'Alternative work hours involve the adjustment of employees' daily work schedules and/or working the typical 40 hour work week in fewer than five days'. Flexibility and Flexible Work are terms used to describe a wide range of work styles and employment practices. Broadly speaking, they are used to describe all kinds of employment, which differ from the traditional 9-5 full time job with a permanent contract.
             The "flexible" aspect of these types of jobs can, in different instances, relate more to the employees, or to the employer, or to both. That is, from the employees' point of view, flexible work may allow 'more freedom to organise their employment to fit in with other parts of their life'. For an employer, the flexibility may come with the ability to organise labour resources more in line with the varying needs of customers, or with peaks and troughs of demand. A positive example of flexible work schedules is in being self-employed, in that the amount of time spent in the office is chosen appropriate to scheduling and not a specific time frame, i.e. 9-5.
             Labour flexibility can be broken down into four main streams or approaches including functional, skill formation, numerical and cost flexibility (Labour Flexibility and Work Place Agreement, No 7 June 1993). The possibility of the topic is enormous, so the aim of this paper will be to focus mainly on numerical flexibility, involving the structuring of contractual status of employees or their working hours – these being - Part time employment, job sharing, flexibility in working hours and teleworking (Labour Flexibility and Work Place Agreement, No 7 June 1993). The trends in the uptake of flexible work and the impacts implementation of flexible work has on the workplace will also be examined. By undertaking extensive research through many types of sources, such as texts, journals, books, and online information, evidence will be cited to expl...