How to manage flexible working practices is a pressing issue for agency-employee relationships and devising practical solutions depends on sharing best practice. The Cannes Lions panel ‘Change The Stats: Fix The Flex or Fail’ surfaced useful advice and insights on the topic.
The session, held at the Empower Café, was chaired by Alex Goat, CEO of Livity, and featured Asad Dhuna, Founder and CEO of The Unmistakeables, Propeller CEO Kieran Kent, Katie Langdon, Founder and Creative Director of Skin and Blister and Sophie Maunder, ex VCCP and Founder of MATRI Coaching, which supports mothers before, during and after maternity leave.
The initial focus looked at approaches to help working mothers, who have so much experience, talent and knowledge to offer, return to their organisations. With 83% of UK female employees moving to part-time or flexible working roles after maternity leave, Sophie gave specific advice for returning mothers including, “be very clear about what you are asking for – how it’s going to work and how it’s going to mean you can still do your job… because businesses can feel paranoid that flexibility is one way only and to make it work properly and reciprocally it has to be worth it for both sides.”
She pointed out that working parents need to be willing to try and adjust their working days or hours on the rare occasion that the business requires it, for instance on a new business pitch or important client meeting. “You need to be signalling with clear optics that you are very engaged in your career, and you can still flex your schedule when the business requires you to.”
Balancing client and working parent needs
The panel spent some time unpacking the meaning behind ‘flexible working’. Asad challenged this framing because of negative connotations- “It conjures something in someone's mind about who it's for and who it's not for” - and suggested a better positioning is, “How do you get work done to meet the client's objectives?”
Katie’s business is flexible on working hours but client deadlines are sacrosanct, so “as long as the deadlines are met and everyone understands the milestones in the middle, then essentially everyone can work to the deadline and not to the hours of the day.”
Kieran explained how Propeller’s policy was hybrid and based on ‘eight days a month’ in the office - but that coordination was necessary to get best value out of office days. Employees were steered to make effective use of the time with face-to-face client meetings or attending events. He pointed out the value of personal interaction for team cohesion, building confidence in younger staff members and mental health.
“We're in a very competitive industry. If you want to retain your best talent and you want to recruit good people in the future, I think if you are saying five days a week in the office, it's not really the way to go now. But a combination of remote and in-person working days gives staff a healthy balance.”
The importance of generous paternity leave is also integral to bringing working parents back to the fold – Propeller recently introduced very well received upgraded maternity and paternity policies for all staff in the UK and US teams.
Actionable advice
- Leaders need to model behaviours and tell teams where they are and if they are working themselves.
- Don’t just give flexibility to women, it must apply to the men in a team as well.
- Work with the individual to see what you can flex in your systems. Everyone needs to reflect on the new rhythms and patterns of modern working life – for instance, this might include checking emails on the way home or after dinner in return for flexibility during the day.
- For remote working do encourage a few minutes of informal chat at the start of conversations.
- Try and make the time spent in the office useful e.g. set up fixed days for line management meetings when people must attend.
- Keep trying new ways of flexible working and tools, keep experimenting to see what works and what doesn’t in your business.
- Can you adjust paternity leave, so that it can be taken in tranches? This will help women when they first return to the workplace.
- Trust your team to be productive when working from home - you can manage employees in the same way whether it’s remote or in the office.