Introducing Flexible Working into GCC Organisations to Combat Commuting Challenges

Introducing Flexible Working into GCC Organisations to

Combat Commuting Challenges

By Harry Puckering

WHITEPAPER SERIES

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Introducing Flexible Working into GCC Organisations toCombat Commuting Challenges

For HR professionals in the Middle East banking sector, retention of employees should be high on the agenda. As Dubai, the UAE and all the GCC nations leave the 2008 credit crunch and recession behind, the population is booming and commuter traffic is increasing. On top of ‘traffic solutions’ to traffic problems, many commentators argue that more flexible working – staggered start and finish times, flexitime, compressed hours, part-time working, home-based working, mobile and tele-working – would take pressure off GCC transport infrastructure. But how do we introduce flexible working when the business and social cultural expectation is that work happens only on employers’ premises and during standard office hours?

The Problem

The Government of Dubai Statistics Centre gives the 2013 total population for the city as over 2.2 million people, with that number increasing by roughly 100,000 each year. Meanwhile, Gulf News has reported that the number of vehicles on city roads was 1.2 million at the end of 2013 compared to 1.1 million in 2012. So vehicle numbers are also increasing at about 100,000 each year. This means that the percentage rate of increase for vehicles – roughly eight per cent – is double that for people – approximately four per cent. With commuter traffic already becoming problematic, as frequently reported by Dubai’s newspapers, if this increase continues at the current rate we can expect the city’s roads to attain total commuter gridlock unless changes are made.

Other GCC cities have exactly equivalent problems.

Dubai Road Traffic Authority (RTA) has introduced a toll system to ease traffic on key roads and invested in Dubai Metro, fast and modern air-conditioned buses and the upcoming tram. Increases in public transport use have been impressive, so much that the Dubai Metro appears to run at near-maximum capacity during rush hours. But, with the economy once again picking up, the city’s population and the number of motorists has also increased. Many road commuters have informal car-share systems with friends and colleagues. The RTA is considering introducing legislation to restrict use of cars. But the city, and by association all GCC cities, needs wider ranging solutions, including possible HR solutions, to its commuter traffic problems.

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Flexible Working

One obvious HR solution to heavy commuter traffic is to decrease the number of employees all travelling to and from their places of work at the same times each working day. The 2008 recession did this for Dubai. One of our correspondents well remembers the conversations at work in that year about how pleasant the commute had become since the roads emptied as so many people had lost their jobs. But every country wants a growing economy with increasing employment: mass redundancies are not the answer to commuter hell.

Solving the commute with a stable or increasing workforce must involve changing the way in which work is done, so that less people use the same infrastructure at the same times. We’re talking about flexible working:

{ Staggered start and finish times, and Flexitime. Rather than the whole workforce (or even the whole working population of the city) arriving and leaving together, you allow employees to choose, individually or in teams, within certain time limits, when to begin and end work. Normally these limits revolve around ‘core hours’, time in the middle of the day when everybody needs to be at work.

{ Compressed hours. Reallocation of work into fewer and longer blocks during the week – with more days off but earlier starts and later finishes on working days.

{ Part-time working. Anything less than the normal hours of a permanent employee: often five half-days per week, or three- or four-day weeks.

{ Home-based working. Cutting the daily commute from hours to seconds, usually relying on email and the internet to enable all the usual workplace interaction to happen virtually.

{ Mobile and tele-working. Same as home-based except that employees work anywhere with networking capability, often using remote office centres and coffee shops.

A 2009 report by the Family Friendly Working Hours Taskforce, UK Department for Work and Pensions titled Flexible Working: working for families, working for business. A report by the Family Friendly Working Hours Taskforce gave the following business case for flexible working:

§ Falling absenteeism and higher retention leads to a reduction in costs – 65 per cent of employers said flexible working practices had a positive effect on recruitment and retention thus saving on recruitment, induction and training costs.

§ Increased productivity – 58 per cent of small to medium sized enterprises reported improvement in productivity.

§ Increased ability to recruit from a wider talent pool – 42 per cent of employers reported that flexible working had a positive effect on recruitment in their establishment.

§ Greater loyalty amongst staff – 70 per cent of employers noted some or significant improvement in employee relations.

So flexible working improves the quality of work – productivity, profitability and sustainability – while reducing the load on overstretched transport infrastructures. Because of this, it is being increasingly adopted in Western Europe, the USA, Australia and New Zealand. But how can we persuade GCC employers to adopt flexible working?

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Resistance To Flexible Working In The GCC

In more than twelve years of designing and delivering HR qualification training in GCC countries, Oakwood International consultants have regularly moderated discussions about flexible working in the region. Two ideas come out of these discussions again and again. Firstly, employees, especially National employees, do not want what they see as the additional responsibility of working outside of typical working hours or away from their offices and workplaces. Secondly, and much more importantly, GCC employers do not trust their employees to be productive without the direct supervision of their line managers. But, at the same time, most of Oakwood / International House Dubai’s students report that line managers in their organisations are not closely monitoring the work of their teams, and that the Performance Management, Appraisal and Reward systems needed to standardise and formalise good management practice in their organisations are not being supported or promoted by HR.

Promoting Flexible Working In The GCC

So the challenges are how to make GCC National employees want to work more flexibly, and how to change the culture of GCC organisations so that employees are trusted to work independently. The first challenge can be addressed by HR and L&D functions actively promoting the benefits and features of flexible working to employees: more choice about where and when they work, a better Work/Life balance, and potentially higher productivity leading to higher levels of reward.

The second challenge is much harder. Before organisations can even begin to talk about flexible working they need to ensure that:

{ The HR function creates and maintains a valid competency framework for all job families in the organisation; designs, implements and polices best practice Performance Management and Reward systems; and sells the idea across their organisations that competencies and performance are the only valid ways to assess and reward employees

{ Line managers stop judging their people and teams purely on attendance and length of service, and instead pay close critical attention to the work done: setting and revising meaningful objectives every three to six months; monitoring performance by collecting evidence of actual work each month; comparing the evidence with model behaviours, based on the competency framework, and with the individual and team objectives; meeting with their people at once a quarter to coach them on their objectives, competencies and performances

{ The L&D function provides ‘joined-up training’ on best practice, linking the HR systems and the work of line managers to focus on productivity

Creating a performance and productivity culture through these methods takes time. It may take a couple of years before new Competency systems and Performance Management and Reward processes are in regular and reliable use. It may take even longer before line managers trust their people to work wherever they are.

In the face of this long drive to better business, it’s easy to give in and revert to an old-fashioned model where employees have to be in the workplace to do work. Marissa Mayer, CEO of Yahoo in California, famously angered her employees by insisting that all staff returned to conventional 9.00 to 5.00 full-time office-based working by June 2013, saying ‘Speed and quality are often sacrificed when we work from home. We need to be one Yahoo!, and that starts with physically being together.’

But the research evidence does not support Ms Mayer’s statement. For the moment, best practice means using Competency Frameworks, Performance Management and Reward Systems, line manager buy-in and employee engagement to increase more flexible working and thereby increase organisational productivity, profitability and sustainability, reduce commuting and improve the Work/Life balance of all staff.

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About the Author

Harry PuckeringInternational Marketing Director, Oakwood International LtdHarry designs and delivers Oakwoodís CIPD Foundation training and qualification programme, as well as other bespoke management learning and development events and programmes. He also oversees Oakwood’s website and marketing initiatives and materials. Harry’s mixed business background, in the private and public sectors, in HR, marketing, publishing and general management, combined with his relaxed, facilitative approach, uniquely equips him for working with varied clients. He has particular experience of working with multi-cultural groups in the Middle East, most often in Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Muscat, Doha, Bahrain and other cities across the GCC. He has also worked in the USA, Germany, The Netherlands, Singapore, Sweden and France, as well as across the whole of the UK. Harry is an Associate member of the CIPD, a member of the ILM and a Graduate member of the British Psychological Society.

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