A particularly interesting article published in the Australian media caught my eye last week. It was the Part-Time Power List, an inaugural selection of 31 top corporate bosses who work flexible hours or job share. It is a relatively new notion worldwide, with part-time work barely getting a consideration until Western governments realised their economies needed women – the gender that is more likely to work part-time - in the workplace, whether it was five days or one. Men too are seeking more flexible hours, mostly so they can also be a better father, but also because they are increasingly willing to put aside their pride and accept their wife’s career can generate more income than theirs or because they have a physical disability that makes full-time work difficult. There are two men on the Australian Part-Time Power List, created by Women’s Agenda and ProfessionalMums.Net. Part-time is extremely rare in the Gulf, including among nationals. But with unemployment rates in the teens, especially among women, and heavily bloated public sectors, it could pay – or save – to create greater flexibility in working hours to see more people with jobs. According to the World Bank, the Middle East and North Africa region needs to create more than 100 million new jobs by 2020. Getting some people in part-time is better than nothing. Meanwhile, those of us working full-time ought to be trusted sufficiently to determine our own working hours, wherever it fits in with our commitments such as meetings, deadlines and international time differences with colleagues and clients. Streaming site Netflix already allows staff to “take as many holidays as they want”, an idea that Virgin Group founder Richard Branson recently said he would copy, while tech giants Apple and Google also are known to allow their staff to work outside the office on the belief it will boost their creativity. How many times do you hear your colleagues/friends say how much more work they got done during that hour before everyone else arrived in the office or the Saturday they swapped for a day off during the week? And imagine the impact on traffic if some of us were allowed to change our starting time or work from home, at least for part of the day. I bet the difference in productivity – which equals money - would be enormous. Of course such arrangements would not work in every industry or all offices. But there are thousands of situations where it could. And in countries such as the those in the Gulf, where most of us are tied to employment visas that can be cancelled at the drop of a hat, it is highly unlikely that such a flexible system would be abused. But coming back to the power list. Any such flexibility in working hours must come with a caveat: it will not affect an employee’s career progression. The Australian list, which includes a professor, an acting director, a partner in a consulting firm and a chief financial officer, among other managers, shows it is possible to work fewer than 40 hours a week and not necessarily in an office and still have a significant impact. ProfessionalMums.net chief executive Kate Mills says the list proves “the way we work is changing”. But, she says, in many cases flexibility creates a ‘glass ceiling’, with a perception among some that people who ask for part-time or flexible work “aren’t serious about their careers”. “That was the sort of stereotype or hurdle that we wanted to push over,” she told the Australian Financial Review. Hopefully in the near future there will be sufficient candidates for Arabian Business to publish its own Part-Time Arab Power List. And, in a perfect world, I will write it from home.
Posted on: Fri, 10 Oct 2014 09:28:47 +0000
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