The Rise of Family Friendly Working

#AD In 2019, it appears that the benefits of making work more flexible and family friendly are finally starting to sink in. Businesses are starting to appreciate that if they want to reap the benefits that a skilled group of employees can bring, they need to widen the pool of potential applicants who can apply, and not exclude or prevent parents or carers from applying for their vacancies.

With the uncertainty of Brexit and a vulnerable retail market, businesses are also looking at ways to keep costs down, including making use of remote conferencing facilities, smart energy solutions and reducing energy bills by increasing the amount of remote and home working options available to their staff.

As a HR Advisor, I always love it when I see businesses taking small steps to make their jobs family friendly and here are some of the initiatives you can expect to see more of in coming months and years

• “Open to Flexible Working” in adverts – A recent CIPD working group has recommended that employers should start putting the phrase “open to flexible working” in their adverts. Whilst in an ideal world their new recruit would be working 37 hours a week Monday to Friday, the reality is that their perfect candidate may only be able to work 4 days a week, or do compressed working hours over a shorter number of days. By adding this phrase to their job adverts, they are expressing a willingness to consider other options, and hugely increasing the potential pool of applicants as a result.
• More working from home – with employers trying to reduce overheads, do more in less space and make the most of productivity by reducing travelling time, working from home (at least for some of the working week) is likely to become more prevalent. There has previously been a bit of stigma around working from home (to the point where it is often said in inverted commas), however for some employers at least, the need to be physically present in order to perform your duties is no longer an essential criteria.
• Farewell to the 9-5 –  Whilst there will always be some professions where flexible working just isn’t possible, for many, the concept of the traditional 9-5 has pretty much gone out the window. With the rise of remote network options such as VPN connectivity, video conferencing, social media, there has been an increasing  understanding that the work simply needs to be completed during the week – how and when that happens is open to interpretation. With many people wanting to work around their family or caring commitments, allowing and trusting employees to manage their own workload can reap huge benefits and lead to a highly committed workforce.
• A Flexible Working Pool – Whilst zero hours contracts are being phased out, companies like PWC have been trialling new initiatives like the Flexible Talent Network where candidates can register their CVs with details of exactly when and how they would be available to work, creating a talent pool that can be dipped into as and when suitable vacancies arise. Whether the reality of such a large corporate as is flexible as this would have you believe remains to be seen!

Do you work flexibly or work from home?

What more do you think could be done to help parents or carers in the workplace?

*This is a Collaborative post*