A new global study by workplace provider Regus highlights that British office culture is detrimental to the health and home lives of many workers and that too few employers are backing up rhetoric on flexible working with real action.
Many businesses will not see this as a problem for them and will continue to stick rigidly to their 9 – 5.30 working day; expecting employees to be present during these times. However, businesses do need to sit up and take note as the study also shows that three quarters of office workers (74%) now believe that flexible working makes them more productive. 84% believe that giving staff a choice of work location and hours improves loyalty to their employer and, ultimately, staff retention.
Steve Purdy, UK Managing Director at Regus, comments “With all the talk about flexible working, it is surprising that so many company cultures seem out of kilter with the rhetoric. They don’t seem to realise the win-win benefits that flexible working can bring on both the employee and company side.
For many small to medium businesses (SMEs) the headache of managing flexible working practices and having processes and systems in place to support the regime are not worth the effort.
However, flexible practices actually bring huge benefits to organisations which are growing such as:
- Savings on office costs and other operating expenses through an office-sharing environment
- Circumventing geographical limits and increasing the hiring pool through flexible and remote work options
So, how do businesses adopt a culture to support flexible working, they need to look at their infrastructure and capability to support their business operations.
The growth of Cloud technologies has helped businesses to adopt a more flexible working culture without losing the control and visibility they need to grow. With the ability to pay as you go, not invest in major infrastructure in-house, have real-time data available any time, businesses are finding the jump to the cloud a question of when not if.
One such solution, SAP Business ByDesign, has been experiencing rapid growth in uptake. It offers the SME a complete, integrated suite that can run their whole enterprise – financials, human resources, sales, procurement, customer service, and supply chain via the cloud. At the same time employees can access business functionality and analytics anytime, anywhere with a broad range of mobile devices. Delivering them the ability to provide flexible working practices in these changing times but still allowing them to keep control of their processes.
To see how SAP Business ByDesign could help your business become more flexible watch the following demonstration: SAP Business ByDesign
For more information on how SAP Business ByDesign can help your business, please visit www.incloudsolutions.co.uk