The "flexible" aspect of these types of jobs can, in different instances, relate more to the employees, or to the employer, or to both. That is, from the employees' point of view, flexible work may allow 'more freedom to organise their employment to fit in with other parts of their life'. For an employer, the flexibility may come with the ability to organise labour resources more in line with the varying needs of customers, or with peaks and troughs of demand. A positive example of flexible work schedules is in being self-employed, in that the amount of time spent in the office is chosen appropriate to scheduling and not a specific time frame, i.e. 9-5.

Labour flexibility can be broken down into four main streams or approaches including functional, skill formation, numerical and cost flexibility (Labour Fle

Flexible Work Practices Brochure Series, Brochure 1). Because flexible work arrangements have not been used widely by staff, many people tend to think of them as a special benefit or privilege for employees. However, there can also be significant benefits for management as well. The best arrangement is the one that most effectively addresses the employee's personal needs or preferences and the department's need to provide effective and efficient services (VandenHeuvel, 1993). Sometimes these needs are in conflict. When this is the case, the department has the right to deny a request for a flexible work arrangement. However, with so many choices available, it is often possible to design an arrangement that meets the needs of both the employee and the department.

Job-sharing is a particular structure of part-time work, where two, usually always two, people share a job throughout a working week. There are a few variations of this structure, an example is where one employee will work the Monday, Wednesday, and Friday shifts, whilst the other will work the Tuesday and the Thursday.

As with most programs, there always has to be some negative issues to be looked at. The idea of measuring accomplishments rather than hours - which is the philosophy behind not paying salaried employees overtime - creates problems as well as solving them. 'If companies don't measure how many hours employees work but instead measure whether they get the job done, how do they decide what the job should entail' (Steen, 1998)? Mary Young, an independent researcher and consultant on workplace issues and trends in Boston agrees with this argument in her article on balancing work and life (1998), "We have a real catch-22. The rules aren't clear, and it's not OK to ask about them. Sometimes people do try to ask about them and don't get the answer they are looking for." "One reader I heard from recently says he is working more than 60 hours per week and his manager keeps giving him additional projects. His concerns about his workload are met with the response, "Well, we're all working hard right now" (Steen, 1998). Working in an office where everyone is working hard can make it even harder to sort out how much work is expected. InfoWorld columnist Nicholas Petreley touched on this issue in his Down to the Wire (1998) column when he concluded that peer pressure could force people to work long hours or make them feel guilty if they don't. The problem can be partly psychological -- the feeling that people look suspiciously if you leave the office at 5 p.m. while they are staying until 8. But creating the impression that you do less work than your co-workers can also have more concrete consequences: A company's employees, after all, compete with each other for a finite amount of money that goes to salary increases, as well as for promotions. Young not only agrees with this, but also adds "One of the underlying issues is that we as a society have no consensus about how much work is enough. If somebody wants me to work 70 hours per week on a salary, I don't have to work there."

There are two main areas of labour when analysing this model. There is the 'core' section which refers to the predominantly full-time, permanent, multi-skilled employees, and the 'peripheral' section which supplements the 'core' section and is made up of part-time, temporary, casual, agency, or contract people/emp

Some common words found in the essay are:
Series Brochure, Flexibility Agreement, Management Robbins, Cited Wolcott, Flexibility Flexible, Nicholas Petreley, Ilene Wolcott, ALTERNATIVE SCHEDULES, OK Sometimes, Workplace Agreements, labour flexibility, organisational design, flexibility agreement 7, june 1993, flexibility agreement, wolcott 1996, agreement 7, 7 june, labour flexibility agreement, flexible arrangements, alternative schedule, agreement 7 june, 7 june 1993, alternative schedules, et al 2000,
Approximate Word count = 2278
Approximate Pages = 9 (250 words per page double spaced)