​ ​	David Mellard, Tooting resident and Director of Bedrock Human Resources, on why flexible working can be mutually beneficial for employers and employees.

At Bedrock HR we manage HR for a number of SMEs and they all agree with the following statements:

• Finding good people is increasingly competitive.
• Keeping good people is much more efficient than finding new ones.
• Keeping people happy at work increases their productivity.

A way to address these points is to introduce flexible working arrangements.

There are several reasons why people want to work flexibly at different stages of life, including balancing responsibilities at home with work (perhaps following maternity leave or when caring for a sick or elderly relative) or the desire to travel or to study.

There are several types of flexible working. One of the most common is 'core hours' around which people can come in early and leave early or come in later and leave later. Part-time working can include working less than five days a week or for a part of each day.
 

Advances in technology have enabled many job roles to be carried out from home for all or part of the week. Periods of unpaid leave can also be arranged, usually with a degree of forward planning.

There are some key considerations before making flexible working arrangements and they will vary for each employer. Questions to ask include:

1. Does the work need to be done at a particular place?
2. When will clients/customers need to have contact?
3. How can colleagues cover for each other?
4. How is work supervised – results or time?
5. Fairness – how is flexibility arranged within the team?

All employees have a legal right to request flexible working and employers have to consider these requests seriously. In some cases there is no way of accommodating a request, but these must be transparent and justifiable. Most Bedrock clients have an element of flexible working which we have helped them to implement – they say that this has had a positive effect on recruitment, retention and morale.

Bedrock HR Ltd works with businesses at all stages, typically with between 5-50 employees to provide a cost-effect outsourced HR solution. Talk to us if you’ve got any questions, we’d love to hear from you. You can also follow us on Twitter and Facebook.

Call us on 0330 111 2176 or email david@bedrockhr.co.uk.