1. Needs assessment
2. Understanding your options
3. Negotiation
4. Implementation
5. Monitoring and evaluation

STEP ONE: Needs assessment

Flexible work practices help you meet the differing needs of each employee, so they can contribute their best. By looking at the individual needs of employees and then ensuring that your workplace caters for those needs, it will be a better and safer environment for all your employees.

Flexible workplace can assist mature age employees:

• manage a healthy work/life balance;
• to attend appointments, for example medical or financial;
• to prepare for, or transition into retirement;
• to meet carer/volunteering/personal responsibilities.

Staff discussions (either individually or through focus groups), staff surveys and Exit Interviews with mature age workers who are leaving to work elsewhere or retire can help you determine if there are gaps in work practices.

Remember that communication (with staff as well as with their supervisors/managers) is essential in developing flexible work practices that are tailored for your organisation and your employees.

[back to top]

STEP TWO: Understanding your options

Researching the options available to you should give you a better understanding of the types of flexible work practices that would suit your business. Flexible work practices can take the form of:

• part time work,
• job sharing,
• teleworking,
• flexible working hours,
• flexible leave provisions,
• flexibility in employment status, such as phased retirement.

Flexible work practices include matching tasks to your employees’ varying capacities. Encouraging employees in multi-skilling and job rotation and offering training and transfer opportunities helps build the resilience of your business.

Discussing flexible working options with employees and supervisors will help to determine what practices are most suited to their needs.

At this stage you should examine the 'job design' of the positions in your business. Job design includes the function, roles, activities and skills in a job as well as the boundaries/differences between it and other jobs.

If you think about a job in terms of these elements it may be easier to implement flexible working practices. For example, whether it is possible to split the elements of the job so it can be performed part-time or through a job-share arrangement or if any of the elements can be performed away from the workplace/ outside standard hours (teleworking/flexible working hours).

[back to top]

STEP THREE: Negotiation

When negotiating which flexible working practices may be suitable for your business, you may like to:

• determine key implementation issues, such as communication, attending staff meetings, working different hours in emergencies, and access to training;
• discuss perceived barriers and strategies to address them with supervisors and employees;
• decide on specific performance measures so that supervisors and employees can evaluate if the arrangement is working;
• finalise the flexible work arrangement once negotiated and accepted, by preparing and signing a written agreement with the employee.

Read more: Sample clause for managing a flexible workplace practices document

[back to top]

STEP FOUR: Implementation

You may wish to consider the following when implementing flexible working practices:

• Use a trial period to ‘test drive’ how the arrangement works in practice.
• Regularly consult with your employee and other co-workers so that issues can be discussed as they arise.
• Negotiate and resolve any conflicts as they arise on the basis of mutual benefit and in terms of the flexibility principles.
• Review the arrangement to see whether it has been successful, perhaps once in the first week, then once a month for three-months, then after six months.

You may also like to use a flexible work practices policy to communicate rights and responsibilities in relation to flexible work arrangements and steps for putting them into practice. The policy will also help promote the flexible working options your business offers.

Read more: Creating a flexible workplace policy

[back to top]

STEP FIVE: Monitoring and evaluation

It is not always possible to predict what impact the implementation of flexible work practices will have on your business or on other team members. Monitoring and evaluating the effectiveness of flexible work arrangements means you can track progress and make amendments or adjustments as needed.

There are a number of ways to evaluate the impact of flexible work practices, including:

• setting up a confidential feedback process for your employees to evaluate the arrangements;
• assessing the specific flexibility training needs for all employees;
• surveying customers/stakeholders to determine their perception of the impact flexible work practices are having on service; and
• checking that individual and team performance measures and objectives have been achieved.

Using the information you obtained through the evaluation, analyse the overall strengths and weaknesses of the flexibility options and put in place strategies in response. A possible strategy may be to provide additional training or resources for your employees to better facilitate the working arrangements.

[back to top]