Flexible work boosts UK output

The UK’s employers come first for offering part-time work and are among the best in Europe for offering 'smart working,' such as work from home arrangements., So says a new report by The University of Nottingham’s Enterprise and Innovation Institute, which says over three quarters of employers found so-called ‘smart working’ boosts worker productivity., The finding is in reverse to attitudes measured in 2002, when almost half of business advisors warned that government plans to promote flexible working would damage businesses., The latest UK Business Adviser Barometer survey, an accompanying study, found 87 per cent of advisors who expressed a gloomy opinion, now consider flexible working agreements to be good for business productivity., European research adds that, on average, flexible working time arrangements exist in 48 per cent of establishments with 10 or more employees. A further 61 per cent of managers said that job satisfaction was one of the outcomes of flexible working.