Fair Work Commission

The AWRS can be used to examine the extent of use of flexible working arrangements based on both employee and employer experiences.

Employers provided information about the availability of flexible working arrangements across the workforce and the range of flexible working arrangements in use at the enterprise. Employers were also asked about the receipt of requests for flexible working arrangements and formalising flexible working arrangements under the provisions of the Fair Work Act 2009 (Cth).

Employees provided information about the pursuit of flexible working arrangements and outcomes.

Availability of flexible working arrangements

As presented in Figure 4.4, half of enterprises reported that flexible start and finish times were available to all of their employees. Flexible leave arrangements were also widely available to employees of enterprises, with over half (55%) of enterprises indicating that these arrangements were available to all employees.

Of note, these measures do not reflect the extent of flexible work practices operating at enterprises, but rather the availability to enact a flexible work practice if and when a need arose. The AWRS collected follow-up information about the extent of use of these types of practices across the employee workforce.

Source: AWRS 2014, Employee Relations survey.

Base = 3057 enterprises.

Requests for flexible working arrangements

The AWRS can provide insight into the incidence of requests for flexible working arrangements from both the employer and employee perspective.

Table 4.9 demonstrates the proportion of enterprises that had received a request for flexible work arrangements since 1 July 2012. Overall, 41% of enterprises had reportedly received a request, with a notably greater proportion of larger enterprises (72%) reporting that a request had been received since 1 July 2012 than smaller enterprises (38%).

The AWRS also collected information from enterprises about processes and policies for receiving requests, including how requests were to be made, who had authority to grant such requests and any criteria used to assess requests in relation to why an employee required a flexible working arrangement.

Source: AWRS 2014, Employee Relations survey.

Base = 3057 enterprises.

Table 4.10 indicates the proportion of male and female employees who reported making a request for a flexible work arrangement. This table shows that since 1 July 2012, just over one-quarter (28%) of employees had reportedly made a request for a flexible working arrangement over the reference period and that the incidence is higher among females.

The AWRS also collected information about why employees had not made such a request to understand if there were any unmet needs for flexibility and the reasons why this occurred.

Source: AWRS 2014, Employee survey.

Base = 7853 employees. Excludes 30 respondents who did not provide a response.

Formalised flexible work practices

While flexible work arrangements may be available to employees of an enterprise, the actual usage rates may differ among types of employees in terms of demographics or employment characteristics, and the AWRS can profile the characteristics of employees who have made a formalised request for a flexible work arrangement using data from the employee survey.

One means of formalising a flexible working arrangement for employees of enterprises that use modern awards and enterprise agreements is via an Individual Flexibility Arrangement (IFA).

An IFA is a documented record of an arrangement that can vary a range of terms of a modern award or enterprise agreement, including when work is performed, and is signed by both the employer and employee. Employees with other forms of individual arrangements may have unique working arrangements prescribed in their terms of employment.

Enterprises were asked whether they had made an IFA with any employees since 1 July 2012. For those that indicated they had, information was collected about the content of the arrangement as well as the genesis and outcome of the IFA according to whether they had made 1 (single) IFA or had made an IFA with more than 1 employee (multiple IFAs) over the reference period.

As presented in Table 4.11, 1 in 10 enterprises reported that an IFA that varied the arrangements for when an employee’s work is performed had been enacted since 1 July 2012.

Source: AWRS 2014, Employee Relations survey.

Base = 3057 enterprises.

Informal flexible work practices

Flexible work practices can be enacted without being formally documented by IFAs or set out in an employee’s conditions of employment. Informal approaches to establishing and maintaining flexible work arrangements can be adopted, whether on a short-term or long-term basis.

The AWRS can provide some insight into how informal arrangements are established in relation to how requests were made: verbally or in writing. Of the 28% of employees who indicated that they had made a request for a flexible working arrangement, almost two-thirds (62%) had made the request verbally which was later accepted by their employer (17% of the broader employee workforce had made a verbal request for a flexible working arrangement that had been accepted).

As demonstrated in Table 4.12, females represent a higher proportion of employees who had made an informal request for a flexible working arrangement compared to males (58% and 43% respectively). This analysis is an indicator of informal arrangements; however, it does not identify whether the arrangement that was agreed to verbally had then been documented.

Source: AWRS 2014, Employee survey.

Base = 2230 employees indicated that they had made a request for a flexible working arrangement with their employer since 1 July 2012. Of these employees, 2113 indicated that the request was made verbally only (1373) or both verbally and written (740).

Some of the reasons why employers do not use IFAs to formalise flexible work arrangements were canvassed in the AWRS. Although this analysis relates specifically to the use of IFAs, these insights may be more broadly applicable to understanding the application of individualised working arrangements.

As presented in Table 4.13, 43 per cent of employers that hadn't used an IFA since 1 July 2012 indicated a preference to use informal/undocumented arrangements instead.

Source: AWRS 2014, Employee Relations survey and Enterprise Characteristics (Recruitment screener) survey.

Base = 2093 enterprises.