"Flexible working for parents is great. But childfree people need it, too" June 15, 2019 | Registered: 13 years ago Posts: 12,440 |
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What about child-free workers? Are they not just as disadvantaged by regressive working policies or indeed any less immune to the trivialisation of their lifestyle choices and office double standards?
The answer is yes, and I speak from experience; one that over the years has flared up with particular force whenever I have wanted to work more flexibly. Indeed, the seemingly simple request to work from home occasionally has at times been a torturous and demeaning exercise that has revealed the widely held assumption that without kids, there’s little life to balance.
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This sense that your concerns and wellbeing are under the radar is echoed by a broader invisibility in the cultural narrative. Yet childless workers do need to be part of the conversation. While discrepancies and inconsistencies prevail, where one person’s flexible working comes at the expense of another picking up the slack, where people’s needs are pitted against each other in a warped battle to be most deserving, we will still have divisions and toxicity that ultimately benefit no one. Indeed, if the approach to flexible working had been less selective from the outset, we might by now be further down the line in seeing the office-bound nine to five for the anachronism it undoubtedly is, and all be much closer to something far more progressive.
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Professor Sharon Clarke and Dr Lynn Holdsworth of Alliance Manchester Business School find a direct correlation between flexible working and reduced occupational stress...They discover[ed] that the upshot is more motivated, committed and productive staff and enhanced organisational effectiveness. Interestingly it comes with another key recommendation; to avoid perceptions of unfairness, reduced team morale and disruption to working relationships, it must be implemented consistently.
Re: "Flexible working for parents is great. But childfree people need it, too" June 15, 2019 | Registered: 18 years ago Posts: 9,984 |
Re: "Flexible working for parents is great. But childfree people need it, too" June 15, 2019 | Registered: 9 years ago Posts: 3,725 |