room where home working normally takes place. It is worth noting that some businesses take the practical step of allowing employees to carry out their own self assessments and along with this is the simple further step of taking a photograph of the designated work area to add to the self assessment information. However whatever method you employ, remember you need to ensure that risk assessments are kept up to date so you should ensure that these are redone at least annually or earlier if there is any significant change in the home environment.
6. Are there any legal risks?
All your legal responsibilities in the workplace are carried into a home working environment. So for example if your employee holds customer information at home, your responsibilities with regards to the Data Protection Act would still apply.
7. Will flexible working affect employee's tax or insurance positions?
There are normally no tax implications for employees that work less than 50% of their time remotely. If the employee is given equipment to work from home, say a laptop and this is also used for personal use this could incur a benefit in kind liability. As long as the equipment is only for business use, however, this liability would be removed.
There is also a potential Capital Gains liability upon sale of an employee's home if they claim tax relief on the space at home designated for office use.
Employees who work from home should inform their home insurer, especially if this means there is additional equipment of value kept in the home.
8. Are there any other considerations?
For most businesses, the biggest factor in adopting flexible working practices is not the technology or costs, but the change in culture required to trust employees whilst they are not under direct supervision. Flexible working isn't for everyone - some employees enjoy the office environment and need the interaction with colleagues or would find it difficult to motivate themselves if they were at home.
One of the ways to overcome these challenges is to start gradually and take flexible working one step at a time.
Management focus needs to shift from hours worked to measurable outputs, and in this sense, employees productivity is more focussed towards achieving business objectives.
The important thing with flexible working is that both the employer and employee are committed to it and determined to make it work. If the cultural barriers can be overcome, the rewards for the business and the individual are substantial. See the Preston Goldburn case study.
