With the unemployment rate hovering around the 5.5%, finding and keeping great people is vital to organisational success.  If a good employee needs to work flexibly after returning from parental leave or for carers leave or for some other equally important and valid reason, it’s important to implement this smoothly both for them and for others in the organisation. 

To follow are some key strategies for implementing flexible work successfully you need to consider.

1. Get designing: Integrate flexibility into job descriptions, job and work design, and teams; integrate flexibility into performance reviews & development plans; assess performance on outcomes, and recognise outcomes can be met in different ways; treat flexibility as a management deliverable; explore possibilities of technology and alternative work strategies.

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Sometimes, even HR struggle when they are on the other side of the interview table.  Interviews are stressful, not many of us enjoy the experience, but they are unfortunately a necessary evil.

Whilst many people prepare for questions they might be asked, they often neglect preparing for questions to ask.

This is a critical mistake in your job search process, as asking good questions at an interview demonstrates:

• You are genuinely engaged in the conversation
• You are interested in the company and the role
• You are enthusiastic about the role and happy to let the interviewer know it
• You are knowledgeable about the company – this is where your pre-interview research becomes important
• You have come prepared and are serious about the role

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Have you ever worked out how much it costs to replace a member of staff?   I have, and I can tell you it’s expensive. Cost of Turnover Calculator

When calculating the cost we often forget to take into account some of the hidden costs such as; needing to have a contractor to fill in, the time it takes in writing an advertisement, how many hours of our time it sucks up in screening applicants then coordinating interviews let alone actually interviewing prospective new employees.

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