What kind of organisation are you?

What motivated you as an organisation to start your flexible working journey?

Flexible working has always made good business sense to me because it allows us to access the best talent we can, and with what we can afford to pay as a small charity. The fact we work so closely with school pupils during the academic year means we’re always very quiet in the summer holiday period, so using term time roles helps us reduce salary costs across the year. We know many people like to have the school holidays off, or mostly-off, so it’s mutually symbiotic: we pay the same amount of money but get access to even better people who want that flexibility and in turn we maximise our capacity to deliver at the times of the year when we need it most.

How and when did you start introducing flex/more flex?

Since inception we’ve been flexible in that we’ve never mandated anyone to spend time in the office. We focus on outcomes, not presenteeism so people can generally work where they like. Our first two staff were full-time in 2016, and then our part-time and term-time roles followed in 2020.

We were supported in our journey by the positive experience of Geoff Leask, then CEO of Young Enterprise Scotland and on the contractual front by Clyde and Co. 

Flex today – what are you doing right now?

Of our ten staff, six work part-time. Four are term-time only, and of those, two work school hours. We define term-time as 0.8 FTE (those working only on days when the schools are open), and those who work school-hours within term-time as 0.64FTE.

So everyone can work from home when they want to, and everyone can take time out for appointments, or to collect kids etc without having to ask permission or use up annual leave as long as it does not impact delivery.
We are also an Accredited Living Wage and Disability Confident employer and have been for years.

What challenges have you faced?

With part-time workers it can sometimes be frustrating if someone has carried out the majority of a task and then is not able to complete it the following day, so that a second person has to pick up where the first left off.  But really that’s about planning and scheduling work better. And also about putting training and systems in place to ensure handovers are managed professionally. These things are sensible steps for any business anyway as they make it more resilient to staff change if fewer things are known only to one person.

Having more part-time workers also meant we had to streamline our onboarding process to stop it getting unwieldly on the HR and admin side. But we’ve done that now, and our onboarding process is better for everyone, regardless of whether they’re joining as full or part-time.

There are some software costs that we pay per user per month, so having part-time workers increases our costs. We hope that more software companies look at different usage models in the future, as we know some software companies did offer concurrent user licensing in the past, but Cloud based users tend to not have that.  We can’t solve that one!

Impact of flexible working

Flexible working has given us access to a higher calibre of staff by reaching a wider and deeper pool of talent, either those who personally welcome or require the flexibility but also by those who want to be aligned with a progressive organisation like SmartSTEMs.

It helps us retain good staff too. We know our staff are happy, and they value the flexibility they have and I believe they choose to stay with us in part because of that. When you factor in all the costs of someone losing interest in a role before they leave, and the time it takes someone new to get up to speed, as well as the costs of recruitment itself, you’re looking at losing the equivalent of a whole year’s salary.

There are benefits to our work being delivered by more part-time workers too. From a continuity perspective, in terms of service delivery, we are much improved by using more individuals to deliver the same number of overall hours. Charitable programmes can often rely on one person’s relationship with a single point of contact at a partner organisation. But this carries inherent risk because whenever someone is promoted, leaves or is just ‘too busy’, then the relationship has to begin again from scratch. With SmartSTEMs we wanted to build something more resilient and create multiple connections with our partners. Having more part-time staff helps us deliver that in a cost-effective way because we’re not paying full-time salaries.

The future of flex in your organisation

We’re already very flexible with SmartSTEMs but we are exploring more flexible working at Seric, particularly around term-time roles. This organisation isn’t entirely linked to school terms but we’re still quieter in the summer because so many people are on holiday.

Top tips for flex

You have to talk – and keep talking – to your staff. There are definitely generational differences in expectations about work and life. More mature workers sometimes get frustrated at the under-30s who want to bring their ‘authentic self’ to work and don’t feel they should bend to fit anything else. But if you have a conversation with people and find out what they would find useful, you’ll find common ground and the path to create a better shared culture for everyone.

Term-time working won’t work for every employer, but I suspect many who have the same quieter period in the summer as us, could and should explore what term-time roles could deliver for the business and its workforce. Remember it doesn’t need to be a full summer holiday off – it might be fewer days, or reduced hours, during school holidays. There are win-win compromises out there!

Some managers will have had a bad experience with someone working flexibly and not pulling their weight. But don’t let one bad apple put you off. The very vast majority of flexible workers are highly dedicated and conscientious, and on the basis of our experience at SmartSTEMs both your business and your teams stand to benefit.