Flexibility Working Environment Assignment

BUSINESS
WRITING

DECLARATION
I hereby declare that all the above furnished informations are true and correct to my
knowledge and belief. I undertake to change any information if the above found to be untrue,
false, misleading and misrepresenting. I may be further help liable for disciplinary action.
ABSTRACT
Report includes study of an architectural firm. It is a middle size firm situated in inner
residential area of Melbourne. Present report consist formative research aim, sample design,
methodology, advantages and disadvantages of work from home and more as to elaborate
concept of the present study.
Aim
“ Flexibility Working Environment at AKC AKC Architectural Firm”
Report Objectives
Report includes, that management is looking forward to make their culture more flexible
by investigating more options as they know that firm is having excellent staff. Management is
looking to offer flexible working culture in which they will allow their staff to attend office as
per their desired time along with work form home facility
Methodology
In order to effectively conduct this research Qualitative method is being considered.
Which is mainly a in-depth understanding concerned with human behaviour from the point of
view of informant's perspective. In context with present scenario, with the help of Qualitative
method numerous roles can be played relating to suggesting possible relationships, Dynamic
processes , causes and effects.
Sample design
In this report data is collected via interviews and participant observation. This form of
research is mainly interpretive and creative.
CONCLUSION
It has been concluded from this report that firm is required to make necessary
improvements. With the help of research methodology firm can effectively able to evaluate basic
strength and weaknesses with the help of which they can formulate plan effectively to provide

work from home facility to their staff while ensuring their morale towards firm. In addition with
this firm can use appropriate software and are required to purchase resources like laptops to
make their staff work from in best effective way.
Recommendations
It has been recommended to firm to take advantage of numerous technological measures
with the help of which they can make their administration and architectural staff work via work
from home. In addition with this, with the help of work from home facilities firm can retain their
staff for long period of time. Along with this firm are require to purchase additional resources
like software and laptops as to aid their staff while allowing them to work in flexible work
schedule.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
I would like to deeply express my appreciation to those who helped me to complete this
project. A special gratitude to project manager who embark their contribution and provides me
with suggestions and encouragements. Furthermore, I would like to specially acknowledge
crucial role of staff who access me with necessary material information. I thanks and appreciate
advices of supervisor to improve my project presentation.

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
Business writing is an important element which allows facilitation of communication to
happen with the help of writing. A rather professional approach, this allows individuals in an
organisational settings to effectively communicate using forms of written communication like
projects, reports, etc. The assignment below is based on business writing on business strategy of
a company regarding developing a flexible working environment. For this purpose, AKC
Architectural Firm has been chosen which is working upon providing Working From Home to its
employees.
The agenda of the report was to identify advantages of Working from home. Through
effective research from a range of sources, it was determined that there are several advantage of
this strategy. Some of them are, that working from home provides effective flexibility to
employees working within the organisation through which, they could effectively manage their
personal life as well as professional functions. Moreover, it also creates an environment for
individuals in which they are calm and there is not much stress surrounding them in context with
the workplace.
The assignment also had the purpose of determining disadvantages of working from
home. It was identified that this strategy might prove to be challenging for the company and
managers. This is because it would lead to ineffective management. Furthermore, it also might
lead to lack of communication which is very crucial for a smooth running of business operations
while certain employees are working from home. In addition to this, working from home could
also restrict the organisation in establishing a healthy collaborative culture due to limited
interaction.
This report also required that certain recommendations are presented which allows AKC
Architectural Firm to implement this strategy with utmost ease and convenience. It was analysed
that the company must provide the employees with personal laptops which would help them in
tracking their work as well as monitoring their progress. In addition to this, software like
HipChat as well as BlueJeans must be utilised by the organisation to ensure proper and
consistent communication. All these aspects would allow AKC Architectural Firm in an effective
provision of working from home facility to their employees.

Table of Contents
DECLARATION.............................................................................................................................2
ABSTRACT ....................................................................................................................................2
Aim.........................................................................................................................................2
Report Objectives...................................................................................................................2
Methodology...........................................................................................................................2
Sample design.........................................................................................................................2
CONCLUSION................................................................................................................................2
Recommendations..................................................................................................................3
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT...............................................................................................................3
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY.............................................................................................................4
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................1
PART 1............................................................................................................................................1
PART 2 ...........................................................................................................................................3
CONCLUSION................................................................................................................................4
RECOMMENDATION...................................................................................................................5
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................7

INTRODUCTION
Business Writing is an appropriate practice which is important to be adopted by
individuals in order to effectively communicate professionally through writing (Bell, Bryman,
and Harley, 2018). In addition to this, it makes flow of crucial information quite easier in context
with several business operations. The assignment below is based on AKC Architectural Firm,
which is currently looking up for options related to development of a more flexible workforce
(Quinlan and. et. al., 2019). The idea which has been chosen by the organisation is to apply
“Work from Home” strategy. This strategy has several advantages such as flexibility and lesser
stress. However, there are certain disadvantages of this strategy as well like lack of
communication, along with ineffective management. Furthermore, several recommendations
regarding this strategy have also been presented within the report which would help AKC to
establish its agenda appropriately.
PART 1
Modern technology, personal computers and internet effectively aid individuals to work
form their home. With the help of advanced networking solutions it becomes possible to
perform work from home instead of offices (Hyland, 2015). One of the biggest advantage in this
is flexible working hours which turns out to be remarkably beneficial for women those who are
having young children. As due to this reason women quit their jobs . Thus, with the help of work
form home they can increase their efficiency without quitting their jobs. With the help of screen
video calls and sharing of IP addresses will allow architectural staff to conduct their operations.
Further it will lead towards effective work- life balance along with sense of well-being.
Along with this with the facility of work from home employees can able to save their lot of
resources such as travelling. Some of the certain factors that are related to advantages of work
from home are,
 Flexibility:
This factor is not just related to time of work hour it also determine basic environment
that suit person mood of framework such as, temperature, lightning and more. This lead towards
happiest working schedule and most productive outcome. By allowing flexibility in working
schedule staff can effectively able to increase their performance level in more effective way.
 Less Distractions:
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Unnecessary distractions and unimportant meetings can be avoid if a person work from
home as they can seal their environment off with barricade that can lead towards saving self form
possible interruptions.
 Less Stress:
Stress in a person mind starts from commuting bumper-to-bumper traffic hour it is a
factor that impacts on a individual performance on counterproductive way and make them feel
exhausted from beginning of day. In context with architectural staff firm can offer them work
from home facility by allowing them to login to company server and let the directly work on
shared files. Along with this with the help of formative tools like,voice over IP in context with
long distance calls, large scale virtual meetings and share screen facilities. This will help firm to
align their work in an coordinating way while ensuring continuity in work. It will further lead
firm towards increase in their overall performance level, Productivity and profitability level.
However, due to flexibility in work, there would be fewer hours invested within their daily work.
Thus, almost 30 hours working would be acceptable for an employee who would be working
from home.
 Increased Productivity:
Firm is having trust on their staff efficiency and thus they allow them to work form
home. It will directly help in increment of their productivity. Productivity will be effectively
increased as individuals will not get distracted by co-workers and loud environment. By
embracing flexible working practices firm can not only able to increase productivity of their
employees but also make rise in their cash-flow. In addition to this, there also will be quite a cost
saving for the company as fewer labour would be facilitating fewer and limited usage of energy
and other electrical equipments on site. This would lead to appropriate saving of cost which
would be contributing to productivity in a better manner.
Thus, by considering all these factors in best effective way firm can able to ensure
efficient working structure while ensuring high end productivity of staff that will lead towards
rise in their as well as staff productivity and profitability. Firm can take advantage of remote
connection in effectively continue their work seamlessly without wasting their time on
troubleshooting. In addition with this firm is require to provide knowledge to their staff related to
virtual meetings.
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In order to set parameter for usage of office personal laptops firm is require to have
formative policy for equipment usage as to further avoid any kind of discrepancies. As firm is
dealing in architectural sector that consist lot of sensitive information it is required by firm to
have implement measures relating to device security. Along with this, firm is effectively require
to communicate their staff related to insurance, tax and other related worker's compensation.
Firm is further required to choose suitable tool such as, instant communication tools such as,
slack, HipChat, video conferencing tools like BlueJeans and HighFive, Shared docs like,
Dropbox and Google Docs.
PART 2
Work from Home is an essential as well as a crucial practice and has several advantages
which have been explained above. However, there are several disadvantages of this practice as
well, which might cause hindrances within the company and its strategy for developing a flexible
work environment for their workforce. These disadvantages are explained in detailed below:
 Lack of Unified Culture:
One of the major disadvantages of this strategy which would be experienced by the
employees working within the organisation is that there will not be much interaction between the
workforce amongst themselves. They would be having limited interactions from weekly video
conferences or exchange of professional E-mails (Wilson, 2016).. This would hinder the firm in
establishing a unified culture and such limited interaction would also lead to lesser collaboration,
which is essential for success of AKC Architectural company. In addition to this, if the firm
would be employing people from different cultures, working from home would also result in rise
in cultural barriers, which would affect the performance.
 Communication:
Communication is perhaps one of the most important aspect related to the company and
its strategy of a flexible work culture. However, working from home might reduce the
effectiveness with which the firm could operate if all the members are present within the
company. There are several reasons for the same. As an example, the first reason would be
unavailability of employees. There might be some sort of ineffectiveness in communication as it
is not possible that each employee is available at the time some assignment is required to be
provided to the workforce. Moreover, there are several chances of the project becoming quite
ineffective as sometimes there are important changes and urgent modifications which might not
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be communicated due to such unavailability and hence, causing delay. For both administrator as
well as architectural employees, working from home might cause delays in important and crucial
information which could stall the whole project for a significant period of time, outcome of
which might be loss.
 Difficulty in Management:
One entity which experience highest impact of employees working from home is
manager of that company (Josefsson and Peltonen, 2015). They are required to manage the work
of both administrator as well as architectural employees. However, working from home would be
making it quite challenging for the managers of AKC Architectural Firm. For managers of
administrator employees, it could become very hard for them to measure and evaluate
productivity of each employee. Reason for this is that each employee working from their
respective homes are obviously exposed to several better resources which might be an unfair
advantage to these employees. Additionally, monitoring is a very important within an
architectural company to ensure that the architectural designs, business reports and overall
implementation of projects are in alignment with the set plan. However, working from home
would refrain managers to monitor their work which might also result in increasing ambiguity
within the projects. Furthermore, there are no effective software with the firm currently which
could help managers in effectively managing work from home. Thus, absence of an integrated
system would affect the company in a negative manner.
However, even more than administrator managers, individuals managing architectural
employees face greater difficulties while managing the workforce when there are several who are
working from home (Powell and Craig, 2015). The biggest roadblock for these managers is that
they do not find enough workforce to execute their work on the site. Moreover, with ample
resources hired to the work, lesser employees restrict a proper and optimum use of these
resources. This adds to the time related to completion of project, furthermore, with more time
taken than required, the firm might come at a risk of losing their clients as well.
CONCLUSION
To conclude, it could be effectively said that AKC Architectural Firm could utilise a
flexible working strategy like working from home which would create an appropriate working
environment within the company. This would also allow the firm and its employees to
effectively ensure flexibility within their structure which would contribute to retaining their
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employees and providing them utmost assurance. Furthermore, with employees working in ease,
working from home would ensure lesser stress within the staff. This is because they would be
able to manage both their personal life as well as professional. However, there are several risks
associated with implementation of this strategy. The first one being that working from home
would be producing quite a lot challenges for the managers which might be an issue regarding its
implementation. Several other issues which might cause barriers within its implementation is
related to the ineffective communication and limitation in establishment of a unified culture
(Reshma, Acharya and Aithal, 2015). However, with little attention to the strategies disadvantage
and developing counter strategies for the same, the organisation could appropriately result an
effective implementation within the same.
RECOMMENDATION
Recommendation related to implementing the strategy of working from home is
necessary for AKC Architectural Firm, as it would allow the company to take necessary steps to
ensure maximum productivity, ease as well as management of the organisation and all its
operations (Bigby, Webber and Bowers, 2015). Moreover, this could also act as crucial actions
which might reduce the negative effects associated with working from home to a greater extent.
These recommendations are stated briefly below:
 The first and the most effective recommendation related to working from home is that in
order to ensure that the work is being performed with utmost ease, the firm could
appropriately utilise strategies such as video conferencing as well as interchanging IP
addresses. This would allow the company to ensure utmost effectiveness in the working
of employees who are operating from their home, along with monitoring the work
performed by them. This would further enhance the effectiveness of working from home
and reduction of its several disadvantages (Taylor, 2015). Moreover, this would also
require the firm to put in some additional arrangements for administrator staff to work
upon. For instance, the firm could ensure a unified database on which administrator staff
would be working upon, which would in turn enhance its effectiveness.
 Another recommendation which AKC Architectural firm must implement within their
working is related to the provision of personal company laptops to the employees. This
would help management in tracking the progress of administrator employees as well as
would enable the firm in monitoring the design and implementation of the architectural
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design developed by their architectural employees. Furthermore, providing them laptops
from the company will help the organisation in keeping their data safe and secure which
would fulfil their demand of security of sensitive information related to their architectural
plans, designs and operations.
 Lastly, the firm must purchase different software like, HipChat, which would help
management in staying in touch with their employees and could acquire real time status
of their work. To further enhance the effectiveness, video conferencing tools like
BlueJeans and HighFive could also be acquired and implemented within their company.
In addition to this, each staff present within AKC Architectural Firm must be
communicated several aspects in relation to insurance, tax and other related worker's
compensation, etc. In addition to this, appropriate and essential training must be given to
the employees within the organisation that would educate them regarding the best
methods using which they could be both productive as well as available for the company
whenever the firm requires their assistance (Tsos and. et. al., 2016).
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REFERENCES
Books and Journals
Bell, E., Bryman, A., & Harley, B. (2018). Business research methods. Oxford university press.
Bigby, C., Webber, R., & Bowers, B. (2015). Sibling roles in the lives of older group home
residents with intellectual disability: Working with staff to safeguard wellbeing.
Australian Social Work.68(4). 453-468.
Hyland, K., (2015). Teaching and researching writing. Routledge.
Josefsson, K., & Peltonen, S. (2015). District nurses' experience of working in home care in
Sweden. Healthy Aging Research.4. 1-8.
Powell, A., & Craig, L. (2015). Gender differences in working at home and time use patterns:
Evidence from Australia. Work, employment and society.29(4). 571-589.
Quinlan &. et. al., (2019). Business research methods. South Western Cengage.
Reshma, P. S., Acharya, S., & Aithal, P. S. (2015). Relevance of On-line Office Administration
through Working from Home in Future Education System. International Journal of
Application or Innovation in Engineering & Management (IJAIEM).4(4). 44-53.
Taylor, S. (2015). A new mystique? Working for yourself in the neoliberal economy. The
Sociological Review.63. 174-187.
Tsos &. et. al., (2016). Influence of working out at home on the expansion of cardiovascular
disease risk factors. Journal of Physical Education and Sport.16(3). 1008.
Wilson, N. (2016). Home in British Working-Class Fiction. Routledge.
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