Flexibility for workers[edit]

Labour market flexibility refers to more than the strategies used by employers to adapt to their production or business cycles as it is in the definitions above. Increasingly, the common view is that labour market flexibility can potentially be used for both workers and companies, or employees and employers.^[7] It can also be used as a method to enable workers to "adjust working life and working hours to their own preferences and to other activities".^[8] As companies adapt to business cycles and facilitate their needs through the use of labour market flexibility strategies, workers adapt their life cycles and their needs through it (Chung, 2006).

The European Commission also addresses this issue in its Joint Employment Report and its new Flexicurity approach, calling for an adequate method to enhance flexibility for both workers and employers that is "capable of quickly and effectively mastering new productive needs and skills and about facilitating the combination of work and private responsibilities."^[9] ETUC also emphasizes the importance of the development of working time flexibility as an alternative to implementing external flexibility as the sole method of increasing flexibility in the labour market (ETUC, 2007).

In their report on working time, the TUC has also argued that flexible working should be extended to all workers through stronger regulations.^[10] As authors Gerson and Jacobs agree, "flexibility and autonomy are only useful if workers feel able to use them" (Gerson & Jacobs, 2004, pg. 238).^[11]

Some of the widely used arrangements that enable workers more flexibility in their work include flextime, remote work, and part-time jobs.

– Non-permanent type of employment

Contingent work

– Loss of shared knowledge and experience

Corporate amnesia

– labour term

Employment Protection Legislation

– Welfare state model with a pro-active labour market policy.

Flexicurity

– Flexible hours schedule in workdays

Flexitime

– Study of the markets for wage labour

Labour economics

– Laws that mediate the relationship between workers, employers, unions and governments

Labour law

– Form of government regulation on professions or vocations for compensation

Occupational licensing

Precarity

[12]

– Period of time that an individual spends at paid occupational labor

Working time

Atkinson, J. (1984). (PDF) (Report). IMS Report No. 89. Institute of Manpower Studies, Brighton.

Flexibility, Uncertainty and Manpower Management

Atkinson, J.; Meager, N. (1986). . Institute of Manpower Studies, National Economic Development Office, London. ISBN 0729207889.

Changing Working Patterns: How companies achieve flexibility to meet new needs

(2006) Labour Market Flexibility, for Employers or Employees? A multi-dimensional study of labour market flexibility across European welfare states, Paper presented at the 2006 Annual ESPAnet Conference, Shaping Euoropean Systems of Work and Welfare, 7~9 September 2006, Bremen.paper link

Chung, H

Fagan, C.; Hegewisch, A.; Pillinger, J. (2006). (PDF). Trade Union Congress, London. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2007-09-27.

Out of Time: Why Britain needs a new approach to working-time flexibility

Reilly, Peter Andrew (2001). . Aldershotd: Gower. ISBN 978-0-56608-259-7.

Flexibility at work: balancing the interests of employer and employee

Wallace, C. (2003) Work Flexibility in Eight European countries: A cross-national comparison. Sociological Series 60.Institute for Advanced Studies, Vienna.

. Understanding Society. 2022-03-24. Retrieved 2023-11-02.