High Court Judge Car­ol Gob­in has just grant­ed an in­junc­tion to halt a sched­uled dis­ci­pli­nary hear­ing re­gard­ing an em­ploy­ee at the Min­istry of Works and Trans­port.

The case is re­lat­ed to this em­ploy­ee’s long-term health is­sues, which are hav­ing an im­pact on his abil­i­ty to ful­fil his con­tract­ed reg­u­lar hours, and the em­ploy­er’s al­leged re­jec­tion of re­quests for flex­i­ble work to mit­i­gate against the chal­lenges the in­di­vid­ual is fac­ing.

In prac­tice, the case at the min­istry is frozen un­til it is ful­ly con­sid­ered by the court, and, for that rea­son, the specifics of this case are best left to the ju­di­cia­ry, at least for the time be­ing.

This is in no way a com­ment on the case or a view on whether flex­i­ble work­ing arrange­ments are right for this in­di­vid­ual, but the dis­pute brings to the fore the ques­tion of flex­i­bil­i­ty in em­ploy­ment ir­re­spec­tive of some­one else’s health, some­thing we are quite be­hind when com­pared to mod­ern economies around the world.

The fact is that flex­i­ble work­ing con­di­tions are com­mon­place now in many coun­tries ir­re­spec­tive of whether em­ploy­ers are legal­ly oblig­ed to con­sid­er re­quests for re­duced hours or spe­cif­ic work sched­ules or in so­ci­eties where, even if not a le­gal right, busi­ness­es and the State wel­come such re­quests. And there are good rea­sons for that.

Per­haps the main one is that this kind of flex­i­bil­i­ty can be cru­cial when em­ploy­ers want to re­tain tal­ent­ed em­ploy­ees who may have gone or are go­ing through cir­cum­stances that don’t al­low them to stick to a typ­i­cal full-time job.

This is par­tic­u­lar­ly the case for women, of­ten the ones who end up car­ry­ing most of the load when it comes to look­ing af­ter chil­dren or the el­der­ly in the fam­i­ly. It is not un­usu­al for many to quit their jobs due to the chal­lenges of rec­on­cil­ing de­mands at home and work.

Al­though oth­er fac­tors may be at play, there is no ques­tion that this is one of the rea­sons that, ac­cord­ing to the US De­part­ment of Labour, while women ac­count for 43 per cent of the to­tal full-time em­ploy­ees, they rep­re­sent 63 per cent of those work­ing part-time there.

This pat­tern tends to be re­peat­ed else­where. But it makes no sense to lose a tal­ent­ed fe­male em­ploy­ee for lack of con­trac­tu­al flex­i­bil­i­ty, es­pe­cial­ly if the cir­cum­stances are bound to change again in the near fu­ture, po­ten­tial­ly al­low­ing her to re­turn to the orig­i­nal num­ber of hours or work pat­tern.

And it is not just a ques­tion of los­ing some­one tal­ent­ed, male or fe­male. The lack of flex­i­bil­i­ty can al­so be cost­ly: a new em­ploy­ee must be trained, get used to the em­ploy­er’s cul­ture and process­es, and may sim­ply not last long enough, trig­ger­ing an­oth­er ex­pen­sive re­cruit­ment process.

The num­ber of op­tions for flex­i­ble work­ing con­tracts can al­so be con­sid­er­able, rang­ing from flex­itime and com­pressed/con­densed hours to term-time work­ing on­ly, an­nu­alised hours, and job shar­ing.

With them come oth­er in­no­v­a­tive con­cepts, like flex­i­ble hol­i­days based on the con­cept that the em­ploy­ee has a set of tasks to de­liv­er (and de­liv­er well), thus be­ing ful­ly ca­pa­ble of man­ag­ing his or her own time off.

More re­cent­ly, and in some cas­es con­tro­ver­sial­ly, there has al­so been an in­crease in the so-called ze­ro-hours con­tract, when the per­son on­ly works when shifts are avail­able and/or when they want to work. There are pros and cons to this range of op­tions, and, in the case of ze­ro-hours con­tracts in par­tic­u­lar, there is a re­al risk of a dam­ag­ing lev­el of in­come un­cer­tain­ty, es­pe­cial­ly for those on low wages; al­though, con­verse­ly, it is pop­u­lar with those who don’t want to ful­ly com­mit to a job and want the flex­i­bil­i­ty to work when it suits them.

But there is no ques­tion that, in de­vel­oped economies, an em­ploy­er’s at­ti­tude to­wards flex­i­ble work­ing con­di­tions is a ma­jor fac­tor in at­tract­ing tal­ent­ed em­ploy­ees. The prob­lem is that this idea of flex­i­ble work­ing is to­tal­ly for­eign to us in T&T—not be­cause there are no em­ploy­ers or em­ploy­ees in­ter­est­ed, but be­cause our laws are so out­dat­ed, they sim­ply don’t cater for them.

On top of that, equal­ly out­dat­ed col­lec­tive agree­ments do lit­tle or noth­ing to make the work­place more flex­i­ble and more wel­com­ing to peo­ple who would strug­gle with a typ­i­cal em­ploy­ment con­tract.

In fact, there have been cas­es when, even if strong­ly sup­port­ed by staff, pro­pos­als for more flex­i­ble or dif­fer­ent work pat­terns were ei­ther turned down by the unions or blocked by the In­dus­tri­al Court (to be fair, be­cause of the leg­is­la­tion’s own lack of flex­i­bil­i­ty). As a coun­try, we must look at both the le­gal frame­work and our cul­ture to­wards more flex­i­ble work­ing con­di­tions to im­prove di­ver­si­ty in the work­place and, if we get it right, to ac­tu­al­ly im­prove the coun­try’s woe­ful pro­duc­tiv­i­ty.

A more flex­i­ble ap­proach to em­ploy­ment will not fix all our labour is­sues and our poor pro­duc­tiv­i­ty when com­pared to de­vel­oped economies. But it could go some way to­wards help­ing make us more pro­duc­tive and more suc­cess­ful eco­nom­i­cal­ly, with the ad­van­tage of, in the process, hav­ing a chance to make peo­ple’s ap­proach to work more pos­i­tive and cre­at­ing an op­por­tu­ni­ty for us all to live hap­pi­er lives.

If we do noth­ing and main­tain our his­tor­i­cal­ly rigid ap­proach to em­ploy­ment, we will end up be­ing one of the few mod­ern economies where the law makes us po­ten­tial­ly mis­er­able at work or quit due to the im­pos­si­bil­i­ty of find­ing the right work-life bal­ance. That sure­ly can’t be right.