Image by Luis Ricardo Rivera from Pixabay Working from home – the future for SME’s
For many SME’s the recent months have been the first time they have experienced whole teams working from home. With a few exceptions SME’s tend to step back from exploring flexible working and stick to their legal obligations. Like many HR practitioners I have been asked to draw up Working from Home policies and create ‘rules’ to manage the expected requests to WFH once COVID is over. Perhaps this is the ideal opportunity to think about our approach to ‘shirking from home’ and the opportunities it offers SME’s. It’s a great chance to build on how we managed change so well back in March. A recent webinar hosted by Breathe HR had Kirstie Axtens from Working Families asking why most jobs took 37.5 hours to complete ! it’s a good question and although the working week is an accepted and known ‘measure of tasks’ maybe now is the opportunity to turn things on their head. If we try to shoehorn everyone’s role into something that they can do remotely or from home for the same number of hours we tend just to create reasons for not allowing it or reasons why it will not work. Maybe forget ‘family friendly’ working and think’ life friendly’ working – because its not just about people with children. Different approaches to how we complete our work also helps those looking after or having caring responsibilities for parents and family/ friends. Once the mortgage is paid and the kids have gone many people want a shorter working week. The key here is how we measure work and if we keep thinking it’s about being available 9-5 Monday to Friday all we will gain from more people working from home is some empty desk space in the office. By focusing on outputs, writing job descriptions to fit the people, looking at skill sets and letting people do the things they are best at, working from home or remotely will be a fantastic tool for many SME’s. To work well flexible working must go hand in hand with better or differently designed jobs. If you are still not entirely sure that you trust people to work from home- my question is ‘Why did you hire them?’ We are still learning from the current experience- whether that is about technology, wellbeing, communication or culture. So, before you issue or amend your WFH policy think about the opportunities a different approach could give you.
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October 2020
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