BUSINESS STRUCTURE AND ARRANGEMENTS


WORKING ARRANGEMENTS

Results in this section are for the proportion of businesses that offered employees each of the selected working arrangements during 2012-13.

Employee working arrangements, by employment size(a)(b), 2012-13
		0-4 persons	5-19 persons	20-199 persons	200 or more persons	Total
		%	%	%	%	%
Businesses offering:
	flexible work hours (e.g. to enable employees to deal with non-work issues)	43.8	65.9	73.9	86.4	53.4
	ability to buy extra annual leave, cash out annual leave or take leave without pay	7.5	23.8	40.8	65.5	15.6
	selection of own roster or shifts	16.5	25.5	26.4	34.3	20.2
	job sharing	5.7	14.5	17.1	41.1	9.6
	ability for staff to work from home	16.6	17.8	27.9	63.3	18.1
	paid parental leave	2.4	9.4	24.1	68.5	6.6
	flexible use of personal sick, unpaid or compassionate leave (e.g. to care for other people who are sick)	13.2	34.3	58.7	75.9	23.7
(a) Proportions are of all businesses in each output category.
(b) Businesses could identify more than one type of working arrangement and were not required to report working arrangements other than those listed.

Over half of all businesses offered flexible work hours (53%) to employees. This was over twice the proportion of the next most commonly offered working arrangement, flexible use of personal sick, unpaid or compassionate leave (24%). The propensity for businesses to offer any of the working arrangements increased with each successive employment size range.

Businesses in the Mining industry were the most likely to offer the ability to buy extra annual leave, cash out annual leave or take leave without pay (29%) and paid parental leave (16%), while businesses in the Health care and social assistance industry were most likely to offer flexible work hours (63%), flexible use of personal sick, unpaid or compassionate leave (38%) and job sharing (23%). In contrast, businesses in the Transport, postal and warehousing industry were the least likely to offer flexible work hours (35%), the ability to buy extra annual leave, cash out annual leave or take leave without pay (8%) and flexible use of personal sick, unpaid or compassionate leave (13%).

Innovation-active businesses were more likely to offer any of the selected working arrangements (76%) than non innovation-active businesses (52%). Innovation-active businesses were twice as likely as non innovation-active businesses to offer the ability to buy extra annual leave, cash out annual leave or take leave without pay (22% and 11% respectively) and paid parental leave (10% and 4% respectively).

Further data relating to working agreements can be accessed via the Downloads tab.