A great deal of wasted time and expense can occur when workplaces “reinvent the wheel” when it comes to implementing flexible work programs. Small businesses can now take advantage of our extensive experience with family friendly work arrangements and benefit from the cost savings that our Toolkit provides. For further details contact Flexibility At Work on Tel: (02) 9402 4741

When a business contacts Flexibility At Work to assist with their Work & Family Program the usual starting point is a Work/Life audit. (Module 1 of the Toolkit). This is a survey and consultation process. The results of this audit will form the basis of the individual business work/life needs analysis. The Toolkit is a very cost effective way of obtaining the support, tools, guidelines, policies, training and resources needed to successfully implement Work & Family arrangements.

client feedback
"I wanted to thank you for your help with our Worklife Audit process and to let you know it has changed our business
in a positive way as staff have more flexibility which in turn helps productivity. We have found your services invaluable."
Director, JMacgraphics

“Flexibility at Work assisted us with the completion of the Work/Life audit process.
Throughout the process we found it a pleasure to deal with Kerry and am sure the work
completed went a long way to maximizing our chances of and ultimately ensuring our successful application.
Sincerely, thank you Kerry.” Brendan McKenzie CFP Dip FP, Genesys Wealth Advisers Ltd

“Flexibility At Work facilitated with my staff a work/life audit which ultimately assisted our
business in deciding what types of policies and guidelines we put in place. Without the assistance
of Flexibility At Work my job would have been so much harder, Kerry was understanding of the needs
of the business and the staff and remained impartial. Thank you Kerry for making this process far
easier than I ever thought it could be." Sharlene Cohen, Director, Property Works Pty Ltd (ACT & NSW)

Case Study – Implementing Flexible Work Practices
Interview with Sharlene Cohen, Director, Property Works Pty Ltd

Why did your company seek help with the implementation of your flexible work practices?

Though we had a range of staff work/life options available, these were on an ad hoc basis. We realised that to fully achieve the business benefits of our flexible work practices we needed a systematic approach to staff consultation on these issues and to formalise these arrangements with clear policies and guidelines. Our Work/Life Audit Process, facilitated by specialist consultancy Flexibility At Work, showed that although the majority of staff felt that we were building a culture where work/life balance is valued, we also needed to ensure that all staff felt that their work/life needs were considered, that everyone knew about the options available and how to submit a proposal for flexible work arrangements. The plan was to achieve this through written polices and guidelines and a systematic approach.

Also because of the specialist nature of some of the roles within our business, it can be difficult to find these employees. We understood that to be seen as an employer of choice, that values employees’ work/life needs, would help to attract such staff. We needed to formalise our arrangements to achieve this.

What steps did you take?

The Work/Life Audit, consultation process and report provided by Kerry Fallon Horgan from Flexibility At Work was very valuable to the business by ensuring we understood our employees’ work/life balance needs.

Flexibility At Work provided us with A Flexible Workplace Policy, Part-Time Work Guidelines, Home Based Work Guidelines and Job Sharing Guidelines. These policies and guidelines provide our current and future employees with information on the types of flexible work practices available at Property Works, what employees need to consider when entering a flexible work arrangement, how this will benefit them and the business, a step-by-step approach to attaining work/life options and how to successfully sustain these practices.

How has your company benefitted from implementing flexible work practices?

Our flexible workplace policies, guidelines and work/life consultation processes help Property Works to achieve a sustainable flexible workplace culture that will benefit all of the staff as well as having bottom line business benefits. Introducing and formalising our work/life balance practices will enhance our happy, high performing workplace culture. If people are happy to come to work and feel they have a balanced lifestyle, this leads to high staff retention and lower costs associated with employee turnover.

Employee satisfaction at work and less stress due to a reduction in work /life conflict also means better customer service. Our business bottom line is a function of our customer service and customer satisfaction. So it is vital to Property Works that we have engaged, fresh, flexible employees that can provide the best possible service to our customers. Our flexible work policies and practices will enable this. Our commitment to the work/life balance needs of our employees will positively impact motivation and loyalty, which will assist in increased productivity and business revenue.

It is also fantastic for our business to be perceived in the market place as an employer of choice because of our flexibility arrangements. It is expected that this will place us ahead of other employers when a candidate is making an employment decision and may ultimately give Property Works a better quality candidate. Our Policies and Guidelines will also ensure compliance with the flexibility requirements of the new National Employment Standards.

What lessons have you learned from the implementation process?

Have an effective consultation process with the staff and advise them of the benefits for them in implementing the flexibility arrangements. It is important to engage the services of an experienced independent provider. We found that our provider, Flexibility At Work, has the specialist knowledge needed to successfully implement flexible work practices and the work/life coaching experience which allows the staff to be fully comfortable that they can discuss their work/life needs and issues with someone independently.

For more information contact Flexibility At Work on T: (02) 9402 4741 or email kerry@flexibility.com.au

Small Business Flexible Work Practice Case Studies

Benbro Electronics is a Work & Family Award Winner in the Small Business Category

Though Benbro has a workforce of only 20, the diversity attests to their willingness to find the right person for the job and then design the work around that person. The staff range in age from 19 to 74 years, have culturally diverse backgrounds and 40% have an intellectual or physical disability.

Benbro’s initiatives include:

Their focus on work and family balance has resulted in excellent staff loyalty and retention, an impressive workplace safety record with no accidents resulting in days lost in over 21 years, and increased revenue due to reputation and repeat customer business.

Turning On Flexible Employment - A Case Study on TakeABreak.com.au

Currently employing a staff of 12 employees,TakeABreak.com.au has been growing strongly over the last five years, and this growth has been fuelled in part by the flexible employment options built into their human resource policies.

Key work/life issues affecting employees and how TakeABreak identified them

TakeABreak employees, like employees in most organisations, have widely varying needs. Regular group and individual discussions are used to identify ways that the business can better support its staff. The most important work/life issues arising from these are:

“Employees need to be able to control the amount and timing of their work. Sometimes they want to do more work, sometimes they need to give priority to other things and do less work. So the ability to schedule their work to the right times and durations is very important to staff,” says Penny Young, Joint Chief Executive Officer (Marketing).

Key work/life balance initiatives

Work/life issues are a fundamental aspect of the culture of TakeABreak.com.au. The company's founders decided that creating a genuinely good place to work was a central part of their vision for TakeABreak.com.au.

TakeABreak's business systems are engineered from the ground up to enable work/life balance:

Communication strategies to raise awareness of work/life balance issues with employees

Communication of TakeABreak’s work/life policies and approach begins with the recruitment process. They emphasise work/life balance in job advertisements, and explain in detail their approach as part of the interview process. They seek employees who understand and value the approach - right from the start.

The most important element of communication is visibly putting policies into practice. “It is easy to say you're flexible on working hours, but when you consistently implement this, staff are empowered and are much more likely to ask if they have a need which is not being met,” says Craig Davis, Joint Chief Executive Officer (Operations).

Integrating work/life balance into day-to-day operations

Realistic expectations of the needs of staff needs for time off and flexibility are built into TakeABreak’s business plans. The management team considers impact on the working environment and work/life balance for staff before making any substantial change to the business plans.

TakeABreak’s recruitment strategy emphasises offering genuine flexibility and a friendly (and professional) working environment as a major competitive advantage in recruiting the best people. “We believe this has gained us staff who are more motivated, and more skilled than we would otherwise have been able to attract,” says Davis.

Where a staff member has a crisis and needs to change their working times or other aspects of work at short notice, TakeABreak’s policy is to offer as much flexibility as possible. This would include granting leave at short notice - due to smart business systems this can usually be done with little impact on customer service. Occasionally this results in a senior manager doing front line customer support, but this is regarded as a good thing in terms of keeping in touch and ensuring that the business is staffed at a level where this need is rare. The willingness of senior management to step in rather than push staff to work in ways that conflict with their family needs shows a true commitment to putting work/life balance principles into practice.

Outcomes including benefits for employees and for TakeABreak

TakeABreak sees a number of specific benefits that are attributable to flexible employment options:

“We believe that our work/life policies also benefit TakeABreak - primarily by building high staff motivation and loyalty.” says Davis “We are often able to attract an extremely high calibre of experience than otherwise would have been the case, simply by providing flexible employment options”.

Customer satisfaction is another benefit. With a number of staff working on a part-time basis, their approach to customers is generally fresh; they are not tired out after sitting 8 hours straight at a computer, nor stressed by tight deadlines and working in an unfriendly call centre environment. This positively impacts the quality of their interaction with customers. TakeABreak regularly surveys customers and find very high (industry leading) levels of satisfaction. The most recent results showed 94% of respondents would recommend TakeABreak.com.au to their friends.

Finally, TakeABreak.com.au's business success has been outstanding. They recently won the NSW Tourism Award in the Tourism Marketing category for the third year in a row, and were inducted into the Hall of Fame. They were awarded a High Commendation in the 2007 National Work and Family Awards (ACCI, BCA) and were NSW State Finalists in the Telstra Business Awards.

For the last five years,TakeABreak.com.au has been one of the top ten websites in the highly competitive destinations and accommodation category, revenue growth in the past year was over 100%, and TakeABreak.com.au was reviewed by the Sunday Herald Sun as 'one of the best websites to "find an escape" '. “While it seems that at times we put our people ahead of profit, our profits are strengthened by our approach,” adds Davis.

For more information, go to www.TakeABreak.com.au

This is an abridged version of the www.TakeABreak.com.au Case Study. Access further details here

Telecommuting - David's Story

David works at a company that employs 15 people in Sydney. It sells post-production systems for film and television. It offers service, support and training. David’s job is to provide technical support over the phone.

David lives in Penrith, which is 57 km away from his office. He was spending three hours a day getting to and from work until one day he rang Telstra and got chatting with the operator. She said she was in Broken Hill, half a state away from where he wanted information. He started to think about the time he wasted travelling and the fact that he too could do his job fromanywhere. He did not have to be in his office. If he were to work from home three days a week, that would give himan extra three hours a day he could spend with his wife and three children.

David didn’t know anyone who worked from home.There was no-one in his office who was doing it. David was scared to suggest such a radical change to work patterns. He had no model to follow, but after he had collected as much information as he could he put his case to his manager. His manager could see the sense in it and took the idea to the CEO, who also had no problem with it. It was decided to give David a trial, working from home for three days a week for two weeks. There were some communication problems (e.g. diverting calls) but these were quickly sorted out and after the two weeks’ trial period David continued to work from home for three days a week.

To do his job David requires the specialized workplace system on computer and a phone. He installed the computer system and a second phone line at home. He has a modem, which means he can dial into the server at the office to access the phone bill. David comes into the office two days per week. He says he likes to do this as it means that people know he is still around. It makes him feel he is still part of a larger organisation, and it instils a sense of teamwork when staff all have the opportunity to be together. He does not think that he could work five days from home for these reasons.

David can now have breakfast and lunch with his wife and children. When he worked from the office he used to leave at 6 a.m. every day to beat some of the traffic; his family was still asleep. Now he can also spend time during the day with his children, and he makes up work time after they are asleep.

Problems? There have been some technical hitches but these have been sorted out as they occurred. David was worried about whether the company’s insurance would cover the expensive equipment that he took home. The company’s financial controller reassured him that it did.

Because David is working only two days in the office, he works more hours on those days for the company than he did when he worked five days in the office. He arrives at 7.30–8 a.m. and leaves at 5.30–6 p.m. But the days that he works at home he often starts at 9.30–10 a.m. He works odd hours at home so he doesn’t slow the system down when he logs in. It is possible for David to organise his hours to suit himself. The only requirement that his company has is that he is contactable by phone to deal with anyone that requires information or has a problem with the equipment from 8 a.m. to 11 p.m. seven days a week. For this he has a pager. His phone in the office is diverted to his home phone or to the pager so he never misses a call. One work day he needed to pay the car registration and go to see the school teacher, and he simply diverted the calls to his pager. One stressful day David needed to get out of the house and ‘chill out’, so he went for a walk in the fresh air and simply took the pager and the mobile phone with him.

When his son comes home from school at 4 p.m. he and David can go into the backyard and kick the ball around or practise his Reader, something David can never do when he is working in the office, as by the time he gets home he is too exhausted. The work itself is mentally draining and after he adds the driving and the distance, some days he gets home and is just a ‘shell’.

David’s workplace conducts annual employee reviews where performance criteria are agreed to. He does not require supervision as he knows what he is expected to achieve; if it is not done, the company will know about it soon enough.

David is a happy employee. He puts in a lot more hours at home and in the office than he was doing before he acquired this flexibility. He says he is now more productive and more committed to his employer

Flexible Working - Debbie's Story

Debbie works as personal assistant to the general manager of an Australian film production company. The company employs 20 permanent staff and up to 100 contractors at any one time. At the interview for the job she made it clear that she needed flexibility so she could pursue her other interest, sculpture. Debbie took the job on the basis that she receive six weeks’paid leave so she could undertake her art. She organises her time off around her work commitments to sculpt.

Debbie says she considers her job even more flexible than she expected it would be when she started. She says there is strong loyalty among the employees because of the mutual respect for personal and private time. Everyone who works there, including the principals, realises that the employees have a life outside of work, and everyone helps out when they can.

Employees sometimes care for each other’s children and if children come into the office there is a room set aside that they can play in, or read or sleep. Once Debbie brought her 10-year-old son, Maxx, to work with her when her child care arrangements ‘got screwed up’, and her boss insisted that she go home and be with Maxx as he thought that was more important than being at work. He made it clear that he did not mind Maxx being there but that it was a priority for her to be with him rather than to be at work.

Debbie’s boss wanted to restrict his working life as much as possible to the hours between 9 a.m. and 5 p.m. To help him do this he employs other people to work these times and is therefore encouraged to go home when everyone else is leaving.

If Debbie is running late in the morning she rings in before 9.30 a.m. to give her estimated time of arrival. If she arrives late she makes up the time at lunch or stays back if possible. There is no pressure to arrive on time or make up the time. It’s acknowledged that if you’re needed on weekends or needed to work back you will take time off in lieu. Everyone works out their own time off.

Debbie says the company totally accommodates employee’s personal lives. Rather than count the hours that people are there, they just expect the job to be done. Debbie responds to the faith and respect she gets from the company by being available when needed and working hard. Even when she was ill she worked from her home fax, because she knew it was a busy time. She also helped out looking after her boss’ son when his child care fell through in a crucial time.

Debbie says that she was able to negotiate flexibility by being honest about her needs, which suited the way the company was structured. She feels she can approach her boss at any time and discuss her changing needs.

Small businesses can now take advantage of our extensive experience with helping workplaces implement their family friendly work arrangements and benefit from the cost savings that our Small Business Work & Family Toolkit provides. For further details contact Flexibility At Work on Tel: (02) 9402 4741

Video: Small Business Owner, Rob Davidson recommends the Flexibility At Work work/life programs

Further access to training programs

Further Work/Life Balance Resources to assist you with your Work & Family arrangements

"I have been a subscriber to your newsletters for a quite a while and as a small business owner in the HR space I find them useful for both myself in managing my own business and for my clients. Really practical and useful advice so thanks. I have also seen your articles in some publications trying to get the word out about the benefits of flexibility in the workspace. Good on you!" E Rasul, Director, Effision HR

"You'll be glad to know I have referenced your web site in our company Part-Timers Teamroom, and people are quite enthused about the good articles there. Also, I have just purchased your book and hope to use some of your ideas in the Flexible Work meetings I am running quarterly for part-timers at IBM GSA ! Thanks for your input - I look forward to reading the book over the weekend."
K. Payten, IBM GSA Business Operations Manager

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