Flexible Working Jobs For All

Flexible working jobs should be the default position for all employees, rather than it being up to individuals to request.

That is the call from Conservative MP Helen Whately, who introduced a flexible working bill in Parliament this July. As we’ve been saying for a long time, if all jobs were flexible working jobs, it would help to close the gender pay gap, assist parents to share childcare and help businesses to retain staff.

Here’s what Helen Whately said that really turned our heads:

“The 40-hour, five-day working week made sense in an era of single-earner households and stay-at-home mums, but it no longer reflects the reality of how many modern families want to live their lives.”

This and Mother Pukka’s Flex Appeal campaign to bring an end to the 9 to 5 working day, has resulted in traction in the public eye. We hope it feeds down quickly as more businesses realise the benefits of flexibility. As a flexible recruitment consultancy, we work with many forward-thinking businesses who understand how flexibility can improve employee engagement, retention and hiring opportunities. You can find out more here in our Flexible and Proud Report.

Flexible working jobs for the modern age

We place experienced professionals in roles that offer flexibility in the form of either part-time work or full-time work but with compressed or condensed hours, staggered hours, working from home or 9-day fortnights. The full list of flexible working options is here on our website and we also have lots of examples of flexible working jobs.

Jane O’Gorman, Director at Ten2Two says, “It’s quite amazing it has taken this long for parliament to wake up to the fact that new ways of working and in particular, flexible working jobs must be a necessity rather than the exception.”

“As we recently told Recruiter Magazine, we’ve been knocking on doors and encouraging businesses to think differently about how they recruit, not just from the perspective of thinking about they attract new talent but also retaining the employees they actually have. Companies are then losing out on all that experience by perhaps not thinking slightly differently about how they manage the workflow.”

New ways of work and recruitment

Just as businesses need to find ways to adapt to be profitable, so too do hiring departments and flexible working can be the key to unlocking experienced talent that’s affordable, productive and loyal – all essential ingredients, particularly in times of uncertainty.

We look forward to seeing flexible working advertised by hiring managers where job advertisements are concerned. If employers open up the job pool to untapped part-time and flexible talent, hard-to-fill vacancies will attract excellent talent which may otherwise have been scarce.

If you’d like to discover the benefits of flexible working for your organisation and hiring practice, including flexible consultancy, please contact us today. We also offer businesses advice around remote working policy and implementing returnships.