In today’s rapidly evolving work landscape, the concept of flexible working has gained tremendous momentum. Offering employees, the opportunity to have more control over their work schedules and locations has proven to enhance work-life balance, boost productivity, and attract top talent. As an HR professional, implementing a well-crafted strategy for discussing flexible working can lead to a more engaged and satisfied workforce. In this blog post, we will explore key elements of a successful HR strategy that fosters open conversations about flexible working arrangements.
Flexible working works well in some sectors with certain experience levels well. The reality of more junior staff members, they are not quite as challenged and ahead as people from 5-10 years ago. But this of course depends on the individual.
The strategies we put in place are continuously evolving, as one strategy sadly doesn’t fit all, is what we have found. Below are some anchor strategies we use as a base line that we then tailor them as needed.
- We want people to have a flexible work lie balance, but we establish core hours that will allow teams to chat from more than one location. For example, 2-4pm in Ireland is 9-11am on the East Coast of US and 6.30-8.30pm in our Indian office. Those are core times that most global teams will meet. So, each team member must be working at those times.
- We set task orientated objectives, rather than time watch. Each team will have a required task for the day/week and each team member then has their clear set of objectives.
- Training and Support – we carefully monitor the performance of each team, we do this by assessing the quality, performance and speed of each objective. We try to add tasks that challenge each person and with that develop training to assist with those tasks. We have found by doing this each employee gets a more tailored career path. (Warning – it does give Managers more work that has caused some conflicts, but they do understand the importance of it)
- Employee – Manager dedicated time. This is so important; we push this more then make it mandatory. We want open and transparent working environments, so meetings once a week or once a fortnight are really encouraged.
- Technical Infrastructure, we monitor the use of technical products we Invest in technology and tools that facilitate flexible working arrangements. We ensure we have the best collaborative platforms (without over lapping, an example of overlapping tech is Slack and teams. We recently cut Slack from our stack). We also pay attention to communication tools and ticketing systems such as Atlassian to ensure seamless and simple connectivity and effective collaboration among team members.
- Flexible working is restricted to certain locations. We don’t want people based anywhere. We want them based in Counties that we have legal entities, so we don’t run into tax complications for the business or the employee. If you have a contract team or B2B team it’s more seamless. But not with full-time employees.
As mentioned, the above is more the core strategy, we must tweak it depending on performance. For example, if we see under performance or people not available during core hours, we then take a more proactive hands-on approach that does lose some of the flexibility. Sadly, this happens often. In some cases, people need more structure and flexible working simply doesn’t work for them. We are currently building questions into our Talent Acquisition and interviewing for more team members to ensure the right fit from the start.
Implementing a successful HR strategy for discussing flexible working requires a thoughtful and systematic approach. By developing a comprehensive policy, fostering open communication, and aligning objectives with performance.
Elwood Roberts is a specialist Recruitment and talent business. We don’t only find the best available talent on the market. We also help businesses with their HR and talent strategies. If you are seeking some assistances, please do get in touch here.
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