Implementing Flexible Labour Strategies: Challenges and Key Success factors

This paper presents the results of an in-depth study in seven UK manufacturing plants in six major industrial sectors: electronics, process, engineering (capital), engineering (consumer), household goods and food. The paper explores the issues that companies face in implementing flexible labour strategies and how these can be overcome. The companies investigated implemented different flexible labour strategies. We find that successful implementation of the strategies depends market drivers of flexibility (e.g. demand uncertainty and demand variability). We find that the choice of which strategy to implement was found to be largely independent of the industrial sector. We identify key challenges to implementation and a number of key factors for the successful implementation of the strategies.