Whether you participate in them or not, LinkedIn polls are a fascinating way to gauge views on a diverse range of topics. A recent poll about flexible working from The Economist caught my eye last week as it is a subject that we have given a great deal of thought at Saffery.

The poll asked participants to answer what a “flexible schedule” meant to them. The overwhelming majority of respondents indicated that, to them, ‘flexible’ meant the ability to work whenever they want.

Prior to 2020, for many businesses, flexibility was offered through part-time or term-time contracts, and ‘working from home’ was either not possible or not permissible. The covid pandemic necessitated the need to find alternative ways of working and catapulted the adoption of processes and technologies that enabled that flexibility.

The pandemic accelerated our plans for flexible and home working options, and we have since provided training and equipped all our team members with the necessary technology to enable remote working.

As the world adapts to a “new normal”, it has been interesting to see news coverage that some businesses have backtracked on flexible working policies, either by increasing the requirement for more days in the office, or removing the option to work from home entirely.

Alongside media coverage of a return – by some – to a lack of flexibility, the UK has also seen the results of a four-day work week trial, which, overall, saw an increase in staff retention and wellbeing with no decrease to productivity.

The wellbeing of our teams is paramount to the values of the firm and, while some businesses may be looking to return to traditional working options, we have actively looked for ways to offer more flexibility.

Flexibility is subjective and it would therefore be a mistake, in my view, for employers to impose heavy restrictions on what is meant by “flexible”. To some, flexibility may mean taking a longer lunch break to head to the gym, working additional hours some days to free-up time on others, or having the freedom to work from home without a caveat of needing to justify a reason for doing so.  

Over the last year, we opted to remove the necessity of “core hours” from our flexible working guidelines. In doing so, we showed our team members that we trusted them to be responsible with their hours and their workloads.

We have an ethos of finding individuals who are not only experienced and qualified for their roles, but whose values reflect those of the firm. It therefore came as no surprise to me that this initiative has been highly successful, and we have not experienced issues with staff being too liberal with this flexibility.

As our Board works alongside our People and Culture team to formalise our flexible working policy, I look forward to continuing to be a progressive employer and, in turn, seeing the positive impact on our team.