Flexible Working Hours: The Future of Work

Employees’ yearnings are constantly changing and this can be a challenge to organisations because they have to continually keep up with these demands to attract and retain increasingly scarce talents. A mix of reality, strategy and empathy provides employers with a platform to adapt the workplace to evolving employee needs. Gone are the days when competitive pay and good benefits were the only factors that informed the decision of an employee to join and stay at a company. There are now new and widely overlooked desires that people consider more important than a paycheck.

One of these is the concept of “Flexible Work Hours”. This describes the ability of employees to work outside the traditional norm of a rigid 8-to-5 or 9-to-5, five-days-a-week structure. With this individuals have potentially more freedom with regards to when, where or how to fulfill their particular roles. From the typical employer perspective though, promoting flexible work hours might seem a daunting challenge.

So, how can a company promote a flexible work style without sacrificing employee productivity?

Technology has made the process rather seamless. And one of such easy-to-use workplace technologies is TAMS, a highly acclaimed human resource management solution. During the development phase of TAMS, the design thinking team looked at trends- past, current and emerging- in the workplace and their impact on employee productivity. One of the key findings was the “Flexi Hours” concept, which informed a number of decisions that were taken during the design of the solution.

While business owners and managers tend to fret over how to achieve productivity within diverse work schedules,there is no need for such concern, because managing multiple shifts for several employees can be done with ease. As the experience of TAMS users has shown by simply following a set of steps to allow employees work within their chosen work hours.

Step 1

If you already have an account, login to TAMS. For new users, simply sign up . You can enjoy a free plan which allows you to manage a maximum staff strength of five.

Step 2

Once you have signed in to TAMS, click on the “Attendance” module located at the top menu bar. This takes you to your attendance module interface.

Step 3

While in the Attendance Module, click on the “Scheduler” sub-module located on the left menu bar. This takes you to your Work Shift interface.

Step 4

Note that to schedule your employees’ shift, you have to set shift types that would be assigned to each employee. A shift is the time period during which you are expected to be at work. To do this, click on the “Settings” button located at the top right of the interface. This takes you to a settings page.

Step 5

Click on the “Shift Type” settings; this leads you to the “Shift Type Settings” Interface. This settings enable you to create the different Shift Types you want to assign to your employees.

Step 6

While on the Shift Type interface click on the “New Shift Type” button, a row of input fields containing the following required field appears:

- Shift Name: This requires you to input the name of the shift. (e.g. Morning Shift). Number of Days to run shift: This requires you to input the number of days this shift should run e.g. you might want a shift to run two days consecutively. - Shift Starts: This requires you to select the time the shift starts. Shift Ends: This requires you to select the time the shift ends. Colour Code: This requires you to select a colour for your shift. Action: This gives you a set of actions to carry out like “Delete”.

step 7

You can add more shift types by clicking the “Create New Shift Type” button located below the table.

Step 8

To save your shift types, click the “Save” button.

Option 1 : Shift can be created directly from the platform.

Step 9

Click on the “Scheduler” sub-module located on the left menu bar. This takes you to your scheduler interface.

Step 10

On the Scheduler interface, you would see the following fields you are required to fill:

- Date: This requires you to select the dates you want to create shifts for. Note that you can create for as much as a week, a month or a year.

- Select Employees: This requires you to select the employees you want to assign a shift to. Once you have filled the required fields, click on the “Update” button and ta-da, like a magic wand, you are provided with an input field - to select your desired shift - for the dates and employees selected.

Step 11

What is left is to begin to select your desired shift.

Option 2 : Shift can be uploaded via CSV

Schedules can be imported from a CSV file. The following field must be included in the CSV sheet:

• Employee’s Name
• Dates
• Shift name

Step 12

Click on the “Upload” button located at the top right hand corner of the interface.

Step 13

A modal window will appear, instructing you to select the file. Once your file has been selected, another modal window will appear instructing you to select the file match the title of the system field to the title on your sheet.

Step 14

Once the fields have been matched, the system gets updated automatically with the data from the sheet imported

Easy Right?

Want to learn more about how TAMS can help you promote flexible work hours in your organisation? Simply reach out to us on info@tams.com.ng. It is our mission to help you.