How To Prepare Your Business For Flexi Time

Make sure you’re ready for when your employees invoke their right to request flexible working on July 30th….

Working nine to five. It’s no way to make a living. At least that’s the verdict that came from Nick Clegg last week.

Last Tuesday, the deputy prime minister announced that the ‘right to request’ law had come into effect, allowing any company employee the right to request more flexible working hours from their employer, if they have been working for the company for more than six months.

This will come as good news to to the 33 percent of the UK workforce who would jump at the chance to have a better work/life balance, according to a recent study by the Mental Health Foundation.

And, if you’re a business owner, it should come as good news to you, too. Last year, a study by Vodafone revealed that large UK PLCs could save as much as £34 million by adopting flexible working practices. This is because allowing workers to work from home, for example, saves on things like desk space and utility bills, among other factors. Another piece of research carried out by the Institute of Leadership and Management revealed that 82 percent of businesses who had adjusted to flexible working hours believed it had benefited their businesses.

The research goes on and on. Studies from the four corners of the world – from New Zealand to England have correlated flexible working hours with everything from reduced sick days and improved employee retention rates to increase company productivity.

However, if you are going to adopt more flexible working, especially working from home, you’re going to need to prepare. Skype is an invaluable tool for home working communication, as are virtual conferencing tools like pow-wow now. Google Drive is also a great piece of kit to have, because it allows employees in different locations to share documents and make changes to them together in real time.

If you’re really serious about flexible working, though, you should consider setting yourself up with a VPN server on a UK2 VPS Cloud. Slicing through the jargon, this is a way of allowing your employees access to all your company software from their own homes. What’s more, their access will be secure – meaning that no one outside your business will be able to access it, as it’s transferred to their home computers.

To get yourself set up with this, you’ll need to get a UK2 cloud hosting package. Visit our VPS homepage for more details or call the support staff to chat about your options.

To learn more about flexible schedules and how to request flexiblity in your work week visithttp://www.acas.org.uk