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In recent months the jobs market has been in the news
regularly thanks to improving unemployment numbers and criticism of zero-hour
contracts.
This is certainly not a coincidence, with a large proportion
of the new jobs being created in the private sector being part-time, shift and
zero-hour employment.
Then in the Metro this week (Monday November 18) two letters
were published from Kelly-Marie Blundell, a prospective Liberal Democrat
candidate in 2015, and Karen Mattison MBE, cofounder of Timewise Foundation, a
pro-flexible working action group.
Both claimed the creation of part-time work was a good thing
and we should be abandoning the idea of the traditional full-time job for
flexi-time, telecommuting and working from home.
This raises two very interesting points, firstly about the
nature of the new jobs being created in the economy and second about the
concept behind flexible working.
Flexible working and flexi-time have been seen as the trump
card in modern work environments for at least the last two decades, but as yet
has not taken off as quickly is expected.
With people living further from work, commuting greater
distances and having to juggle both a professional and home life, the idea of
fitting your working day around your children’s school hours, for example, seems
like a really good idea.
The basic concept was people would come into the office
earlier, reduce break times, telecommute and work remotely from home.
However, this holy grail of 21st century human
resources has not materialised to the extent many thought it would.
Yes, parents are taking advantage of it to drop-off and
collect their kids from work and, thanks to modern telecommunications, work
remotely from halfway around the globe in extreme cases, but this is far from
the norm.
In particular, working from home is unfairly stigmatised in
many office-based environments.
There are many reasons for it not taking off in the way many
thought it would.
Firstly, despite the wonders of modern communications there
is a significant and quantifiable benefit to having a team based in one place, being
able to interact and bond face-to-face rather than email-to-email.
Secondly, people like the routine of going into work. Ask
anyone (including this blogger) about working from home and they will tell you
it is not as relaxing as it sounds as your home becomes your workplace rather
than a place of rest.
Thirdly, and lastly in terms of this blog post (although
there are many other reasons), the modern workplace has not evolved as rapidly
as people think.
It is easy to claim flexible working sets the workers free,
but it is not true in the majority of cases.
Most people still have and work to the traditional idea of what
a job and career is and this still revolves around the basic principle of
9-to-5.
Undeniably, more people are working from home or are on
flexible hours, but these still make up a minority of the work force and while
we have been reliably informed for the last two decades this is the way things
are moving there is precious few facts to prove it.
The problem is there are very few hours in the day to be
flexible with in the first place.
Almost all professions keep what are essentially office hours,
or operate to a much fuller capacity during them. This includes the construction
industry, retailing, customer services and event he medical and care professions.
If the majority of people are at work between 9am and 5pm
then the majority of business needs to be done between those hours.
In fact, even the single parent, a prime candidate for benefiting
from flexible working, still works what are essentially normal office hours,
minus 90 minutes at the end of the day.
However, here lies a problem. People get mixed up between
part-time and flexible working, when in fact the two are totally different.
Flexible working involves working a standard number of
hours, while not necessarily keeping the same office times as other staff. Part
time simply involves working fewer hours.
Yes, part-time work has its place in the economy, but it always
has, and should always, be taken by people who require this kind of employment
routine, for example, students or those requiring a few extra hours to top up
wages. It is not a full-time employment substitute.
This is the problem with the current jobs market.
A major criticism of the recently improving unemployment
figures is the majority of the newly created jobs are not full-time or even
flexible working, but standard, part-time work, which is of debatable benefit.
You can create as many part-time as you want, but if people need
to work three of them just to make ends meet then you will need to create three
times as many part-time jobs as you would full-time jobs.
It is very easy for us all to get caught up in the
technology revolution, allowing us to stay in constant, and all too often unnecessary
contact, a think everything else has moved forward at the same pace, but it has
not.
For example, the underground system in London has hardly
changed at all since the first mobile phone was invented, let alone moved with
the times in terms of WiFi, smart phones and tablets.
Yes, the world is changing and in some areas this change is
happening at a staggering rate, but it is foolish to think everything is moving
forward at the same rate.
We do not currently, nor will we for a while, live in a
world where a majority of people require some level of flexible working and the
people who require part-time work, like students, will always be able to find
it.
So for now the most important thing is to encourage job
creation in the way it is actually needed, not in the way a human resource manager’s
dream thinks it should be, and for the moment this path is still firmly based
around the 9-5 rat-race.
