Filenews 1 July 2023 - by Adamos Adamos
In addition to teleworking in the public sector, other flexible forms of employment are expected to be regulated (by the end of 2024), based on what the country has committed to under the Recovery and Resilience Plan.
One of them is the reduced working week, i.e. the four-day working week, which has already been examined in the context of the study carried out by a private firm on the regulation of flexible forms of employment in the public sector.
The four-day work week is also one of the suggestions submitted by PASYDY in the context of the dialogue with the Ministry of Finance within the same framework, as confirmed by the general secretary of the guild, Stratis Matthaiou, speaking to "F".
With the latter clarifying that PASYDY's proposal concerns only the months of July and August, as is the case in sectors of the private sector and without of course discounts on the regular weekly hours of employees, which will be completed in four instead of five days.
Mattheou said that there is also talk of regulating flexible forms of work in the Public Service and reduced working hours for cases that may involve young mothers or other special cases, for a specific period.
In these cases, PASYDY's general secretary said, employees will be paid proportionately, further clarifying that in their entirety flexible forms of work in the public sector will be applied if the nature of each employee's duties allows it.
He said that, with the proposals already submitted by PASYDY, there is an attempt to further modernize the Public Service and make greater use of technology, for the benefit of employees and citizens.
The PwC experience
We note, however, that at least as far as the four-day workday, which some private organizations implemented last year, is concerned, the practice has shown that there have been benefits for both employees and customers of organizations.
Relevant is the report of PwC Cyprus, which implemented in July and August 2022 a four-day working week, thus extending by one day (Friday) the free personal time of employees.
Since February this year, Anna Loizou, partner and head of Human Resources at PwC Cyprus, has maintained that the results of this pioneering practice have been very satisfactory, both for the employees themselves and for the organization's leaders.
As he said, the internal survey conducted by the firm showed that 77% of PwC Cyprus employees said that they managed not to work at all on most Fridays, while 95% reported that the four-day work week had a positive impact on them.
At the same time, 65% said that their productivity increased during this period and 34% that it remained at the same level.
In addition, 61% reported that customer service capacity remained at the same high levels, while a significant percentage of 37% said that customer service improved!
In view of the above, Philippos Soseilos, CEO of the organization, has already announced to the human resources of PwC Cyprus that the four-day work week will be implemented in 2023, for the months of July and August.
The commitment to flexible working expires at the end of '24
The promoted regulation of flexible forms of work in the public sector also includes teleworking, an issue for which a relevant bill has already been submitted to Parliament, but which concerns only the private sector.
For the Public Service, there will be a separate bill, which may regulate other forms of flexible work.
Already, however, the Parliament and specifically the Labor Committee, which recently decided that it will continue studying the bill on teleworking after the summer, has asked for the same regulations on the issue in both the public and private sectors. The same request was made by PASYDY.
However, it should not be excluded that the legislation initially concerns only the private sector, despite the apparent desire of Parliament to cover all employees.
The truth, however, is that for the public sector, time is not pressing, despite the study already done on flexible forms of employment and the dialogue that seems to have begun with PASYDY on the same issue.
The reason is that the commitment we made with the Recovery and Resilience Plan to regulate flexible forms of employment in the public sector must be completed by 31 December 2024.
On the contrary, the Ministry of Labor and specifically the Department of Labor Relations seems to have undertaken to pass a bill on teleworking - obviously for the private sector - by the second quarter of 2023, with the relevant milestone already passed.
