Can Flexible Working drive Operational Excellence?

There are numerous benefits to flexible working hours and staff working from home – from a reduction in operating costs to increased workforce productivity. Statistics even show that employee satisfaction and loyalty can improve with telecommuters 48% more likely to rank their job a 10 (the highest level) on the happiness scale.

With the number of workers that are likely to work from home passing the 1.5 million mark, yet 64% of companies still do not have a formal remote working policy (CIPHR), we anticipate 2017 will be a year that companies address this. The key is to measure the output rather than the visibility of employees – but what if you could do both for maximum return? In other words, can you offer flexible working hours to your employees without compromising performance management and still ensure the best utilisation of time and skills?

Stats on flexible working

It has been predicted that flexible working will be commonplace for 70% of companies by 2020. With increasing traffic, skewed working hours and changing customer demands, it’s not hard to see why.

Reducing travel times can not only redirect wasted working hours, but demonstrate smart working – a company is showing confidence and trust in the employee and the employee can better control their work-life balance. Win-win, right?

The new technologies and innovations of today’s world mean that ‘home working’ doesn’t have to mean working in isolation, or compromising on valuable ‘working’ time. With the right tools, managers needn’t feel as though supervision or process optimisation is being lost.

So, what’s the solution?

OPX is a workforce management software that provides the most flexible IT platform for managing shift, flexi-time and home workers.  The secret is that OPX tracks the users’ availability to work, as well as the work accepted and completed.  By using this and combining it with our unique low-level, skills-based approach, work that can be carried out at home can be identified and allocated, ultimately there is still a visibility of process.

OPX tracks and records the workforce productivity, as well as the quality of the work, allowing team managers to work with the external staff in a similar manner to the internal staff, tracking their skills and competencies, quality and throughput, utilisation and performance.

OPX can be tailored to deliver a custom timesheet using the OPX dashboard system based on the activity carried out. The OPX calendar system can provide details of a company or individual days off, absence or sickness.

Neither visibility nor output is overlooked and managers can still make the best utilisation of people’s times and skills. Flexible hours and home working don’t have to mean a loss of visibility, rather, it can provide an opportunity to promote productivity and lead to a demonstration of operational excellence.

How about a demo?

There’s no better way to truly grasp the benefits of a workforce management software like OPX than a live demo. Why not send us an email to find out more?

Or find out just why OPX is the back office of the future.

Sources

CIPD Flexi time work

CIPD Working from Home