Employers’ and employees’ evaluation of the implementation of flexible working policies

Sammanfattning: These years has witnessed a rapid change in staff’s working pattern. Flexible working arrangements are increasingly widespread in developed countries as well as developing countries. The adoption level of flexible working arrangements is predicted to keep increasing in the future. However, some obstacles will emerge when flexible working policies are carried out in companies. The results such as low participation of staff in flexible working arrangements may fail to live up organizations’ expectation. Accordingly, employers’ and employees’ evaluation of flexible working policies may be helpful to remove these obstacles and plays a vital role in improving the implementation of flexible working arrangements.Considering that change of the implementation of flexible working policies will have direct impacts on employers and employees, these two groups of people are chosen as respondents to investigate. The respondents of this thesis are from foreign and multinational companies in China. Since documental data on flexible working policies are quite few, the researchers have collected both qualitative and quantitative data by doing interviews and a survey. The findings of the interviewees’ opinions and the survey data show both similarities and differences between employers’ and employees’ evaluations, which may pave the way for improvement of the implementation of flexible working arrangements.The findings of this research show that the implementation of flexible working policies is affected by two categories, “the content of policies” and “the external factors influencing the implementation of policies” such as facilities provided by companies, trust and support from supervisors. Furthermore, employers and employees tend to hold similar or different opinions on the concepts included in these two categories related to their different positions in their companies. The findings of this research are regarding the current implementation of flexible working arrangements and limited types of flexible working arrangements. Other factors and improvements can be achieved in future practice.