Organisations are legally required to consider requests for flexible working from employees who have been employed for at least 26 weeks. There are many different types of flexible working, including flexitime, job sharing, reduced hours, compressed hours, working from home and working in term-time. 

 

According to the CIPD, the south of England, which combines the south-east and south-west regions, is “on par with the UK average on the availability of compressed hours”, and “just above average for use and availability of working from home.” The south-east has less availability of compressed hours than the south-west, while the south-west has 9% less availability of working from home as a flexible working option.

 

The south of England is about the national average for workers reporting that they can’t fulfil external commitments due to work pressures. Allowing flexible working here would clearly motivate the staff who are currently struggling to meet other commitments. 

 

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There are many ways to manage staff who don’t work in the same building or area, or to the same timescale.

 

Studies have shown that many Scottish bosses aren’t taking advantage of the flexible working phenomenon – which can improve morale and productivity immensely – because they are too concerned about workers slacking off. 

 

Here at Time and Attendance Scotland, we can help get rid of that paranoia. Our Self Service Module (SSM) is an addition to our overall software package, and it is ideal for remote workers and those with flexible working hours. It is a browser or mobile phone-based app that workers can use to clock in and clock out, and request or cancel holiday. 

 

If it is used on a mobile phone, then the GPS location is sent to the central time and attendance system as well. This allows supervisors and managers to check that the employee is in the expected location. If the employees go into an area of bad signal, the mobile app can cache the information onto the phone and transfer it as soon as connectivity is restored. 

 

A record of their clock-ins and outs can be exported or printed if the company would like a copy in those formats, but the supervisor has full access to all the employees’ data on the app anyway, and can run reports if they need to.