How can we define organizational flexibility? There are plenty of definitions for flexibility. In the sense of managing recruiting, flexibility can be defined as the organisation adapting to size, composition, responsiveness and the people. their inputs and costs necessary to achieved organisational objectives and goals. Organisational versatility can be defined when work gets done, where it gets done and exactly how work gets done.
Organisational Flexibility includes:
- Having flex time, therefore the employee chooses the start of their day and the end of their day,
- Being in a position to take off time during the day to look after family issues, for example a worker having the ability to go everyday to fetch their children from school and take them home then time for work,
- Taking a couple of days off in order to take care of family matters and not losing any leave days or pay. So an example would be taking days off to be able to go look after a sick family member or to go to a funeral or something,
- An employee working some of their daily work hours at home, so an employee either coming into work late due working from home each day, or leaving work early and working at home a few hours,
- Working shifts, this implies employees working differing times. Maybe morning shift one week and night shift the other week. Some individuals might prefer this as it might be more predictable. Therefore they can plan lives,
- When people choose when they would like to work, the hours they would like to work, knowing when they may take time off every day. Employees will generally have control over their work day or schedule,
- Employees will often work longer hours during some days of the week to be able to get some days off; they may have compressed their work week. Which allows them to have more time for themselves,
- In some cases employees can advance, go up in their jobs even of they choose their work hours or compress their weeks
The dependence on versatility in the workplace
The need for organisational flexibility is vital. When looking at why there is a desire a for flexibility there are factors that are creating the necessity for flexibility in the workplace. Things are changing all the time, which means an organisation, must have the ability to take on these changes. Aspects such as social, technological, economical, legal, political and other global factors when a business operate within are changing on a regular basis, so organisations should be able to adapt when these changes happen. So in other words they have to be flexible. Since it says there's a need for versatility in the workplace, but there is also a need for overall flexibility in the workforce, meaning the staff. As change happens, how work gets done too changes which means workforce should also be flexible.
Those aspects I mentioned above, I find is not the factor of change that will require the workplace to be flexible. Another factor I find to make a difference is the employees. Folks are changing. Their needs and wants are changing, their ways are changing, the way they live is changing and how they work is changing too. Therefore a lot of people are not attempting to work normally, possessing a Monday to Friday, 9 to 5 job. People are wanting to become more flexible using their time, therefore wanting to work less hours, certain days of the week, have time off or whatever it might be. Therefore a few of the workplaces might benefit if indeed they make themselves flexible in the sense of offering these things to employees. So the workplace should be flexible with this factor too.
There are some aspects that have allowed flexibility to be placed in place in the workplace:
- * The biggest asset to an organisation is the folks who work there, therefore this can create competitive advantage through people. It's best if the organisation is flexible in the number of individuals and the skills in the workplace
- * Organisation have become more flexible in specialization production, so making specialized goods. And shifting from mass productions. Making goods of the same in bulk
- * A couple of changes in life-style, private and work life balance and social changes
- * You will find regular technological changes. Therefore HR services are becoming wider; organisations are doing things differently in the sense of technology. E working therefore on
I suppose in the past organisations were very structured, rigid. And today there still should be structure at work, as an organisation wont work if there wasn't some type of structure. In today's workplace, heavily structured organisations, with rigid job specifications, with strict management styles won't work. The workplace is changing due the ever changing and not predictable environments. Therefore that's the reason there is a dependence on organisational flexibility.
Types of Organisational Flexibility
There are a variety of types of organisational flexibility. They can be:
- Functional Flexibility- Functional overall flexibility basically states that employees can do jobs that exceed what they are actually there to do. So they'll perform jobs that they weren't actually specified to do. So employees can do different jobs but still do their own. Therefore the organisation will require multi-skilled employees. So for example would be in an organisation, a debtors clerk doing their own job, which is debtors, but also having the ability to do creditors when required.
- Numerical Flexibility- This basically involves an organisation bring labour in or taking labour out in accordance service or product demand. The state of the economy can be one factor for the organisation to bring in or go without labour. They are able to control this by the number of employees they want at that time. Therefore they will hire as they want. They can do that by hiring casuals or in your free time workers.
- Financial Flexibility-
- Procedural Flexibility-
- Skills Flexibility-
- Attitudinal Flexibility-
- Structural Flexibility-
