Companies not ready for introduction of new legislation on 6th April

Many UK companies will be caught short by the onset of new employment laws, introduced on 6 April, which legally oblige them to look at ways of finding flexible working options for staff. Most organisations have not considered the management and administration problems, or the potential negative impact on customer service and productivity if they don't accurately plan and co-ordinate their flexible working offerings.

The warning from employee management specialists, Crown Computing, comes on the back of research which says that 46% of jobseekers choose flexible working as the benefit they most look for in their next job while in contrast 56% of employers have never considered flexible working schemes, such as working from home. *1

Mike Hawkesford, Managing Director of Crown Computing says: "The new law says that employers must consider allowing flexible working if employees with young children request it. Some organisations may feel they need to open this up to all employees. This could mean offering employees staggered shifts, shift swapping or even letting them choose their own shifts. But if you're an organisation with a large workforce then the planning and admin burden of such changes is huge. If staff are in customer facing roles, you need to ensure there will always be enough people to meet service targets. And if you have production or delivery targets from customers, you need to ensure enough people are working at the right time to ensure these are met. And on top of this - there's the payroll burden of tracking staff hours and ensuring the salaries are correct.’

Crown Computing estimates that as many as 75% of organisations it speaks to about employee management don’t have a strategy for addressing the increasing issue of flexible working. ‘Its not all doom and gloom though,’ says Hawkesford, ‘there are technologies out there that can easily work with existing systems to quickly allow businesses to embrace new legislations while improving productivity.’

To help large companies address these issues Crown Computing has just launched a new workforce scheduling product called Open Options Workforce Scheduling that helps companies that have fixed working arrangements, to embrace flexible working and plan and manage their workforce efficiently. This helps to ensure that employees with the correct skills are available at the right time and appropriate place while also allowing staff to access their schedules on the web (either on computers at home or at work) and swap shifts and book holidays at ease. Crown Computing’s Open Options Workforce Scheduling also makes sure that costs and human resource issues such as the Working Time Directive are managed correctly while keeping an accurate track of employees pay.

Open Options Workforce Scheduling is also designed as a vital tool for workforce planners. It works on the basis of providing a broad plan that can be ‘tweaked’ to best accommodate the needs of the business. The Open Options Workforce Scheduling product works alongside forecasting tools such as complex ERP systems or simpler spreadsheets. Crown Computing understand there are already tools in place to help the productivity or profit of their business. Open Options Workforce Scheduling is designed to compliment such systems and easily interfaces with them, providing the benefit of increasing the use of the knowledge base a company already has about its staff and working patterns.

The flexibility within Open Options Workforce Scheduling allows a company to define its own job roles and assign individuals to those roles. Any discrepancies are highlighted on screen to aid the planner make the final planning decision. The auto- planning capabilities provide a broad plan that can be finalised by the planner based on a host of information that is available for each employee.

Notes to editors

*1 The figures come from a Department of Trade Industry survey conducted towards the end of last year for Work/Life Balance Week.

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