Every week, indeed sometimes every day, there is a new report out extolling the benefits to business and employees of flexible working. Higher staff retention rates, reduced overheads, reduced absence rates, a more diverse workforce and greater productivity are just some of the positives.
More and more employers are coming round to the idea that flexible working is the future. Yet still very few seem to advertise new flexible jobs, even if they might be prepared to negotiate this on a case by case basis. This puts the onus on the employee to second guess whether negotiating flexibility will be successful, based on the employer’s track record on work life balance issues. That can be hard in today’s ultra-competitive workplace. At what point in the recruitment process, for instance, do you bring up the subject?
Indeed, Workingmums.co.uk recently published the preliminary results of a survey on flexible working and found that over a third of women said they felt trapped in the job they went on maternity leave from because they can’t find a new flexible job that used their skills and experience. The full survey results will be published in March to coincide with Workingmums LIVE, a one-stop shop on all things flexible working.
The initial findings chime with what many women find – under current flexible working legislation, parents and carers can apply to work flexibly but only after they have been in their current job for over six months. The most common time to do so is on return from maternity leave. If you can’t then find a new flexible job and you need to work you have few options: either you accept full-time work, keep your head down and hope to apply later for flexible working or stay put. It doesn’t make for the most motivated workforce.
Things are starting to change, though, with more and more organisations seeking out platforms like Workingmums.co.uk which are all about family friendly working. Others are starting to embed flexible working into the recruitment process as a whole so that the default position for job adverts is flexible rather than the traditional 9 to 5.
To promote good practice in this area last year Workingmums’ Top Employer Awards included a category on Talent Attraction. The first winner of the award was Virtual Sales Team which goes out of its way to advertise and promote its flexible model to new recruits, setting out clearly in its job advertisements that people can negotiate the hours they want to work.
Director Andrew Smart says small companies like his cannot often afford the calibre of manager he has on a full-time wage so flexible working means he can get high quality skills and experience without having to pay large salaries. His marketing manager used to work for a leading automobile company, for instance, and left because she could not get the flexibility she needed. At Virtual Sales Team she works around 20 hours a week, but is on her Blackberry at home when needed.
He adds that the company is doing well on the back of its working model. It has grown in every year of the recession and he has big plans for the next two years – he wants to treble the company’s size. “I have the right team in the right position and all of them have some capacity to spare if we need it,” he says.
Virtual Sales Team can see the clear advantages of openly advertising flexible jobs. Although many employers now offer flexible working, much more needs to be done to encourage greater normalisation of flexible working in the recruitment process in order to attract and retain a motivated, diverse workforce.