Leading the way in flexible working
Article Type: HR at work From: Strategic HR Review, Volume 9, Issue 4
Short case studies and research papers that demonstrate best practice in HR
Remote Employment is a recruitment website specializing in flexible and home-based jobs. In recognition of the success some organizations are achieving in this area, in terms of the benefits to the environment, business productivity and employees’ quality of life, in 2009 Remote Employment launched the Remote Worker Awards in association with BT Business. The award scheme aims to raise awareness of remote and home working as an alternative to redundancy and the traditional nine-to-five office routine.
Flexible working opportunities can allow working parents, carers and many people unable to work in the “traditional” way, to continue a valuable, challenging and enjoyable career without having tough decisions over childcare and work/life balance. The award organizers wanted to prove that life does not have to revolve around a job location – you can achieve just as much, if not more, no matter where your office is located.
Exceeding financial forecasts via remote working
The winner of “The Remote Employer Award” was Cuddledry from Nether Stowey in Somerset, UK. Cuddledry manufactures and supplies towels and accessories for babies and children, employing nine home-based personnel. It recognizes that there are many people no longer able to work full time in senior roles due to childcare commitments and has used home working to the advantage of all.
The biggest challenge the founders faced when setting up the business in October 2006 was working out how they were going to give the company the commitment and time it needed to succeed, without their children having to go into full-time childcare. They created a business model based around their children that used remote working and meant having an office in “cyber-space”,rather than a central physical location. They believe that by using home working they have challenged the assumption that a lifestyle or remote working business model cannot be a highly profitable business and attractive investment or acquisition. Over the last two years, Cuddledry has become one of the fastest growing companies in the south west of England, it has been named Somerset Business of the Year and it has exceeded all targets and financial projections.
The Cuddledry range is now sold successfully in over 30 countries worldwide,with sales ever increasing. The company has achieved significant financial success far quicker than projected: a comparison of the original five-year projection with actual performance shows it has exceeded projections almost 12 months ahead of plan. Projected turnover in year three was £450,000 but in fact Cuddledry all but hit that figure at the end of year two (turnover was£425,000, instead of the projected £258,000). The target for year three was readjusted to £600,000 (the previous target for year four) and the company is on track to hit and exceed this also.
Cuddledry was chosen as the award winner because it recognizes that there are many people no longer able to work full time in senior roles due to childcare or other commitments. Cuddledry has pioneered remote and home working and built its business model around this modern approach. It has successfully used home working to the advantage of both the business and its team, demonstrating that home businesses can achieve fast growth and financial success often above office-based equivalents.
Attracting top class talent
The runner-up for the award was Achieving Quality Leads (AQL), from Chiswick in London, which employs 12 people. AQL specializes in arranging high-level appointments with senior decision makers over the phone. When the company began trading in 2004, the objective was to create a remote lead generation and marketing business, where all staff as well as the two directors work from home. The objective was to keep overheads low and reflect the savings in higher pay to attract highly qualified people, who may once have had traditional professional jobs, but either could not or chose not to continue with them, due to family or other commitments or because they did not want to commute or work full time.
The company’s remote working proposition is highly attractive,especially to women with families, people made redundant or who are retired, and those who want more control over their work and home life balance. The directors believed the model would be highly suitable for professional women with families, and it has proven so. In early 2009 AQL was named the top British small company (under 100 employees) for bringing women back into the workforce at a Downing Street ceremony with UK prime minister, Gordon Brown, and cabinet minister for women, Harriet Harmon.
Among AQL’s consultants are a former HR executive who is now also a magistrate, a former barrister with a young family and an IT sales executive who is now a single mother with three children, one of whom has special needs. A number of AQL consultants have been with the company between three and five years and clients often comment that they feel with AQL they are being represented by a quality of worker they could not afford to have in house.
AQL was chosen as the runner-up because it proactively recruits and trains only home-based workers, and had to overcome significant technical hurdles to provide them with single site telephony and IT capabilities. AQL’s commitment to this way of working was shown to be essential in attracting highly qualified people who are motivated to bring success to AQL clients.
Overcoming the challenges
Implementing remote and flexible working can involve challenges, such as those met by Compariter, a company that specializes in bringing together organizations and suppliers. The company started from an office in Surrey, UK and recruiting suitable telephone researchers was difficult. Its experience showed there were limited numbers of people available in the local area to do the type of work required. One of its long term researchers moved to Spain so rather than lose her accumulated knowledge and skills it kept her on by enabling her to access the company database via the Internet and make her research calls to UK companies using Voice over IP (VOIP).
Realizing this could be done for all its staff, Compariter became a wholly virtual business. Customers were not affected since all transactions are done online. One problem it had when everyone worked from the office was achieving a balance between ensuring researchers made enough telephone calls and keeping them motivated. This would be a greater challenge with people working from home.
The issue was resolved by recruiting people to work on a self-employed basis. Although this made it harder to find the right type of person since it requires good self-motivation, the work was available to people anywhere with a good Internet connection and the organization was able to tap into a larger diverse pool of people. The company has a staff blog to provide a place to exchange ideas and frustrations and to create some sense of camaraderie.
Making flexibility work
The key to overcoming the challenges associated with implementing a remote and flexible model resides typically in the individuals that companies either move into a home-based situation or recruit to work. The ability to identify individuals that can work in an isolated situation without direct supervision is a key component in successful flexible working. Companies considering this way of working should focus their efforts on determining, through personality assessments and other tools, whether an individual is capable of succeeding in a remote environment.
In addition, a company should ensure that virtual supervision and support is in place. Companies that are not willing or able to invest in this infrastructure have been less successful than those that have carefully planned out the transition. Lastly, it is imperative that a monitoring and measurement system is in place. The company’s ability to monitor employees’attendance and performance is paramount.
Many ambassadors for home working have stated that allowing smarter working options turned out to be the vital ingredient of their business because they found exceptionally talented people across the country who wanted to work from home, whereas if they had an office they would have recruited locally and may not have found as wide a pool of talent.
Paula WynneRemote Employment
About the author
After a career as a publicist and marketer, Paula Wynne is now an award-winning businesswoman, an online entrepreneur, woman’s ambassador,speaker and panelist. She aims to help other women to work flexibly as she has needed to do and Remote Employment is her vision for bringing a better quality work life to working parents across the UK. She is a SEEDA Women’s Enterprise Ambassador. Paula Wynne can be contacted at: paula@remoteemployment.com
