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Question: Discuss About The Research Social Stratification And Mobility? Answer: Introduction This report aims to investigate the suitability of work from home facility for the employees of AKC Architectural Firm (AKC). From the provided situation, it can be observed that the company is facing the issue of high absenteeism among the employees, as most of the employees have to stay at home due to look after their sick children and due to other school related issues. For this reason, the management of AKC is considering to provide the employees with work from home facility so that they can continue their work. In this context, it needs to be mentioned that the companies are required to consider some major factor before implementing the facility for work from home (Allen et al. 2013). The following discussion considers all the major aspects required to be discussed before the implementation of the work from home strategy for the employees of AKC. Software and Access Before the implementation of the strategy of work from home, the accountant is needed to assess the availability of appropriate software so that the works can be done in a smooth manner from home. There needs to be appropriate software that will maintain a connection between the employees and the administration team. With the assistance of this software, the instructor will be able to give instructions of the tasks in working hours. This can be a video software, chatting software or the personal mail of the company. The accountant needs to assess all these aspects (Masuda et al. 2012). Purchase of Additional Resources This part is related with the above part. After the assessment, in case the accountant finds that some important resources like software and others are missing, the company needs to purchase them for implementing work from home facility. Another important aspect is laptops. In case the AKC uses desktop computers at office, they need to buy laptops along with the required software for their employees so that they can carry them to home for doing work from home. Thus, the company needs to bear the expenses of buying laptops. However, if AKC uses laptops at use, then they need to give permission to the employees for carrying these laptops at home. In both of the cases, AKC needs provide the employees allowance for internet (Sweet et al. 2014). Cost Savings AKC has certain scopes for cost saving by implementing the strategy of work from home. First, in the employees of the company are provided with fork from home faculty for 3 days a week, then there will be a reduction of utility bills for the company; like electricity bills, internet usage bills and telephone bills. After that, the company will save the money for traveling allowances provided to the employees, if there is any. Other costs saving areas are savings in the usage of water, coffee, tea and others (Leslie et al. 2012). Taxation Benefits of Work from Home It is an important aspect to inform the employees of AKC about the taxation benefits of work from home. As per Australian Taxation Office, in case the employees use tools, equipments and other assets for the generation of income, then the employees can claim a taxable deduction for some or all of the cost of the assets (ato.gov.au 2018). It is important for the company to inform the employees about the taxation benefits of work from home so that they become interested in this aspect. Working Hours According to the Australian regulation, the employees have 38 working hours in a week. It needs to be mentioned that there is not any exception of this working hour in case of work from home. For this reason, the employees of AKC need to work for 38 hours in a week (Duncan and Pettigrew 2012.). However, there needs to be flexibility in the working hours as the main aim of the strategy of work from home is to provide flexibility to the employees. For this reason, the employees should be given with the option to fulfill the working hours of 38 hours in a flexible manner. It implies that they can work whenever they want to work buy required to fulfill the assigned working hours and tasks (Katz and Krueger 2016). Process to Stop Abusing the Working Hours There is a major possibility of the abuse of working hours by the employees in case of work from home as the employees many take the negative advantage of work from home and do not fully work in the full working hours. In order to avoid this issue, the employees are required to be assigned work on daily basis that need to be completed on daily basis. This will make the employees to work in urgent basis and they will get the flexibility for working. In addition, there needs to be penalty for the abuse of working hour like salary deduction and others. All these aspects will stop the abuse of working hours (Ferguson et al. 2012). Issues in Flexible Working Hours Some major issues can be seen in flexible working system. The first issue is the availability of the employees. In flexible working system, the administration teams are not always able to make contacts with the employees that hamper the work. The next issue is the timely completion of assigned tasks. There are many instances where the employees miss the deadline of tasks or cannot deliver the work in time. Some other issues can be the establishment of connectivity with the employees and others. Thus, the accountant needs to solve these issues in order to put the system in place (Eversole, Venneberg and Crowder 2012). Availability of Adequate Staffs The company needs to segregate the whole employees in some groups. These teams will have certain working slabs allocated for them and they must be available in that working slab. For example, there can be four teams. They are team 1, 2, 3 and 4. Now, team 1 is required to be present from 9 am to 11 am on a mandatory basis. Team 2 needs to be present mandatory from 11 am to 1 pm and so on. With the implementation of this strategy, the company can ensure that there will always be adequate staff on site (Stier, Lewin-Epstein and Braun 2012). Different Arrangements There will be different arrangements for the administrative team and the employees as flexible working system can also be provided to the administration team. However, the work pressure will be more on the administrative team as they will have the responsibility of assigning the works, follow on various work related issues, follow on the availability of the employees and others. The responsibility of the administration team will be to report to the higher authority about various work related issues on a constant basis so that everything can be run in the smooth manner (Wood et al. 2012). Conclusion Based on the above discussion, it can be seen that the accountant of AKC needs to consider the above-discussed issues in the implementation of the work from home facility. Amendment with all these issues will ensure the reduction on absenteeism for the companies. In addition, the company will be able to continue their operation in an effective manner as they employees have excellent skills. Based on the above discussion, some recommendations are provided below: It is recommended that AKC should purchase adequate amount of laptops along with software for this strategy. The company is also recommended to inform the employees about the taxation benefit of work from home so that their enthusiasm can be increased. 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