Labour Market Flexibility - Flexibility For Workers

Flexibility For Workers

However, labour market flexibility does not only refer to the strategies used by employers to adapt to their production/business cycles as it is in the definitions above. Increasingly the common view is that labour market flexibility can potentially be used for both workers and companies/ employers and employees. It can also be used as a method to enable workers to ‘adjust working life and working hours to their own preferences and to other activities’. As companies adapt to business cycles and facilitate their needs through the use of labour market flexibility strategies, workers adapt to their life cycles and their needs through it (Chung, 2006). The European Commission also addresses this issue in its Joint Employment Report and its new Flexicurity approach, calling for an adequate methods to enhance flexibility for both workers and employers that is “capable of quickly and effectively mastering new productive needs and skills and about facilitating the combination of work and private responsibilities.” (Chung, 2008) ETUC also emphasize the importance of the development of working time flexibility as an alternative to implementing external flexibility as the sole method of increasing flexibility in the labour market (ETUC, 2007). In their report on working time, TUC has also argued that flexible working should be extended to all workers through stronger regulations (Fagen et al. for TUC, 2006). As authors Gerson and Jacobs agree, “flexibility and autonomy are only useful if workers feel able to use them” (Gerson & Jacobs, 2004, pg. 238). Therefore, if the policies and benefits are being offered, our hope, as management, is that our employees take advantage of the opportunities.