Businesses need to invest to make Government flexible working plans a reality

In yesterday's Queen Speech it was announced that the Government is looking at how the right to flexible working can be extended to millions more parents. Under current guidelines, only parents with children under six have the right to request flexible or part-time working. Working with a leading industrialist, the Government will be looking to investigate if it would be viable to extend this to parents with children under the age of 9, 12 or even 17.

Alistair McKinnon, Senior Product Manager, ntl:Telewest Business comments:

Flexible working has significant benefits for parents and allows them to improve their work-life balance. The flip side of the coin also sees businesses reaping substantial benefits in increased productivity and efficiency gains. However, despite the advantages British organisations have remained reluctant to go the whole hog and make flexible working available to all. This means that should the Government introduce a new policy extending parents rights to flexible working, many will lack the necessary infrastructure.

Gordon Brown's proposals could see over 10 million parents given the right to flexible working, leaving many businesses to review how they can support flexible working. To effectively work from home employees need to be able to keep in touch with colleagues as though they were next to them in the office, by using soft phones on laptops; access corporate data files; share files in a live environment; conduct PC to PC video conferencing; and enable staff to see when colleagues are online, which means that companies need a reliable and effective network.

For companies that don't already have a flexible working policy, implementing such an infrastructure change will seem like a daunting task, but this needn't be the case at all. Technology exists today, to make flexible working a reality without burdening businesses with a huge upheaval and costly bill. Flexible working will become increasingly business critical in order to support more disparate working practices and even if the government doesn't extend the right to flexible working, organisations should still be looking at the business value flexible working can deliver, concluded McKinnon.

If you would like further information or an interview with Alistair please contact me on 0207 494 6598.