Monday 24 January 2000
New MORI survey shows two thirds of UK employees want to work flexibly. This week, the UK's most passionate advocate of flexible working launches an on-line service to help them achieve their wish.
A new on-line service which has developed a proven formula to successfully match senior executives into jobshare partnerships launches this week as a MORI survey, published today, shows that 65 per cent of UK employees want to break out of the traditional 9-5 routine.
www.flexecutive.co.uk, the brainchild of flexible work company The Resource Connection, will provide the first on-line job share register to middle managers and above (positions which employers have historically believed to be unworkable for jobshare). Flexecutive.co.uk also delivers a full flexible employment service, as well as support services for flexible working.
The MORI poll, also commissioned by Flexecutive, further established that:
- 17 per cent of respondents would like to work fewer days a week with longer hours on the days they do work;
- 17 per cent would prefer to work at home some of the time;
- 13 per cent would like entitlement to unpaid leave of absence from work;
- 14 per cent of those asked would prefer to work fewer days a week, but the same amount of hours per day and 9 per cent would choose to work only in school term time. It would be fair to say that these groups could be open to the idea of jobshare.
Flexecutive.co.uk was developed following a major study by The Resource Connection, The Industrial Society and psychometric specialists Saville & Holdsworth, which found that 70 per cent of senior executives in jobshare generated 30 per cent more output than one person doing the same job. The study went on to establish the personality traits that differentiated jobshares and flexible workers, and which combination of factors produced the most successful jobshare partnerships. Using this information via its exclusive TAS model, flexecutive.co.uk can enable employers to combine work style profiles, providing support to maximize the effectiveness of their business teams.
Crucially, the study also reveals that managers of both jobshares and flexible workers rate those workers as providing a higher level of output than traditional full time employees - the first time that this feedback has been officially established.
Carol Savage, Managing Director, The Resource Connection, comments:
" We have proved that more employees want flexibility, and that successful senior jobshare and flexible working makes money for business. Now, with flexecutive.co.uk we can enable more successful jobshare partnerships and provide employers with the best and most innovative solutions to retain and attract staff."
Dr John Knell, Senior Research Director, The Industrial Society, adds:
"Flexible working will become the norm in British business, and initiatives such as flexecutive.co.uk are set to extend the added value to business derived both from negotiating flexible contracts and from finding an effective jobshare partner."