Flexible Working Can Be Beneficial For Business Success

With International Women’s Day hitting tomorrow, I think it’s important to start talking about topics that are issues for women, and flexible working seems to be a big topic at the moment. We’ve always grown up being told that women are the matriarch of the family. They cook, they clean, they look after the children and the house, and make sure their partner is sorted. But what happens when it comes to them working too whilst still having to deal with all of that.

Flexible working always seems like a topic that people don’t want to talk about. And to be fair, it is key to tackling the gender pay gap, as it usually effects women, so I understand that some men don’t think it’s a problem. I mean, I get it, some men are effected by it too, but let’s be real, it is mostly women.

You just have to mention flexible working and people have certain ideas. Conference calls in pyjamas, lunchtime sitting on the sofa, maybe a desk in the back garden – playing at work when really they’re lounging at home. All ideal for some of us, but unfortunately, not what flexible working is about.

Allowing the workforce to work in a less rigid way, championing women, diversity and flexible working, will bring a happiness to the workplace, that nothing else can do. As flexible working is more than just working from home. It’s about working from wherever you need to be at that time. And it can be done so easily too by making use of the technology we have available to us such as audio and video conferencing, and even mobile internet.

Even then, each employee is different. Some work better in the mornings and find that their concentration tends to start wavering by the afternoon, whereas other employees may work best from lunch onwards. I guess what I’m saying is, flexible working allows individual employees to play to their strengths in order to ensure maximum output – and isn’t that a good thing?