Flexibility and Its Contribution to Organisational Efficiency at Harvey Nichols - Essay Example

The advantages of having a flexibility option within their company include permitting employees to pursue their interests and spend more quality time with their families. They also have a greater sense of autonomy, well-being, and motivation. It likewise encourages retention. However, respondents are not convinced of its ability to attract key talent and let them feel they are trusted by management. Moreover, they perceive that flexibility options open employees to greater distractions in working away from the office. It also makes it difficult to balance the time allotted for work and for other tasks. The barriers to the flexibility option of Harvey Nichols UK include restructuring within the organization and increased work demands overshadowing personal needs.

Moreover, they also agreed with the company’s inability to achieve flexibility and insufficient involvement of and communication with senior management. There is also a failure to evaluate the impact of programs and a lack of communication with staff. Ineffective implementation and focus on programs rather than on culture change were also cited as barriers to effective implementation of the WLB flexibility option within the company. Responding to the following barriers were found to be positively correlated to the effective implementation of the flexibility option.

These include failure to evaluate the impact of programme; lack of communication with staff; involvement of and communication with senior management; increased work demands overshadowing personal needs; and focus on programs rather than on culture change. In addition, individual performance has been found to be significantly and positively correlated to responding to the following barriers to flexibility options: failure to evaluate the impact of programmes; and lack of communication to staff. Lastly, organisational efficiency is perceived to be positively correlated with addressing the following: failure to evaluate the impact of programmes; lack of communication to staff; insufficient involvement of and communication with senior management; increased work demands overshadowing personal needs, and focus on programs rather than on culture change.