Did you know that many candidates in the current market will only apply for a role if the role offers flexible working and that nearly 9 in 10 UK employees either work flexibly already or wish they could? Despite these facts there is still a distinct lack of jobs that are being advertised with flexible working arrangements meaning that business owners are limiting their own talent pool. What? We hear you cry… that makes no business sense. And it doesn’t! 

If you don’t already operate flexible working within your business you could be missing a trick. We know that offering this flexibility can be daunting and you might think that your employees are going to take advantage of this (in our experience very few do) but trust us, the majority of your team will embrace the new way of working and you’ll benefit from more positive outcomes than negative. 

There are many types of flexible working and some of the most common arrangements are:  

• Home working or working in another location, some or all of the time  
• Part-time hours 
• Annualised hours: An employee’s hours are expressed as a total number of hours to be worked during the course of the year.  
• Shift working  
• Compressed hours  
• Job share  
• Core hours with flexible start and finish times  

The main benefit to your business is from the point of attracting candidates. If you don’t offer flexible working but your competitor does then you may be cutting yourself off from the increasing proportion of candidates in the market who won’t apply for traditional 9-5 jobs. There are not only benefits to offering flexible working for potential new hires but it also helps to retain existing staff and is proven to save on sickness absence.  

There’s also consideration to be given to the diversity and gender pay gap with legislation meaning that firms with more than 250 employees now have to publish figures about their gender pay gap. Although this might mean that the legislation doesn’t apply to you, if you are worrying about these relatively new inclusion issues then flexible working in hiring will go a long way to addressing them.  

Most importantly, flexible working is great for your brand. Over recent years it has become a key employee benefit second only to salary so promoting your openness to this flexibility and truly embracing it will help your business stand out from the crowd. 

What are you waiting for?   

When it comes to considering flexible working in your business start from the position that most jobs have some flexibility regardless of sector, seniority or location and then by considering the following: 

• Time – How many hours are needed to carry out the job: is this a full-time role, a more than full-time role or could it be a part-time one?  
• Location – Where do the activities physically need to be carried out?  
• When – What activities have to be done when 

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