Flexible working is evolving at a rapid pace. Before the Covid-19 outbreak, many established organisations were slow to embrace the change to a more flexible working arrangement for their employees. This was either out of habit, fear, perceived complexity, or lack of interest. It was more common to see flexible working arrangements adopted by smaller, more agile companies, who had evolved and adopted a flexible nature naturally.
But the global pandemic has changed everything. The flexible working trend was on the rise anyway, but the lockdown forced everyone who could work at home to do so. Companies who had never worked this way before had to adapt overnight. The dated viewpoint that employees who work flexibly lack the drive and motivation to be productive and fully contribute to their company has been challenged like never before. People have proven to their employers that it not only works, but it works well. Perhaps even better than before.
As we begin to ease out of lockdown, employees are likely to resist attempts to return to the old ways of working. Covid-19 has given employees a taste of flexible working, and for many it has positively transformed their working and personal lives.
The Rise of Enabling Technology
Workers used to be tethered to a 9-to-5 existence in an office through necessity. The rapid advancements in technology allows employees to collaborate and share data with anyone, from anywhere. Cloud technology and communication tools such as Microsoft Teams, Zoom, and Google Hangouts mean that for employees, the ‘office’ can be anywhere.
That doesn’t mean that there is no longer a place for the traditional office. Companies will always need a headquarters; a place to meet clients, or a place for face-to-face meetings. If Covid-19 has taught us anything of importance, it’s that human beings have a desire to interact with each other, and via a computer screen doesn’t always cut it.
The shift towards more flexible working arrangements will no doubt highlight to employers that the large, fancy office is not essential anymore. Maybe they can get away with renting a cheaper alternative without all the bells and whistles, such as the pool table, espresso machine, and vending machines. They will not be needed anymore, because their employees will be getting on with being productive.
Key Benefits of Flexible Working for Organisations
1) Competitive Edge
Smaller organisations need an edge when it comes to hiring talent. Offering candidates flexibility will give them this edge where they cannot hope to match the salaries and staff benefits offered by bigger rivals.
2) Goodbye 9-to-5
The modern, 24/7 world is driven by technology and globalisation. Demand for services across the world and outside of the archaic 9-to-5 has accelerated the creation of different shift patterns. Companies need staff to work out of hours, and to work those shifts employers require flexible people.
3) Widen the Talent Pool
By offering prospective candidates a flexible working arrangement, companies automatically widen the talent pool. This makes recruiting for hard-to-fill, and more specialist roles, even easier.
4) Increased Productivity
Empowered employees who work where, when, and how they want are more productive, and do more than they are paid to. They also save more time and money by not having to make the daily commute. This time is used more productively because instead of being spent on driving or waiting for trains, it is spent working instead.
5) Staff Retention
The simple fact is this: if staff have a great flexible working pattern, they will be happier. Happy employees are far less likely to give up a good thing. Loyal, hardworking people are the cogs of any business, and what companies save in recruiting costs, they can use to further develop their people or improves customer services or other business processes.
6) Collaboration
As mentioned earlier, this rise of technology has produced some fantastic tools that facilitate collaboration. Face-to-face meetings are great, but they are not always possible to arrange, or they don’t make sense because of location or timing. Staying productive with a remote workforce is critical to the success of a business, especially during these uncertain times, but luckily technology is at the point we require it to be to work effectively with each other, even when we’re not in the same building. Indeed, colleagues don’t even have to be in the same countries these days to collaborate with one another.
The move towards widespread flexible working arrangements was always an inevitability. This is because Millennials, who already make up the largest generational workforce in the UK, understand that the traditional 9-to-5 workday is becoming outdated. It is key for employers to understand this too in order to attract the top talent. 93% of millennials identify flexibility as a top priority when job hunting, and by 2025 it is estimated that this generation will comprise 75% of the global workforce, so in a few years flexible working will be the norm. Interestingly, 35% of people would prefer flexible working to a pay rise, an especially revealing statistic about how much the world of work has changed in the last few years.
But Covid-19, like with many other aspects, has been a catalyst for major change. It has forced everyone who can work from home to do so. Even bigger companies who were set in their ways have had to take the plunge, but the consensus has been that is has been a positive transformation. Employees now have the ideal work-life balance they’ve always craved, and employers are seeing a spike in productivity.
Offering a full range of flexible working is a sign of a progressive, innovative, and forward-thinking employer. Covid-19 has caused massive change in how people work, and there is no going back. Flexible working is not a passing fad, but rather, the future.
RMS is one of the UK’s leading providers of merchandising and retail support staff. We deploy teams of flexible, responsive and highly trained staff, wherever and whenever they’re needed, using flex, our innovative workforce management system.
