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  3. Work-life Balance: Flex Appeal Georgina Blizzard and Nicky Imrie decided they needed to find a more flexible working pattern

Work-life Balance: Flex Appeal Georgina Blizzard and Nicky Imrie decided they needed to find a more flexible working pattern

admin2013-07-11  25
问题                         Work-life Balance: Flex Appeal
    Georgina Blizzard and Nicky Imrie decided they needed to find a more flexible working pattern when they became mothers. Having had jobs in public relations, which involved long hours and a lot of pressure, they felt their old style of working would not suit their new responsibilities and decided to find a way to make the work they enjoyed fit in with their changed lives.
    They launched the PR Network in 2005, when Blizzard’s eldest daughter, Isabella was just three months old. Both women work a three-day week, and built the running of the company around the sort of flexibility they needed. They offer the same level of flexibility to the freelance(自由职业的)associates, matching companies of all sizes looking for freelance support with workers with the right skill set who are happy to take on contracts that fit in with their preferred pattern of hours.
    While technology now enables many workers to do their thing from anywhere, at any time, recently developed forms of "extremely flexible" working are providing a way into the workplace for more people with lifestyles that can’t easily accommodate a regular working pattern.
    Shaking up the workplace does not just help individuals. Wingham Rowan, founder of Slivers-of-Time, a social enterprise that has devised a system allowing people to sell their available working time through an online marketplace, believes extremely flexible working could hold the key to a brighter future for employment in the UK. "We have to start thinking in terms of work, not jobs," says Rowan.
    Slivers-of-Time developed a web-based system to allow people to sell their time online to employers in tiny blocks of two hours or more, on days that suit them. More geared up for in-house staff than home workers, Slivers workers post their CV and their availability and employers can book them to cover busy periods or do a temporary piece of work. Ideal for carers, parents and anyone who wanted to use a few spare hours to earn money but found it difficult to hold down a regular job with one employer because of personal commitments, it was awarded government funding as a means to tackle worklessness.
    "The system has been particularly embraced by smaller companies," says Rowan. Smaller firms er\joy the opportunity to take on workers to cover small bits of time, minimising costs and enabling them to cover busy periods. "There is an office supplies company that knows the best time to call potential buyers is between certain times on a Tuesday and Wednesday, so it books staff to cover those times. Then there’s a T-shirt printing company that books extra staff if they have a big order to fulfil. And the City of London has found that library inquiries are busier during the school holidays, so it takes on staff to cover those periods."
    The model works well for small companies, but Slivers now has a number of large household names using its system. Helen Turner, recruitment and development manager for John Lewis in Cambridge, used Slivers-of-Time to cover the extremely busy Christmas period.
    "Slivers-of-Time meant we could cover gaps as small as two hours," Turner says. "Once they were hired they worked various hours across the week, depending on their circumstances. We were able to call on extra resources quickly and they supported our partners." She says many of the staff were students, while some were carers, and the flexible model suited both the store and the staff well.
    Flexible hiring also works well for another household name, Adobe, which uses PR Network’s associates to support its existing analyst relations team. Timothy Brook, senior manager of analyst relations at Adobe, says: "We were looking for skilled, knowledgeable and motivated individuals who could work without the day-to-day management or direction often required by an agency model, and who could work directly with senior management within Adobe in the UK on a number of projects."
    PR Network is in the enviable position of having grown during a recession, but although the downturn has pushed a higher number of people into self-employment, organisations involved in flexible working practices say it can’t take all the credit.
    Xenios Thrasyvoulou, founder of PeoplePerHour(PPH), an online service that allows freelance workers to bid for contracts offered by businesses, says the movement towards extremely flexible working for all skill levels was already under way when the recession took hold.
    PPH was launched in 2007, and now has 35,000 freelancers registered on its books, and 43,000 businesses, mostly small. Thrasyvoulou says the changes in working practice are "not just a recessionary effect".
    "What is happening is a longer-term trend which has been accelerated by the recession, and one that is led by small businesses which are always more creative."
    Both the public sector and small businesses in the private sector are moving towards flexible styles of working, according to Andy Lake, editor of the online journal flexibility.co.uk. "In the public sector, more and more contractors are being taken on," Lake says. "There’s evidence that things are working in different ways. In the private sector, the biggest growth area is small businesses, which are keen to grow turnover but not personnel."
    Even larger firms echo this opinion. As Adobe’s Brook says: "Due to the uncertain economy, we wanted the ability to ’dial up and dial down’ our commitment based on available budgets and levels of work." This "flexing up and down" of the workforce may be key to the future of industry, opening doors for more people to pursue extremely flexible styles of working.
    According to the Confederation of British Business’s Shape of Business report, published last November, organisations will increasingly "move to a new employment model where the core of permanent staff is smaller and a greater number of freelancers, consultants and temporary workers are used".
    All in all, it’s good news for people hoping for greater control of their work-life balance. "More organisations have adopted flexible working practices as a way of saving jobs during the recession," says Gillian Nissim, founder of Workingmums.co.uk.
    "We hope this will not just be a stop-gap measure to save money but will bring lasting changes to the UK’s working culture, making it easier for women and men to balance work and family life and giving employers the diverse and committed workforce they need to thrive."  
PR Network may be envied because ______.
选项 A、it is awarded government funding
B、it cooperates with some household names
C、it has grown even in economic downturn
D、it gets credit for fighting unemployment
答案C
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