FlexCareers hold regular roundtable events with employers across Australia and New Zealand, to connect and collaborate on flexible working practices and gender diversity issues.
Late last year, we hosted over 130 organisations across corporate, government and not for-profit, to discuss how they were progressing in their flexibility journey and to promote discussion and learning so that organisations can learn faster, and move the needle on flexible working practices and gender diversity.
To promote discussion as we move into June and Australia’s inaugural Flexible Working Day, we wanted to share some of the findings and key themes from our roundtables:
No-one is getting it right yet: everyone is still on the flexibility journey.
There is not one organisation out there that can put their hand on their heart and say that they are 100% fully flexible across the entire organisation. There are some organisations that are definitely progressing well in terms of implementing robust flexible work practices, but even they say there is still much to learn.
Everyone has the same challenges.
What fascinated us was that no matter the sector (corporate or non-corporate), industry (banking, mining etc.,) or size of the organisation – everyone is facing the same issues in implementing robust flexibility practices. But of course, flexibility isn’t about organisational design or the right policies (albeit they do have some influence), the fundamental factor that united everyone, is that flexibility is about people.
Early Adopters are starting to see advantages.
Those organisations that have already adopted flexible work practices are starting to see the benefits, with hard metrics from increased engagement levels, increased retention of their people, attracting a greater quality of talent, and more.
There is much research and evidence to support the benefits of flexible working – we find the conversation in many organisation is not about why they should flexibly, but how can they implement it and do it well.
Flexible working is fast becoming more acceptable not just for working parents but, as we like to say, reason agnostic. There are many organisations that don’t require their people to specify or justify why they need (or want) to work flexibly. They have have embraced modern technology and outcomes-based performance management in order to empower their people work to the best of their ability wherever, and however, it suits them.
FlexCareers is hosting our current series of roundtables across Australia and New Zealand throughout June and July. If you would like to find out more, please connect with us.
Flexible Working Day
FlexCareers is proud to be supporting Australia’s inaugural Flexible Working Day. FlexCareers will be featuring case studies and success stories from our client and community portfolio, and hope that you will support this amazing initiative. To assist you to run an event at your office on the day, a Flexibility Kit is available, and there is also a wealth of information available on the Flexible Working Day website, including links to educational resources, employer case studies and more.
Read more about Flexible Working Day, and how to get involved here.
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