Guest blog: Being smart about flexible working - By Stefanie Reissner, Newcastle University & Michal Izak, University of Roehampton
/More and more office workers now can work flexibly: from home or a café, interspersed with the school run or a lunch with friends – and without the commute. Such flexibility brings opportunities and challenges for individuals and organizations, which we have researched thanks to funding by the British Academy and the Leverhulme Trust.
The advantages of flexible working are already well documented. It allows individuals to have greater control over their time and combine work with other commitments. Gone are the days when carers (particularly women) had to decide between working and caring. Now, parents and grandparents can attend a school play in the afternoon and catch up with work in the evening, helping them to improve their work-life balance. Or they can work at a nearby café whilst their offspring attends an extracurricular sport activity they needed a lift from parents to get to. Similarly, carers can now attend appointments with external parties during the day and finish off their work later without having to book time off, helping them to shoulder the burden. Our research (and that of others) has found that staff will often repay their organization by working longer and harder.
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