What is flexible working, what’s in it for the employer and who’s doing it?

Organisations must adapt to economic and cultural change by embracing more flexible working practices or risk losing the new war for talent. Fifty percent of employers surveyed who had flexible practices in place admitted these were borne out of the GFC where flexibility in terms of shortened working week and other necessary trade-offs with employees were implemented as a survival strategy to retain employees whilst necessarily reducing their salary levels.

Our recent survey of business leaders in Australia and New Zealand, conducted with The Rubicor Group also sought to uncover the current extent of flexible working practices already in place across the business communities of both Australia and New Zealand. We were interested in understanding the perceived benefits and challenges that flexibility brings into the workplace and whether flexible arrangements are now an integral part of the employee value proposition employers are presenting to the external candidate market as well as their internal employee audience.

Does successful flexible working really mean boosted productivity and improved staff morale, as many claim?

The findings below reveal a powerful argument in support of this.
The findings below seem to support this notion.
The sentiment observed in our survey responses seems to say so.

• Only 2% of the surveyed audience felt that there were no positive business benefits gained from introducing flexible work practices
• 86% of the businesses surveyed now provide some form of flexible working initiatives
• 84% felt flexibility would create higher levels of retention
• 75% of respondents agreed that flexible work practices would have a positive benefit in attracting quality staff
• 74% also felt employee morale would increase
• 70% of all respondents believed that employee engagement would improve
• 64% felt they would reduce absenteeism in the workplace

It seems then that flexible working can deliver significant benefits for both employer and employee. There appears however to be little awareness of how to fully harness this via the EVP and employer brand, with 57% of respondents admitting that these benefits were NOT regularly discussed with applying candidates.

We know that work-life balance is increasingly on the radar for employees and candidates. We also know work-life balance is a key driver of job satisfaction for generations X and Y, and increasingly the Boomers. We can then suggest with confidence that flexibility and work-life balance then are an integral part of the EVP and as such represent a significant element of any employer brand. It is not without reason that the adoption of flexible practices is widely supported by HR practitioners.

Work-life balance keeps individuals healthy, stimulated in all areas of their life, and more likely to stay and contribute productively to their employer’s vision.

It is getting harder for employers to ignore that there are more flexible working models and more technology to support them than ever before. Employers must mind-shift away from needing to see an employee in a seat to fostering a ‘results-oriented’ environment.

The key words here are ‘trust’ and ‘empowerment’. If you don’t trust your employees and are not a manager who works hard to empower employees, then you will struggle to make such a scenario work and will likely be left behind. We are witnessing more remote and flexible working than ever before. Business sectors that have fiercely resisted the model, such as the legal sector are finally succumbing to employee pressure in order to retain and attract in a very competitive field – they are not alone.

Many office policies relating to Flexibility are not formalised (statistic) which could represent a ticking-time-bomb for employers. Employers beware – when rules and favours are not applied with equity across a workforce – if this occurs then previously settled employees may well become disengaged or even move on.

Healthy Internal Communications

• Over 43% of managers surveyed said their teams were unaware or only partly aware of the current flexible benefits available to them

There is a clear communications gap here between having the benefits available and making employees aware of them, even when these benefits have been specifically designed to keep them in the business! – this communication gap is hurting many employers who do not have a robust EVP, have poor internal communications and no effective employer brand to recruit to.

The most desired flexible practices suggested by survey participants included: Childcare support, Sabbatical, Job share/Flexi-time and Technology support.

The strongest perceived or expected problems/difficulties outlined by survey participants included: Supply and support resourcing, No trust from leaders and managers, Potential fragmentation of teams and Expense.

Sample response (see below)

To access the Flexible Workplace Survey – March 2010  report document click here.



Tony Heywood is a Fellow of the Design Institute of Australia, founder of Heywood Innovation in Sydney Australia with affiliates in Melbourne, Gold Coast, London, Singapore and Mumbai.
tony@heywood.com.au
www.heywood.com.au

Are disengaged employees holding you back?

The GFC and its resulting job losses have, on one hand released an array of available talent to the market, and on the other hand have fostered many cases of disengagement within the workplace. Shaken by the dismissal of their colleagues, disillusioned by their own frozen-careers or exhausted through delivering ‘more for less’, many employees are fed up with worry and sleepless nights - many blame their leaders and expect them to ‘put it right’.

Disengaged employees are not good for business. Consider some of the ways they can negatively impact your organisation’s bottom line:

• a lack of focus – not delivering close to 100% effort
• distracted – product and service deficiencies result
• bad influence – a negative effect on co-workers
• undermine – leader’s vision and authority
• leave – or cause others to leave
• inappropriate uses of company time – job seeking, time wasting, clock-watching
• lack of focus – company initiatives don’t gain traction
• increased absenteeism
• employee morale falls across the organisation
• employee productivity falls
• no creative or innovative input
• no real drive or incentive to go the extra mile

What causes employee disengagement?

• burnout due to long working hours and lack of recognition in return
• inadequate training, career mentoring, feedback and support
• broken promises
• lack of empowerment
• favouritism/inconsistency
• ineffective leadership
• inflexibility
• an inappropriate environment
• a brand with which no one wishes to be associated
• mis-trust and or micro-management
• career opportunities absent or minimal
• individual contributions not acknowledged
• poor team spirit
• poor internal communication particularly during the GFC when redundancies, changes in work patterns and budget cutbacks were occurring
• Inability to compete with remuneration levels offered by alternative employers (talent competition)

Actively disengaged employees can cost employers thousands, if not millions of dollars. Gallup estimates that the decreased productivity and performance fostered by actively disengaged employees’ costs U.S. businesses around $300 BILLION annually!

Ignore disengaged and actively disengaged employees at your peril!

Employers should make every attempt to find out who’s motivated and who’s not, who’s engaged and behind the leader’s vision and who’s going through the motions. Who’s there for the long-term and what keeps them bound to the company. Who’s contributing, who’s a passenger and who’s a company assassin?

Discover what people most ‘like’ about working for your organisation, what they actively ‘dislike’ and what you need to do to engage, motivate and retain them.

Online employee survey – why you need one now…

Looking at the employee profiles below – doesn’t it make sense to understand the prevailing employee sentiment and levels of engagement within your organisation?

HI offers:

• Free Employer Branding presentation (EmployerBrandGuidanceSystem 2010)
• Free Brand clinic – find out how your brand is performing

Our all-staff surveys probe general levels of engagement and employee perceptions of the value proposition across 12 key areas which comprise the employee experience.

Our surveys will:

• Identify strengths and weaknesses within your existing employment framework
• Indicate ways in which improvements might be made
• Solicit anonymous quantitative input from employees
• Allow comparison/alignment between employee groups
• Provide insight into the levels of sentiment within the workforce

Tony Heywood is a Fellow of the Design Institute of Australia, founder of Heywood Innovation in Sydney Australia with affiliates in Melbourne, Gold Coast, London, Singapore and Mumbai.
tony@heywood.com.au
www.heywood.com.au

Vale recruitment advertising

Australian recruiters and employer branding companies like Heywood Innovation were shocked at the news this week that national recruitment advertising firm TMP Worldwide has collapsed into administration with the closure of five offices in Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide, Brisbane and Perth, despite winning four gongs at Fairfax’s Employment Marketing Awards only a few months ago.

This presents sobering insight to the state of the recruitment sector throughout 2009. Despite a seemingly dramatic pick up for many recruiting firms in the opening months of 2010, the strain of prolonged low advertising activity throughout 2009 proved too much. Previously Monster Inc before its purchase in 2006 and subsequent renaming, TMP Worldwide was a major supplier of recruitment advertising services to governments around Australia.

Most of us will appreciate that if there are only a few job vacancies available there isn’t much call for recruitment advertising. It makes sense.

What doesn’t make sense is that here in Australia our experience has been that the downturn also caused companies to clamp down on their employer branding activities. This in my estimation has contributed significantly to the rapid turnaround in recruitment activities in these last few months. Employee engagement has fallen off the radar for more than 12 months. Consequently the ‘itchy feet’ syndrome is affecting many employees, causing their employers to start feeling the pain of departing talent. This ‘knock on’ effect with employers is predicted to become one of the key contributors to the SWD ‘Second Wave Downturn’ the doomsayers are preaching will hit us at the end of the year and continue into 2011. We sincerely hope not.

More sobering is the realisation that the future prospects for print media are, like the Australian drought, looking pretty dry. “I’ll have $10 for online media to win, and a cold beer mate”.



Tony Heywood is a Fellow of the Design Institute of Australia, founder of Heywood Innovation in Sydney Australia with affiliates in Melbourne, Gold Coast, London, Singapore and Mumbai.
tony@heywood.com.au
www.heywood.com.au