The Dynamic Workforce
Aquarius’ approach to developing and embedding effective flexible working practices
Flexible Working – why bother?
Why should your business embrace flexible working, which looks as if it has the potential to be inconvenient and put pressure on your ability to operate in the way you are used to?
You probably recognise the need to:
- Cut costs and increase efficiency due to the recession
- Comply with EU & UK legislation
And you may be experiencing:
- Loss of permanent talented employees because of their need to work flexibly
- Disappointing numbers of people returning after maternity leave
- Disappointing numbers and calibre of job applicants
These are familiar issues faced by many organisations that have gone on to successfully embrace flexible working and enhance their performance.
The business case
Our experience and research shows us that, contrary to some expectations, by adopting flexible working organisations can:
- Reduce costs – without losing capability or efficiency
- Meet their regulatory obligations in a positive way that helps increase employee engagement
- Increase retention levels by broadening the options for currently employed talent
- Gain access to a wider and more diverse recruitment pool of high calibre talent
Flexible working is not just a short-term fix. There are significant reasons for adopting it as part of your long term strategy for developing an organisation that will survive and thrive in the 21st Century:
- Having the right Employee Engagement strategies will help you attract, retain and make the best use of ‘talent’ in all its forms, in an environment where individual attitudes to work and employment are changing
- Appropriate Diversity and Inclusion strategies will help you address ethical issues and socio-demographic trends and help to better align your customer and employee profiles
- Taking advantage of technological advancements can enable you to adopt new ways of working and delivering value to your customers and your organisation
Making flexible working work!
Based on our own experience, we know that creating a truly flexible workforce is about more than just changing the hours or the place people can do their jobs, and it’s not just a gender issue.
Determining whether or not a specific job can be done flexibly is only the beginning. The workplace is a dynamic system where the interconnections between the job, the organisation and the individual need to be properly understood if flexible working is to be implemented and embedded on a sustainable basis. For example:
- Are individual jobholders both able and willing to do what is necessary in order to work effectively on a flexible basis?
- Does the organisation have the cultural, managerial, technological and process infrastructures necessary to support and enable flexible working?
Working in conjunction with customers and partners, Aquarius has developed a range of tools and techniques that will help you make flexible working work for your business.
This paper sets out our understanding of and approach to Flexible Working in more detail.
What is flexible working?
Any form of working which varies the location or the times at which work can be done outside the norms for the organisation may be described as flexible working. This includes full-time as well as part-time options, home-based and remote working opportunities. Although the number of possible variations is practically limitless, the most common options are listed at the end of this paper for reference.
A useful guiding principle is to start from the assumption that every job is potentially flexible – but that different forms of flexible working will suit different situations. In every case a prudent employer will consider not only the job but also the organisational context and the readiness of the individual to work flexibly before making a decision at policy or individual role level.
A multi-faceted issue
We have talked to clients who already employ flexible workers, some on a very large scale indeed; and organisations who are just beginning to think about how and where to start. The presenting issues are extraordinarily diverse and include things like:
- Global employers with all the technology and technical processes necessary to enable their people to work flexibly and remotely, and with substantial existing flexible workforces, but who are still finding significant pockets of resistance inside their organisation
- Professional firms who are losing good graduates and experienced women returners to the competition because their culture is not attractive and engaging enough to keep them or bring them back – even in the current marketplace
- Businesses who have looked at the current and evolving demographic profile of their customers and seen that they need to change their own employee profile, particularly in the sales and front-of-house areas, to be more aligned with their customers
- Organisations who are very concerned about the potential costs of flexible working and want to comply with the regulations, but in a way that is fair to all their staff – not just those who will take up flexible working
- Employers who have already adopted a home/remote based working model to keep their costs down – but are now concerned about the level of employee activity, performance and engagement among a community who have become almost invisible to them
- Individuals who are working flexibly but finding themselves on the outside of the organisation when it comes to career opportunities, communications, development, recognition and reward – with consequent impact on their levels of performance and loyalty.
An holistic approach
Our own experience has clearly demonstrated the importance of considering the organisational and individual dimensions of flexible working – as well as the job, in any situation.
We have evolved a number of ways to ensure we have a comprehensive understanding of the particular issues and aims of the client and in each case, can offer a practical solution that fits the need and delivers added value. For example:
- Flexibility Audit: Accurate and reliable diagnosis of any issue and the reasons for it are a vital part of solving any problem. Through a combination of desk research, group discussions, interviews and web surveys we can identify the ‘enablers’ ie factors that are or could support flexible working and the ‘blockers’ ie barriers that are preventing or discouraging the adoption of flexible working. These factors may be cultural, procedural or simply personal. Whatever they are, we can identify the outputs to inform the design of the appropriate solution.
- Flexibility Masterclass: We use these events as a way of sharing knowledge among a practitioner community and ‘upskilling’ key groups of people eg HR teams, embedded flexible working champions and others who are needed to lead and facilitate the successful implementation and/or expansion of flexible working practice. These can be run as standalone events or built into a larger programme to support knowledge transfer and also add value through the inclusion of real time problem solving and/or solution design elements.
- Intranet Toolkits: More and more organisations are using the web and/or their own intranets not only as a means of internal communication, but also to support and enable knowledge management, deliver services and provide self-service transaction capabilities e.g. career planning, performance management, e learning, flexible benefits arrangements and so on. Flexible working is well suited to the web/intranet – and not only for remote/home workers for whom it is often the primary means of connectivity and continuing engagement with their employer and their colleagues, as well as a practical means of doing their job. Automated tools can be provided to help managers and/or staff assess individual jobs for flexibility, implement flexible working, comply with external regulation and internal policy, share knowledge and experience, develop their own capabilities and more.
- Managing Performance Remotely: A common and valid concern for remote and home working in particular, is the difficulty of monitoring and managing the performance of remote workers. This is partly about trust and control and partly about practicalities like measuring performance, keeping objective current and exercising appropriate oversight. In our experience, getting the performance management culture and process right is a critical success factor for many forms of flexible working.
These are just some example. The range of possible solutions is very wide: ranging from creating fundamental cultural change, building a new employee value proposition, developing management skills to adapting processes and procedures and clarifying policy. As a people oriented management consultancy, Aquarius is well used to working with public and private sector clients in all these areas.
See below for a table of Common Flexible Working Options and examples.Use our Blog if you would like to join the debate.
Contact us if you would like to talk to us about how we can help you make flexible working work for you.
Common Flexible Working Options and Examples
| Flexi-time | This is where start and finish times each day may be varied, usually within a range, to ensure a ‘core’ time period each day is full staffed eg 10am to 3pm. Jobholders usually have to ‘clock’ in and out electronically. Common variations include:
Salaries are paid weekly or monthly in the same way as for a ‘non-flexible’ worker. |
| Compressed hours | Normally full time roles, this is where the same number of hours are required as in a normal working week – but they will be done over fewer days ie the hourly equivalent of a 5 day week (eg 35 hours) to be done in 4 days. It is possible, although less common, for part-time roles eg the hourly equivalent of a 4 day week to be done in 3 days. The working days will normally be the same each week eg Monday to Thursday or Tuesday to Thursday.Salaries are paid weekly or monthly in the same way as for a ‘non-flexible’ worker. |
| Reduced hours | Any form of working where the jobholder works less than the standard contractual hours for that organisation and/or that job. In the UK, less than 30 hours per week is deemed to be ‘part-time’ for regulatory purposes.Salaries are normally paid weekly or monthly in the same way as for a ‘non-flexible’ worker. |
| Condensed talent | This is simply a reduced hours role, involving a high calibre jobholder. For example, it may be that analysis of a particular role indicates that only about 60% of the job actually requires a high level of subject-matter expertise and/or formal authority. This creates the opportunity to employ a high calibre and therefore more expensive person on a 3 day week, while reallocating the remaining 40% to others or to a less qualified and therefore less expensive part-time support role.Salaries are normally paid weekly or monthly in the same way as for a ‘non-flexible’ worker. |
| Job share | This is where two (or more) people literally share the same post, at the same level, and with the same responsibilities – but all working reduced hours. The two or three jobholders will equate to either 1 FTE or sometimes 1.2 FTE eg 2 people each doing 3 days a week to provide smooth overlap and handover.Salaries are normally paid weekly or monthly in the same way as for a ‘non-flexible’ worker. |
| Annualised hours | This is where the organisation contracts with the individual to work a set or minimum number of hours in a year. The hours may equate to a full or part-time equivalent role. The times and dates on which work is done are generally variable and will be agreed between the employer and the employee according to the circumstances. Salary is typically payable in equal monthly instalments over a year, in the same way as for a traditional employee. |
| Term-time working | This generally works in the same way as an annualised hours contract, except that the periods of work will be defined by the school year so that parents can work during school terms and take leave during the school holidays.Salary is normally spread over the year and paid in equal monthly instalments in the usual way. |
| Short-term Contract/ Interim working | Where a specific, finite workload increase can be predicted and/or a finite requirement for specific expertise can be identified, employers are increasingly able to look to external short-term contractors or interims to fill the gap. More people are now managing their own ‘portfolio’ careers, providing a larger potential pool of high calibre flexible workers.Payment may be on an invoiced fee basis or paid out as a monthly ‘salary’ payment for the contract period. A third party may be involved such as a consultancy firm, interim provider or recruitment agency. |
| Home working | This is where all or part of the work may be done by the jobholder at their own home. Employers normally need to provide appropriate equipment eg computers, remote support systems; and must consider the risks as well as the potential cost benefits of basing staff at home. Employees need to be able and willing to handle the requirements of home working from the practical eg broadband access, working space; to the professional eg communications, work planning, access to technical resources.Salaries are normally paid weekly or monthly in the same way as for a ‘non-flexible’ worker. |
| Remote working | This where all or part of the work may be done by the jobholder outside the normal workplace – and not necessarily at home. The advent of mobile technologies has enormously increased the numbers and types of roles that can be carried out in this way, to such an extent that many employers do not even regard this as a form of flexible working. However we have included it here because the organisation and managerial capabilities needed to manage a remote workforce really well are vitally important for managing many other forms of flexible working and clearly differ from the traditional skills required to manage a traditional workforce.Salaries are normally paid weekly or monthly in the same way as for a ‘non-flexible’ worker. |