What is flexible working?
There are many different forms of flexible working that cover the way working hours are organised during the day, week or year and/or the place of work - such as home working. Common kinds of flexible working include:
- Part-time working: Workers are contracted to work less than standard full-time hours. For example, an employee might start work later and finish early in order to take care of children after school
- Flexi-time: Employees may be required to work within essential periods, but outside those 'core times', they get flexibility in how they work their hours
- Job-sharing: Typically, two employees share the work normally done by one employee
- Working from home/Teleworking: Workers spend all or part of their week working from home or somewhere else away from the employer’s premises. New technology makes communication with office and customers possible by telephone, fax and email from home, car or other remote locations
- Term-time working: An employee remains on a permanent contract but takes paid or unpaid leave during school holidays
- Staggered hours: Employees in the same workplace have different start, finish and break times - often as a way of covering longer opening hours
- Annual hours: This is a system which calculates the hours an employee works over a whole year. The annual hours are usually split into 'set shifts' which are allocated and 'reserve shifts' which are worked as the demand dictates
- Compressed working hours: Employees work their total agreed hours over fewer working days - for example, a five-day working week is compressed into four days
- Shift-working: Shift-work is widespread in industries which must run on a 24-hour cycle, such as newspaper production, utilities and hospital and emergency services
Flexible arrangements should comply with
the law on working time.
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