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To create optimum productivity, employers need motivated and focused employees. Retaining experienced, high performing and highly motivated people is core to any business aim but relates directly to the profitability of a business, in particular one that is service oriented.
Clients expect fast paced delivery coupled with technological advances. This has increased the challenge to organisations to deliver more innovative and flexible solutions.
Increasingly legislation and government policy seek to protect the right of individuals to work flexibly. Current legislation means that parents of under 16 year olds, or carers of elderly relatives have the legal right to request flexible working. Employers need to give serious consideration to such requests and provide objective business reasons for turning them down. Individuals with disabilities face physical challenges in order to commute to their workplace, flexible working enables them to compete and fulfil their professional potential.
Option to have additional days holiday to fit with other Holy High days or Ramadan, pilgrimage as well as other non-Christian holidays.
Today, many of the most successful organisations actively encourage flexible working as they recognise the commercial benefits of good management practice. They recognise that this creates an equitable working environment and offers a powerful tool for managers to respond and adapt to both customer and employee needs.
Increasing globalisation, IT developments, 24/7 culture and radical restructuring of businesses have had a transformational effect on the workplace. In March 2008 the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD) researched 'Smart Working', aimed at understanding how successful businesses are operating and identifying key concepts and frameworks that tackled the organisation of work and job design. The resulting report highlighted some key factors that accompanied the successful and innovative organisations, these are:
- increased organisational flexibility
- more freedom of action for employees
- use of virtual teams
- outcome-based measures
- IT-based working practices
- high trust relationships
Further benefits of organisations adopting flexible working policies and culture are discussed below:
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Economic responsiveness to the recession
During the current economic period, flexible work practices are important and have played a critical role in enabling companies to respond to the economic downturn.
Flexibility is a powerful business tool enabling organisations to manage headcount as well as productivity effectively. Successful businesses, eg BT achieve better customer service levels and improved employee retention while making significant overhead savings.
These measures included:
- The well documented initiative implemented by KPMG who offered most staff the option of working four days a week (or taking a sabbatical on reduced pay) this enabled them to avoid major staff cuts.
- Norton Rose, the law firm, asked their staff to volunteer to work four day weeks, this results in hundreds of employees working flexibly.
- Pinsent Masons (see below)
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Pinsent Masons: flexing with the economy Pinsent Masons has had an embedded flexible working policy for several years with 175 employees (10 per cent) with formal flexible working contracts, with a 50/50 split between professional and support staff. Response to the recession resulted in widespread flexible working practices at a major national law firm, particularly across two practice areas. To avoid the large scale redundancy programmes implemented elsewhere, and in line with Pinsent Masons corporate values and desire to safeguard their key talent and key practice areas, they launched an alternate programme. They offered corporate and property lawyers a one year altered contract which provided them with either 13 weeks of additional holiday or part time working through a 'salary smoothing' implementation that reduced their salaries by 20 per cent. Every lawyer agreed to either: - 13 weeks of additional leave or
- corporate lawyers opted for additional leave due to the transactional nature of their work
- working flexibly eg three or four days a week
Scheduling work for part time lawyers did raise some challenges. Property lawyers could chose sabbatical or part time - most chose part time. 300 lawyers signed up to this solution. The flexi contract ended in August 2010. There was generally positive feedback from lawyers about this initiative. Commercial benefits for Pinsent Masons - Demonstrated a creative and constructive response to economic downturn
- Enabled the firm to retain key talent
- Sent a positive message to staff that they were wanted
- Saved £2m from their salary bill
- Some lawyers valued highly a unique opportunity to have a break (some want more)
- Helped establish flexible working as gender neutral choice
- A number of lawyers have asked to continue working flexibly
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Promotes Continuity of Delivery. With embedded flexible working practices enables legal practices to respond seamlessly to disruptions to normal working patterns, for example Tube Strikes or the forthcoming Olympics.
Retention of key talent
All the flexible workers interviewed for the case studies in this report emphasised the extremely high levels of commitment, loyalty towards their employer and great motivation to make their roles work. Key organisational benefits to retaining employees include:
- poor return on investment of training
- loss of expertise, client knowledge and organisational knowledge
- cost of replacement - exit from a senior role can cost up to £125,000
- impact of team morale
- management time and effort to recruit the replacement
- three phases of career development (see below)
- response to Generation x/y: not purely a gender issue
- retention and attraction of talent
- opportunity to afford high calibre people part-time
- loyalty factors (stickiness) that this engenders
- enables retention of individuals with disabilities who face physical challenges to commuting to and from their workplace
- use of flexible working for individuals in their fifties and sixties, enabling partners to gradually retire/phasing out while retaining their contribution
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Changing demographics
With more women than men graduating from university, a greater proportion of workforce is requesting flexible working. For example in the legal profession, women make up 62 per cent of the graduate trainee intake in the top law firms, and nationally comprise over 60 per cent of admissions to the Law Society. This illustrates that the work force is changing shape. While having a young family can require a higher degree of working flexibility from both parents, highly experienced and qualified individuals seek to actively develop their careers through this middle phase of career development (see section below). More women are now the major earner within the family, this can result in requests for flexibility from either mothers or fathers. Family-friendly organisations report higher retention rates and also the ability to recruit the best talent.
Facilitating a more diverse workforce
Flexible working enables legal practices to accommodate the religious observances of their employees. For example, the need for Muslim employees during Ramadan, to work shorter hours for a month in order to leave in time for opening of the fast, or Jewish High Holidays with similar requirements.
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Competing for the next generations: the X and Y factors
Recent research into Generation X (senior managers and leaders 'in waiting' and Generation Y (those born post 1979) place more emphasis on work life balance, seeking a different degree of personal life to the currently retiring 'baby boomer' generation. These findings are based on research undertaken both in and outside the legal profession). Where currently large numbers of mainly women exit the profession at four to eight years PQE, research indicates that an increasing number of men will be joining them.
Key contributing factors are:
- These generations are more technologically literate and have inherently higher expectations of how work can be delivered flexibly and remotely.
- They cannot identify any successful and inspirational role model partners (of either gender) working flexibly.
To compete for and retain talent, organisations need to be able to reflect the aspirations and values of upcoming generations within employment policies and practices.
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Combining environmental and commercial benefits
Snapshot of BT: With 75,000 of its 86,000 UK employees working flexibly in some way, (this includes senior managers through to contact centre employees) and with 17 per cent of staff working from home, this delivers the following business benefits to the BT:
- saved around £60m a year from flexible working and achieved a massive reduction in BT's property portfolio (£500m)
- reductions in absenteeism amongst those working from home by 20 per cent
- reduced travel time and commuting costs (saving 12m litres of fuel)
- higher productivity: home workers creating 30 per cent more output than office colleagues
- provision of increased call centre covers enabling customers greater access to BT
- higher quality outputs: home based call centre operators offer comparable or better responses
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Career development and flexible working
Why is flexible working important at certain points in men and women's careers?
It can be useful to consider flexible working in the context of an individual's overall career development.
Career development is typically divided into three phases: early, mid and late. In the early phases men and women tend to be following a similar pattern where their focus is on building and developing their careers. In the middle phase (mid 30s to late 40s) career development for men and women typically differs. Here men tend to focus on 'aspiration' and moving forward in line with their ambitions. For women the middle phase can signal a focus on the need for 'balance' in their working and home lives and frequently this is achieved through some form of flexible working.
Reference: Comparative career development cycle of men and women
| Gender | Early Phase
mid 20s - mid 30s | Middle phase
mid 30s - late 40s | Late / third Phase
late 40s / early 50s on |
| Men | challenge | aspiration | balance |
| Women | challenge | balance | re-creation / re-invention |
Interestingly in the late phase, when women embrace challenge and re-invention, at this point many men are actively seeking more 'balance' in their working lives. In this context, flexible working becomes a means of a phased transition to retirement, enabling firms to retain the expertise of highly experienced lawyers while facilitating their transition to retirement.
Many external factors prompt individuals to choose flexible working, for example:
- having children
- being ill
- being physically disabled
- being the primary or secondary carer
- having aged or ill relatives
- making considered life choices
- preparing for retirement
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The benefits for individuals are significant and include:
- Increased commitment and loyalty to the organisation, with individuals noting that the flexibility and challenge provided far outweighs many other employment considerations.
- Higher productivity, many individuals report working flexibly in a more productive and focused way. The time boundaries imposed by flexible working create more focus and energy.
- Job Shares: the ability to carry out a very senior and high profile role three days a week. Interestingly, those individuals in job shares reported markedly (even) higher degrees of professional challenge and satisfaction.
- Ability to continue to actively develop their career at the same time as having a young family.
- Reduced absenteeism by a third over the last six years.
- Reduced mental health sickness by 30 per cent and medical retirements by 80 per cent.
- Flexible working has enables organisations to retain more staff (at BT 97 per cent of women return from maternity leave, compared with the national average in the UK of 47 per cent. They directly attribute this success to their policies on home working and highly flexible approach to work).
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These include:
- Client and business needs and expectations play a key role in determining whether a flexible working application is feasible.
- Within any change to working practice, it is important to manage client expectations.
- Adapting flexible working arrangements to suit the business model and understanding that no single arrangement suits everyone.
- Safeguard all agreements by building in review period.
- Flexibility is a two way street. All individuals interviewed highlighted that at the cornerstone of these arrangements was a willingness on the part of the organisation and the individual to be flexible with each other in order to achieve the shifting business demands.
- Leadership is core - leading from the top down.
- Harnessing technological advances.
- Performance and productivity vs. 'presenteeism'.
- Regular review and good communication ensures that arrangements continue to meet the changing business needs.
- Ensuring that career development is not impeded by working flexibly.
- Being open-minded about the roles and levels that work flexibly.
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- Part-time
- Job sharing
- Term time contracts
- Fixed hours contract
- Working from home
- Compressed hours
- Flexitime
- Informal flexible working - where a lawyer who works full-time has an informal agreement with their line manager, partner that they can have a degree of flexibility in how, when and where they work. The majority of the time, core hours are observed but when need arises, the individual may leave at 15:00 (for a doctor's appointment) but then log back on again and work through the evening. Or work from home occasionally (if the child is ill). There is much evidence of this working effectively (below the radar) in many legal practices. This is because neither partner nor associate want to formalise the arrangement but this is very successful when a high degree of professional trust exists between individuals within a team.
- Part-time working - this enables individuals to work a reduced working week, eg three or four days a week or a week on and one week off. This pattern of flexible working may not be practical for some roles.
- Job sharing - this involves two colleagues sharing a full time role, with both lawyers taking joint responsibility for the role, with both working, for example, mornings or afternoons, Monday - Wednesday or one week on and one week off.
- Annualised hours or term time contracts - this enables a lawyer to work an agreed number of days each year. Contracted to a fixed number of days each year, facilitating additional days off at certain times of the year, for example during school holidays.
- Fixed or staggered hours working - this enables an individual to start work earlier and finish earlier, or vice versa. Eg from 07.30 to 15.30 or 10.00 until 18.00.
- Compressed hours - less applicable to the legal profession, where long hours are the rule but widely used in other sectors, individuals delivers a full-time role but work altered hours, eg work four 10-14 hours days.
- Working from home - this may be within a full-time contract but the individual may work from home a stipulated number of days each month.
- Flexitime - where core hours are observed but with permanent flexibility around the start and end times of office hours provided the contracted number of hours are worked each week.