John Avison: Making time work for everybody

Apr 10 2009 Huddersfield Daily Examiner

A SURVEYof working parents in Yorkshire on flexible working hours has shown an ambivalent attitude.

Just over half (51%) thought their children would benefit from a scheme at their own place of employment, which means that a massive 49% didn’t, or didn’t know what to think.

A great number thought that their employers wouldn’t like a request for lifestyle-driven hours, fearing it would damage their promotion prospects and mark them as less committed to their job.

Some jobs don’t allow it. Teachers, for instance, will be tied to school hours, nurses and doctors to their shifts, journalists to their deadlines for the foreseeable future.

But for others, it may be the way forward, giving employees freedoms without detracting from – and indeed, possibly enhancing – their efficiency at work.

The theory is that parents who are able to spend more time with their children may well head off trouble with truancy and yobbish behaviour later on.

Flexitime is hardly a novel concept. The Government has accepted its efficacy and made it law last week that all parents of children aged 16 and under can ask their bosses for flexible working arrangements.

Clearly, many are not going to, given the weight of prejudice against it.

Yet we know that it works well in Kirklees.

For several years the council has been a leader in creating a flexible working environment for hundreds of its employees.

It has given workers the ability to build up hours to enable them to take extra paid time off in addition to their holiday entitlements.

It’s possible, in some circumstances, to take up to five years off as a career break and return to full time employment.