Johan Oberg

Croydon, UK

Marketing Manager Europe, Genesys Conferencing, part of InterCall

The launch of a government consultation ahead of new legislation next April extending the right for employees with children to request flexible working prompts a thought.

The traditional, ‘nine-to-five’ day in the factory or office is fast disappearing. Increasingly, your laptop is your office and work is when and where you want or need it to be, so giving individuals greater control over their work/life balance.

What has not changed is the need for the employer to provide the tools for their staff to do the job effectively – and this becomes even more critical as the workforce becomes more geographically dispersed and working more individualised hours.

A key example of how technology is evolving to meet this new imperative has been the development of unified communications. Now a viable alternative to face-to-face meetings, this saves the company money, reduces its carbon footprint and cuts time-consuming and arduous travel for employees.

Yet in terms of increasing impetus towards flexible working, the ‘carrot’ of ensuring that collaboration tools are both designed to meet the specific needs of the business and are intuitive and easy to use, is much more likely to increase take-up across the organisation than the ‘stick’ of any amount of legislation.