Flexible Work Arrangements and Employee Availability

This assignment examines the relationship between flexible work arrangements and employee availability. It analyzes various perspectives on how flexibility can influence employees' commitment, well-being, and productivity. The discussion delves into potential challenges and strategies for implementing effective flexible work policies to ensure adequate staffing levels and maintain organizational effectiveness.

Running head: BUSINESS WRITING
Business Writing
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author’s Note

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Executive Summary
The main aim of this report is to inspect the suitability of work from home facility for the
employees of AKC Architectural Firm by taking into consideration all the necessary aspects. The
results of the analysis state that the company is required to make required tools like laptops and
computers available for the employees to implement this strategy. The adoption of this strategy
will enable cost savings for the company and thus, the company is required to inform the tax
benefits of work from home to their employees. In addition, it can be seen that the company is
required to implement certain strategies for minimizing the abuse of working hours as it will also
maintain the availability of adequate staffs.

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Table of Contents
Introduction......................................................................................................................................2
Software and Access........................................................................................................................2
Purchase of Additional Resources...................................................................................................2
Cost Savings....................................................................................................................................3
Taxation Benefits of Work from Home...........................................................................................3
Working Hours................................................................................................................................4
Process to Stop Abusing the Working Hours..................................................................................4
Issues in Flexible Working Hours...................................................................................................4
Availability of Adequate Staffs.......................................................................................................5
Different Arrangements...................................................................................................................5
Conclusion and Recommendations..................................................................................................5
References........................................................................................................................................7

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Introduction
This report aims to investigate the suitability of work from home facility for the
employees of AKC Architectural Firm (AKC). From the provided situation, it can be observed
that the company is facing the issue of high absenteeism among the employees, as most of the
employees have to stay at home due to look after their sick children and due to other school
related issues. For this reason, the management of AKC is considering to provide the employees
with work from home facility so that they can continue their work. In this context, it needs to be
mentioned that the companies are required to consider some major factor before implementing
the facility for work from home (Allen et al. 2013). The following discussion considers all the
major aspects required to be discussed before the implementation of the work from home
strategy for the employees of AKC.
Software and Access
Before the implementation of the strategy of work from home, the accountant is needed
to assess the availability of appropriate software so that the works can be done in a smooth
manner from home. There needs to be appropriate software that will maintain a connection
between the employees and the administration team. With the assistance of this software, the
instructor will be able to give instructions of the tasks in working hours. This can be a video
software, chatting software or the personal mail of the company. The accountant needs to assess
all these aspects (Masuda et al. 2012).

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Purchase of Additional Resources
This part is related with the above part. After the assessment, in case the accountant finds
that some important resources like software and others are missing, the company needs to
purchase them for implementing work from home facility. Another important aspect is laptops.
In case the AKC uses desktop computers at office, they need to buy laptops along with the
required software for their employees so that they can carry them to home for doing work from
home. Thus, the company needs to bear the expenses of buying laptops. However, if AKC uses
laptops at use, then they need to give permission to the employees for carrying these laptops at
home. In both of the cases, AKC needs provide the employees allowance for internet (Sweet et
al. 2014).
Cost Savings
AKC has certain scopes for cost saving by implementing the strategy of work from home.
First, in the employees of the company are provided with fork from home faculty for 3 days a
week, then there will be a reduction of utility bills for the company; like electricity bills, internet
usage bills and telephone bills. After that, the company will save the money for traveling
allowances provided to the employees, if there is any. Other costs saving areas are savings in the
usage of water, coffee, tea and others (Leslie et al. 2012).
Taxation Benefits of Work from Home
It is an important aspect to inform the employees of AKC about the taxation benefits of
work from home. As per Australian Taxation Office, in case the employees use tools,
equipments and other assets for the generation of income, then the employees can claim a taxable
deduction for some or all of the cost of the assets (ato.gov.au 2018). It is important for the

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company to inform the employees about the taxation benefits of work from home so that they
become interested in this aspect.
Working Hours
According to the Australian regulation, the employees have 38 working hours in a week.
It needs to be mentioned that there is not any exception of this working hour in case of work
from home. For this reason, the employees of AKC need to work for 38 hours in a week (Duncan
and Pettigrew 2012.). However, there needs to be flexibility in the working hours as the main
aim of the strategy of work from home is to provide flexibility to the employees. For this reason,
the employees should be given with the option to fulfill the working hours of 38 hours in a
flexible manner. It implies that they can work whenever they want to work buy required to fulfill
the assigned working hours and tasks (Katz and Krueger 2016).
Process to Stop Abusing the Working Hours
There is a major possibility of the abuse of working hours by the employees in case of
work from home as the employees many take the negative advantage of work from home and do
not fully work in the full working hours. In order to avoid this issue, the employees are required
to be assigned work on daily basis that need to be completed on daily basis. This will make the
employees to work in urgent basis and they will get the flexibility for working. In addition, there
needs to be penalty for the abuse of working hour like salary deduction and others. All these
aspects will stop the abuse of working hours (Ferguson et al. 2012).

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Issues in Flexible Working Hours
Some major issues can be seen in flexible working system. The first issue is the
availability of the employees. In flexible working system, the administration teams are not
always able to make contacts with the employees that hamper the work. The next issue is the
timely completion of assigned tasks. There are many instances where the employees miss the
deadline of tasks or cannot deliver the work in time. Some other issues can be the establishment
of connectivity with the employees and others. Thus, the accountant needs to solve these issues
in order to put the system in place (Eversole, Venneberg and Crowder 2012).
Availability of Adequate Staffs
The company needs to segregate the whole employees in some groups. These teams will
have certain working slabs allocated for them and they must be available in that working slab.
For example, there can be four teams. They are team 1, 2, 3 and 4. Now, team 1 is required to be
present from 9 am to 11 am on a mandatory basis. Team 2 needs to be present mandatory from
11 am to 1 pm and so on. With the implementation of this strategy, the company can ensure that
there will always be adequate staff on site (Stier, Lewin-Epstein and Braun 2012).
Different Arrangements
There will be different arrangements for the administrative team and the employees as
flexible working system can also be provided to the administration team. However, the work
pressure will be more on the administrative team as they will have the responsibility of assigning
the works, follow on various work related issues, follow on the availability of the employees and
others. The responsibility of the administration team will be to report to the higher authority

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about various work related issues on a constant basis so that everything can be run in the smooth
manner (Wood et al. 2012).
Conclusion and Recommendations
Based on the above discussion, it can be seen that the accountant of AKC needs to
consider the above-discussed issues in the implementation of the work from home facility.
Amendment with all these issues will ensure the reduction on absenteeism for the companies. In
addition, the company will be able to continue their operation in an effective manner as they
employees have excellent skills. Based on the above discussion, some recommendations are
provided below:
 It is recommended that AKC should purchase adequate amount of laptops along with
software for this strategy.
 The company is also recommended to inform the employees about the taxation benefit
of work from home so that their enthusiasm can be increased.
 It is recommended that the company should implement the discussed suggested strategy
in order to ensure availability of the employees.

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References
Allen, T.D., Johnson, R.C., Kiburz, K.M. and Shockley, K.M., 2013. Work–family conflict and
flexible work arrangements: Deconstructing flexibility. Personnel psychology, 66(2), pp.345-
376.
Ato.gov.au. (2018). Tools, equipment and other assets. [online] Available at:
https://www.ato.gov.au/individuals/income-and-deductions/deductions-you-can-claim/tools,-
equipment-and-other-assets/ [Accessed 3 Feb. 2018].
Duncan, K.A. and Pettigrew, R.N., 2012. The effect of work arrangements on perception of
work-family balance. Community, Work & Family, 15(4), pp.403-423.
Eversole, B.A., Venneberg, D.L. and Crowder, C.L., 2012. Creating a flexible organizational
culture to attract and retain talented workers across generations. Advances in Developing Human
Resources, 14(4), pp.607-625.
Ferguson, M., Carlson, D., Zivnuska, S. and Whitten, D., 2012. Support at work and home: The
path to satisfaction through balance. Journal of Vocational Behavior, 80(2), pp.299-307.
Katz, L.F. and Krueger, A.B., 2016. The rise and nature of alternative work arrangements in the
United States, 1995-2015 (No. w22667). National Bureau of Economic Research.
Leslie, L.M., Manchester, C.F., Park, T.Y. and Mehng, S.A., 2012. Flexible work practices: A
source of career premiums or penalties?. Academy of Management Journal, 55(6), pp.1407-1428.
Masuda, A.D., Poelmans, S.A., Allen, T.D., Spector, P.E., Lapierre, L.M., Cooper, C.L., Abarca,
N., Brough, P., Ferreiro, P., Fraile, G. and Lu, L., 2012. Flexible work arrangements availability

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and their relationship with work‐to‐family conflict, job satisfaction, and turnover intentions: A
comparison of three country clusters. Applied psychology, 61(1), pp.1-29.
Stier, H., Lewin-Epstein, N. and Braun, M., 2012. Work-family conflict in comparative
perspective: The role of social policies. Research in Social Stratification and Mobility, 30(3),
pp.265-279.
Sweet, S., Pitt-Catsouphes, M., Besen, E. and Golden, L., 2014. Explaining organizational
variation in flexible work arrangements: Why the pattern and scale of availability
matter. Community, Work & Family, 17(2), pp.115-141.
Wood, J., Zeffane, R., Fromholtz, M., Wiesner, R., Morrison, R. and Seet, P.S.,
2012. Organisational behaviour: Core concepts and applications. John Wiley & Sons Australia,
Ltd..

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