Flexible working arrangements and how they affect. Employee satisfaction and productivity

Abstract

The goal of this Master’s Dissertation was to examine this so-called “redefined era” of work flexibility. I say “so-called” as from the evidence found while examining the topic of this Master’s Dissertation, it had come to my attention that flexible working arrangements had been around for many years worldwide even though here in Cyprus such flexible working arrangements were introduced in Cyprus due to the COVID-19 pandemic as a way to limit and/or control the spread of the virus. As you will see through my examination of this topic, many organizations had adopted attention flexible forms of work, which include, but are not limited to, flexible working hours, teleworking working from home, etc. This Master’s Dissertation seeks to examine the questions of whether such flexible working arrangements affected in any way, either negatively or positively, employee productivity and satisfaction. For the purposes of this Master’s Dissertation, I used the qualitative method of research and conducted the following interviews: • 20 face-to-face interviews with mostly open-ended questions allowing my respondents to analyze their thoughts where possible taking into account their feelings on the matters addressed. These 20 samples are employees of a large construction company in Cyprus. I tried to have a sample whereby the respondents were half males, half females and divided their positions - managerial positions and non-managerial positions. I then analyzed the results using Microsoft Excel. • 2 telephone interviews with employees of another construction company in Cyprus and the interviews were more of a conversation like interview where I mostly allowed the respondents to talk freely without much guidance with regards the subject matter. • Face-to-face discussion with four employees of a multi-asset broker in Limassol whereby all respondents were part of the Real Estate and Construction Department of this company. The results showed that nearly all employees felt that some form of flexible working arrangements is desirable as this offers them a better balance between professional and personal life. There were some that agreed strongly with this and some that merely agreed, but all felt that such arrangements were desirable.