Insights
We consider whether digital tools designed to help with job seeking and remote working could be acting as a barrier instead
The charity sector does quite well at some aspects of flexible working. According to the National Council for Voluntary Organisations (NCVO), voluntary sector workers are much more likely to work part-time. 35% work part-time compared with 24% in the commercial sector.
There is some evidence of support from leadership – for example Julie Bentley, CEO of Samaritans says, “Supporting flexible working just makes sense; job share, flexible working hours, and flexibility on location will mean that the widest pool of people will be reached in recruitment, hopefully leading to a more diverse organisation.”
But there are still many situations where organisations set requirements that work against flexibility. “My new job was advertised as fully remote, but within weeks I was 3 days a week in an office. Totally moved the goalposts.”
Claiming flexibility to attract candidates and it not being the reality is so grim.
People make HUGE life decisions on the promise of that flexibility.
Attitudes to flexible working certainly play a role in whether it is offered at the outset, but so do the demands of the communities that charities serve. Rich McStraw, Fundraising Director at StandOUT says, “offering service delivery which is reliant on other services at times (councils, job centres etc) means you are forced to work to their hours if you want to speak to someone or advocate for a person.”
However, Anna Ludeman, Founder and Director at Valued Recruitment explains that flexible working is often not offered as standard because charities simply don’t pause to ask, “why are we hiring a carbon copy of the person that’s already in this role?”
Someone leaves a role and the same role description and terms are used to find a replacement. Ludeman asks, “what if you reimagine that role, what amazing people could you bring into that position?”
Hazel Gavigan, Director of Communications at 4 Day Week Global argues that. “It’s difficult [for charities] to offer pay rises or competitive salaries, so working a four-day week is a really attractive benefit.”
As reports of “quiet quitting” and “conscious quitting” emerge, flexible working could help retain staff.
Tools that support video conferencing, project management and online community have all helped enable more remote and asynchronous working. However, many tools were designed for the default worker: in-person, 9-5, Monday to Friday. Using these tools without making adjustments could be hindering charities’ ability to work more flexibly.
For example, Ludeman explains that most job boards only offer the option to list a role as full time or part-time (not both). Full-time becomes the default, and most alerts are therefore not sent to people who’ve signed up to hear about part-time work. Ludeman says, “you’re immediately stopping around 40% of people applying to your job. All because of a tick box.”
Gavigan gives the example of Outlook. It automatically sets meeting times to an hour. This might be fine for the default 37.5 hour a week worker but changing the standard meeting length to 45 minutes makes meetings more feasible for part-time workers. Gavigan and colleagues also advise 4-day-week trial participants to be, “very strict on only accepting invitations to meetings that have circulated an agenda and advance, or even empowering teams to only attend the parts of the meeting that’s relevant to them.”
Trial participants are also encouraged to take a look at all their processes and find options for automation using digital tools. For example, if a small organisation has one person answering questions via an online chat function Gavigan suggests, “you could automate some of the responses. You could take your FAQs and use artificial intelligence for the responses.”
It’s also important to remember that digital solutions that support flexible working aren’t always one size fits all. Paul Nott, Founder of Recruit and Retain says, “As everyone has different preferences, one type of digital channel may work for some but leave others struggling, so the solution seems to be to use a combination.”
Michael Alexis, CEO of Teambuilding.com, a fully remote company, says, “One digital tool that can both help and hinder progress towards truly flexible working is project management software. On the positive side, these platforms can make communication and collaboration much easier between remote team members. However, if not used correctly, it can lead to micromanagement and a lack of autonomy for individual team members.”
For Gavigan, “The biggest key to success is trusting your team, trusting the culture in your organisation that you can work together collectively and be strong enough to navigate all of this together and find the solutions as a team.”
Trust has to be an underlying principle for how you use digital tools that support flexible working too.
It’s also important to pause and consider how ways of working or default settings can be altered to support flexibility.
As many charities continue to face recruitment challenges and address pay issues, fixing flexible working is rising up the agenda for the sector.
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