Job flexibility is the key to keeping workers happy, productive and loyal to the company, a new study shows.

    Researchers at Wake Forest University School of Medicine in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, found that workers who enjoyed more work flexibility were also less likely to say health problems affected their performance at work.

    "For managers, the results suggest that implementing flexible work arrangements can contribute to the bottom-line," said Joseph Grzywacz, a professor of family medicine at the university.

    Workplace flexibility refers to the ability of employees to modify where, when and how long work their work is performed.

    Telecommuting, flexitime and job sharing were the main types of flexibility cited in the study published in the Psychologist-Manager journal.

    The researchers studied a health survey completed by 3,193 employees of a large multinational pharmaceutical company. They used the information to determine how increases or decreases in perceived flexibility from one year to the next were associated with a variety of factors.

    Decreases in flexibility over the year were associated with reduced job commitment, but had little impact on absence, they said.

    Offering a variety of alternative work arrangements and training managers and supervisors to be supportive of workers' personal lives may help in creating a culture of flexibility, researchers added.

    一項最新研究顯示，彈性工作制對于保持員工心情愉快、高效工作以及對公司的忠誠度至關重要。

    此外，北卡羅萊納州溫斯頓塞勒姆的維克森林大學醫學院的研究人員們發現，享有更多工作自由度的員工稱健康問題影響自己工作表現的幾率較小。

    該大學的家庭醫學教授約瑟夫?格里茲沃茨說：“研究說明，對于管理人員們來說，靈活安排工作日程則能夠帶來不同的效果。”
    
    “工作彈性”指的是員工能夠靈活安排自己的工作地點、工作時間及工作量。

    該項在《心理學家與管理人》期刊上發表的研究報告提到，遠程辦公、彈性工時，以及分工合作是彈性工作制的幾種主要形式。

    研究人員分析了一家大型跨國醫藥公司的3193名員工的健康調查。他們根據其中的信息來確定一年內工作靈活度的增加或減少對其它一系列因素有什么影響。

    研究人員稱，工作靈活度的減少導致了員工工作投入度的降低，但對于出勤沒有太大影響。

    研究人員建議，為員工提供各種靈活的工作安排，讓經理和主管們多為員工的個人生活著想，這將有利于打造'靈活的'的企業文化。