Small businesses back flexible working

Six out of 10 smaller firms offer flexible working to their staff and over half of them believe it has a positive effect on empoyee relations, according to the latest quarterly survey of UK small and medium-sized enterprises commissioned by HSBC Bank.

A random sample of 7,000 small firms across the UK showed that 58 per cent offer some sort of flexible working to their employees. Fifty per cent of these firms felt that flexible working had a positive effect on employee relations.

Part-time working is the most common form of flexibility in employment, according to the survey. More than 50 per cent of firms with flexible working practices had adopted part-time working. Twenty per cent of these offer it to all employees and 80 per cent to some.