Transforming flexible working
Making flexible working work for everyone is an important issue for employees and employers alike; but can be operationally challenging.
Skills shortages, a tough recruitment landscape, retaining talent and leading a multi-generational workforce are organisational issues keeping leaders awake at night. This need to develop a market-leading employee value proposition combined with the Government’s clear commitment to make flexible working the default – brings new urgency.
Clients come to us for strategic support in ensuring:
- leaders at every level are engaged, recognise the value of flexibility and are given support to develop skills to manage teams working flexibly.
- instead of making assumptions about how colleagues want or need to work, we actively listen to gather insights and use this information to shape new ways of working that balance the needs of individuals, teams and the business.
- every colleague is engaged in the learning journey and equipped with the right skills, mindset and behaviours to work flexibly successfully.
The proven benefits for a company are massive. Flexibility leads to better organisational agility, enhances internal mobility, loyalty and talent attraction. It supercharges wellbeing, productivity and performance. And at Innovation in Equity, we’ve got the solutions to get you there. Take a look below to explore how we do this.
Our flexible working workshop options
Every workshop we deliver is bespoke and designed around the precise needs of each client. We’ve shown some of our most popular flexible working workshops here to give a flavour of what we do.
Why do so many of us find broaching conversations about flexible working so challenging? And what can we do about it? This session will offer a safe space for participants to explore what holds us back and engage in meaningful conversations about flexible working. We also teach how to develop a flexible mindset and behaviours, supercharge the way you build relationships, deliver exceptional performance while working flexibly and use data to position flexibility as a win-win for the business and its people.
Teams are guided through our simple process to define and agree ways of working based on their roles and what they need to deliver, looking at how they will balance business needs with individual and team needs. The result is a set of commitments that forms a bespoke team charter agreement which accelerates widespread adoption of flexibility and ignites a culture of inclusivity, trust, accountability and high performance.
This session equips managers to lead with empathy and build a team culture based on trust and high performance. Participants learn to let go of traditional mindsets and embrace a coach approach, transforming the ways they measure performance. We teach how to design flexibility into every role, nurture and sustain a strong culture that effectively balances productivity and wellbeing in teams of people working in flexible ways.
The aim of this session is to make flexible working really work by teaching the tools teams need to create exceptional trust and communication.
Using neuroscience, we teach transformational tools to proactively build and repair trust. We guide them through a process to agree how they will communicate more effectively, breaking down some of the most significant barriers to successful flexible working.
This session benefits everyone within a workforce and gifts them with the time to truly understand your organisation’s key principles and guidance for flexible working. We take participants on a deep dive to unlearn traditional ways of working, cultivate the skills they need to engage in courageous conversations, overcome fear, guilt and negative assumptions and acquire the tools they need to supercharge in-person, virtual and hybrid collaboration with colleagues.
Building a community of champions transforms the experience of colleagues working flexibly by increasing support for their choices, making flexible working more visible through role modelling and empowering others to work flexibly.
In this session we share our proven strategy for activating champions to normalise flexible working, making it possible for everyone to feel comfortable talking about their working pattern so attracting and retaining talented people becomes much easier.
Example key principles for flexible working
We can consult with your organisation to create guidance and a bespoke set of principles to ignite a culture of flexible working – making it really work for everybody. Every organisation is different, but we’ve shared some example key principles below to show how this can typically look.
Flexible working tools
Continue the support for colleagues and sustain the progress made with unlearning traditional ways of working with our innovative tools.
The purpose of our flexible working tools is to encourage every colleague within an organisation to pro-actively learn new ways of working, own their performance and play a pivotal role in creating empathy, awareness, trust and psychological safety for everyone.
Why the tools are needed
- 40% of UK businesses have seen an increase in demand for flexible working since 2020 (CIPD)
- Increasing flexible working opportunities could open up work opportunities for 1.3m people (Centre for Economics and Business Research)
- Diversity of people brings diversity of skills and experience. It delivers richer creativity, better problem solving and greater flexibility to environmental changes. The potential benefit to the UK economy is estimated to be £24 billion a year, which represents 1.3% of GDP. (McGregorSmith Review)
- 65% of UK professionals report feeling worried about saying the wrong thing at work, and the tools help to break down these barriers to inclusion. (Involve)
- Aspirational targets don’t always lead to culture change.
