Flexible Workforce A2businessessay

Analyse the possible reasons why Kevar Travel Plc. wished to make its workforce more flexible? (18 marks) There are several possible reasons for why Kevar Travel Plc would benefit from a flexible workforce. Flexible workforces exist when businesses place less reliance upon permanent full-time employees and make greater use of part-time and temporary workers. Implementing a core and peripheral strategy is one way to make the workforce more flexible. This is because it allows them to gain a core of skilled workers which are all kept on permanent full time contracts which keeps them motivated and secure within the company so they stay which is beneficial as it means lower levels of having to train to high levels. The peripheral aspect of the strategy allows them to hire when necessary whether its unskilled staff to account for increased demand or highly skilled staff for specialist problems. This is beneficial as it means they don’t have to employ all their staff permanently whilst still allowing them to respond to the flucations in demand for cheap holidays.

Kevar Travel Plc has seen a high degree of fluctuation with demand for its product. This is due to seasonal demands, competitive power from rivals and also consumer tastes and fashions regarding holidays over recent years. A strategy that was proposed was to make the workforce more flexible. One way in which they implemented this is the relocation of head office from London to Stoke. They would then go on to create a new workforce plan, which would achieve more flexibility within the workplace, this was done by increasing temporary contracts from 9.2% in 2009-10 to 29.7% 2011-12.
Making the company’s workforce strategy more flexible has its advantages and disadvantages. A benefit of a flexible workforce strategy is cutting costs, this could be done by having a majority of your unskilled workforce on zero hour contracts. Zero hour contracts mean that workers only work when needed and