Flexible Work: Two Types Of Flexibility And Contract

There are two types of flexible work. They are numerical flexibility and functional flexibility (Kalleberg, 2001). Functional flexibility can be described as modifying tasks and allowing employees to gain skills in order to improve performance. In contrast, numerical flexibility reduces costs by modifying the quantity of employees (Voudouris, 2007). Flexibility as a concept arose from the social and economic changes which meant organisations needed to become more flexible to enhance competitiveness (Kalleberg, 2001). This essay will concentrate on numerical flexibility and in particular part-time work, temporary/fixed-term work and zero-hours contracts. The list is greater but due to word count the focus will remain on this four. I

This means productivity will not suffer when staff are absent from work (Bryson and Scurry, 2010). This could be employing people on temporary or fixed-term contracts. Maternity leave is a good example of when one of these contracts will be used. A fixed-term contract will normally be given to an employee covering for someone on maternity leave as there as a confirmed start and end date. GOV.UK (2015) explain that the person on maternity leave also has the right to return to work so a permanent contract for someone covering for them would not be appropriate in this case. They also say that if the person on maternity leave makes any changes to the time when they are due to return to work they have to give the employer 8 weeks’ notice. This gives the employer time to renew contracts with covering employees or let them go depending on whether the employee on maternity leave is returning early or extending their leave period. Another very common example of numerical flexibility covering absence is when an employee is absent due to

The workers themselves may also not be keen to invest in skills specific to the business since their job is not secure. Conley (2006) said that organisations tend not to provide training and development of the highest quality to their temporary workers. Even if the workers were in the organisation for years the employer would still not find it necessary to invest in proper training simply because they were temporary (Conley, 2006). Despite the fact that temporary and fixed-term workers are entitled to equal opportunities when it comes to training the employers always found a way around this (Conley, 2006). This is obviously negative since workers will not achieve their full potential and their work not being completed to the best it could be (Altuzarra and Serrano, 2010). Productivity and wastage will suffer as a result (Bryson and Scurry, 2010). Conley (2006) gave another reason why not investing in adequate training was bad for organisations. She said that employee motivation and morale fell because they were not confident in carrying out their roles and responsibilities. Employees self-worth would other decrease because they felt they were not worthy of being invested in. Their progress in the organisation was limited without training. They could not see a way of achieving the goal of advancing to a permanent contract (Conley, 2006). Disheartened employees