Should companies implement Flexible Working? What are the options?

February 1, 2022
The impact of the Covid-19 pandemic has forced organisations to adopt Flexible Working and enable employees to deliver on their objectives in a flexible way. Flexible Working allows employees to determine their work patterns in line with their personal circumstances within a set policy. Employees can "weave" their work and personal demands resulting in success both at work and at home.  

Why is it critical now?
The demands for a better Work-Life balance has pushed organisations and Governments to make changes at the workplace that support employee wellbeing. Organisations now seek to accommodate individual requirements from employees in an organised way as this does not compromise the quality of their deliverables. 

The Covid-19 pandemic showed organisations the benefit of flexible working, especially remote working, and in turn organisations are making this part of their working pattern. Employees now have the option of choosing between employers who offer flexible working from those that do not. The SHRM argues that, even in the absence of a pandemic, flexible work arrangements can improve recruitment and retention efforts, augment organizational diversity efforts, encourage ethical behavior and help the organization's efforts to be socially responsible. 

What forms can Flexible Working take?
Some approaches to flexible working are discussed below:

List of Services

Challenges to Flexible Working

Flexible working has been in place in different formats for a long time but its adoption is now more prevalent bringing to light some its challenges. 


i) Flexible working culture:

Flexible working success requires line managers that can manage diverse workforces with different work patterns. Managers must support continued performance for employees opting for flexible working arrangements. Employees must be comfortable with flexibility and know that this does not impact how their performance is reviewed.


ii) Remote Working Setting: 

The work environment when working remotely should guarantee connectivity to allow for accessibility and collaboration with other work colleagues. It must guarantee security of the organisations’ physical and intellectual assets. Organisations must communicate the basic environment that is ideal for remote working.


iii) Uneven Applicability: 

Flexible working provides progressive changes to the workplace which has been welcomed by most employees. There are roles that however have not benefitted from some of these changes due to their nature. Organisations need to be creative to ensure that roles that do not benefit from increased flexibility are recognised in some way.


Our Thoughts

At Inspired Dimensions we are strong advocates for flexible working. The modern workplace should not only seek to optimise employee performance but should also equally support employee success away from the workplace. It has been proven that flexibility can increase productivity and is now a major attraction tool for new recruits.


What’s your take? Is flexibility feasible in the long-term? Kindly leave your comments below. 

How accurate are your Job Descriptions?

By Inspired Dimensions • May 1, 2022
Clarity of what is expected for each job is critical for any incumbent to be successful. The Job Description (JD) provides details on the responsibilities and the priority areas for any given role. Collectively, all JDs within an organisation must encompass what the organisation seeks to achieve. Who decides on the content? The details of a JD are prepared following input from various stakeholders that include the incumbent, line management and other stakeholders that work with the role being described. At Executive level, the Board must ensure that the JDs are in alignment with what the organisation strategy. The responsible departmental manager is empowered to make approvals to new JDs and any changes to JDs from their area. The employee must also contribute and always keep an updated copy. Human Resources provides training and guidelines for JDs to be accurately written and that all the relevant content is included. Audit may conduct checks on compliance across the organisation. Updating JDs By their nature, JDs are “live documents”, which must be edited whenever there are significant changes to the roles covered. The employee and the line manager have a responsibility of agreeing on changes as they become effective, add them to the JD and together sign them off. Both parties must keep an updated version of the JD. In some situations, organisations are forced to update or draft new JDs, these include: ◎ when placing adverts for attracting new applicants to a role ◎ as an audit requirement The accuracy of the content can be queried when a JD is not prepared as a tool to aid employee performance but for other reasons. JDs prepared for recruitment are intended to attract top level candidates which may result in some of the responsibilities being inflated. JDs prepared for audit purposes tend to be minimalistic in nature, to only satisfy the audit requirements. JDs must be kept updated to ensure employees are fully aware of what is expected of them and not updating as a reaction to some external requirement. How accurate is the JD content? The accuracy of a JD is a reflection of the thoroughness of the process followed when writing the JD. Individuals tend to emphasise responsibilities that they enjoy or those that they feel make their roles more important. Overlaps in responsibilities are natural for roles that work together but clarity on what each role does must be documented. For completeness, each JD must be reviewed together with that of its line manager, its direct reports, peer roles and other roles that are in close contact to ensure that overlaps are acceptable and also that nothing has been missed. Primary content from a JD must be obtained from the line manager and the incumbent. Input can also be obtained from other stakeholders that have close contact with the role. The line manager has the responsibility of verifying stakeholders input as this might not be in line with the plans for the role. What should go into a Job Description? The Wright State University states that a JD not only describes the position’s responsibilities, it sets the foundation for recruiting, developing and retaining talent and also sets the stage for optimum work performance by clarifying responsibilities, expected results, and evaluation of performance. Attached below is a JD framework that encompasses all the critical areas that must be included.

What is the best way to prepare an employee remuneration offer?

By Inspired Dimensions • April 1, 2022
The Covid-19 pandemic has impacted the way work is delivered resulting in significant adjustments as organisations adapt to the changing environment. Employees are now demanding more flexibility at work whilst organisations seek to return to pre-pandemic profit levels. A key question is how to competitively price job offers in the new environment? At the core the basic steps of deciding the salary offers remain the same. 1) Obtain Data on Market Salaries It is critical that you are aware of what your competition is paying for similar skills before deciding on what you want to offer. Participation in salary surveys provides this analysis with the information quality improving based on the survey participants. Purchasing off-the-shelf survey reports can provide some guidance but with limited accuracy / reliability. 2) Decide on the Salary Budget A firm budget on how much an organisation spends on employee reward must be put in place and communicated to relevant departments. Awareness must be raised to all decision makers on what is affordable and what is not. Salary increases, recruitment for any vacant position and promotions should be guided by how much money is available to spend for each department. 3) Build Salary Ranges Salary ranges are an effective way of managing employee reward as this easier to align to the organisation budget. The ranges should provide room to make inflation increases, adjustments for experience, and performance related increases without exceeding the budget. For larger and where it is administratively feasible, a number of salary ranges can be built to reflect the different skillset employed by the organisation. This makes the ranges more competitive as they are agile to respond to different market demand for different skills. 4) Individual Expectations For new offers, after deciding the salary range for each job, the next step will be to consider the candidate's expectations. Offers must be priced within the organisation range and any candidates requesting higher amounts should be negotiated to within the limits in order to preserve internal equity. Exceptions should be very minimal and require stricter governance before approval. It is important that no offers should be below the range for suitably qualified candidates even if the candidate has asked for a lower amount. Organisations have a responsibility to ensure transparency and fairness which means that if an employee has under-priced themselves this should be corrected and not taken advantage of. The Pros and Cons of Some of the Benchmarking Approaches The decision on how much to offer employees (new hire or existing) is a balance of 3 factors which work well in combination. We highlight some of the key pros and cons for each of the 3 approaches. Internal Comparisons Pro: This is key to ensure that the role is rewarded in line with existing hierarchy within the organisation and hence results in an offer that is internally consistent. This makes budget control easier. Con: This might miss the fact that salaries for the role could have significantly changed on the market as this might not reflect in the internal hierarchy. There is a risk of making an uncompetitive salary offer. External Benchmarking: Salary Surveys Pro: Salary surveys provide an independent analysis of market pay and hence this will give reliable insight on externally competitive offers. This approach increases the ability to attract new employees. Con: The internal worth of a particular skill may be different from the market perception resulting in a misalignment of what the market pays and how much the organisation wants to pay. Candidate Proposal Pro: A candidate proposal gives a good indication of how the individual values themselves, it provides the level of pay that will make them accept the role. Con: In many cases this tends to be overly inflated as most candidates want to draw as much economic benefit as possible from the employment relationship. Our Thoughts Salary offers must reflect the value that the employer places on a job and should be decided following the guidance of an updated Reward Policy. The market data and the candidate feedback should be used as balancing factors but the primary point should be the value the organisation receives from the role. What’s your take, do you feel there is enough transparency being applied in salary offer decisions? Kindly leave comments below.

Performance Management is not only for Employee Reward

By Inspired Dimensions • March 1, 2022
Employee Performance Management (EPM) continues to attract debate on whether the time, effort and money invested into the process justifies the outcomes. Opponents of EPM argue that it is difficult to be consistent, especially for larger organisations, where the decision making is delegated to more junior or inexperienced line managers. For most organisations, the main observable impact of EPM is an increase in salary or a higher bonuses. This results in poor appreciation of its wider value of EPM as organisations become fixated on linking performance assessment outcomes to reward. The end-of-year EPM process focusing on performance assessments/ratings, salary increases and bonuses award can take up to 4 months if not managed well. This creates an anxious and unhealthy work environment as employees seek to make "last minute" efforts to influence the EPM outcomes. Successful EPM goes beyond just ratings and reward but creates strong links to other HR practices. i) Employee Engagement A well-managed EPM approach provides employees with clarity of expectations as well as timely feedback on progress being made. This is complimentary to employee engagement in creating a culture in which employees are excited and satisfied with their work. Interesting insights from a survey conducted by Harvard Business Review Analytic Services on 717 Business Leaders showed that: ◎ 75% Strongly agree that engaged employees tend to be higher performers ◎ 69% Strongly agree that it is difficult to improve performance without also improving engagement ii) Talent Management This is about adopting strategies to onboard, retain and deploy talented employees into high impact roles that significantly contribute to organisational success. EPM supports talent management processes for example: ◎ Succession Planning: Provide performance capability justification for succession candidates. ◎ Promotions : Setting minimum performance criteria for employees to qualify for promotion. iii) Managing Underperformance Proactive EPM requires line managers to hold frequent meetings with their employees providing constant feedback and support. Any challenges are hence addressed earlier and employees are supported to achieve success in their roles. Underperformance is managed by creating a distinct plan of measurable objectives to be completed by the employee. Failure of performance improvement under this setting triggers further action which could be, reappointment to a new role, change in responsibilities or exiting from the organisation. iv) Workforce Planning The CIPD UK defines workforce planning as the process of balancing labour supply (skills) against the demand (numbers needed). It includes analysing the current workforce, determining future workforce needs, identifying the gap between the present and the future, and implementing solutions so that an organisation can accomplish its mission, goals, and strategic plan. EPM is critical workforce planning tool as it provides performance data which can be utilised in making key decisions. Examples are: ◎ Redeployment: Moving employees to areas where their competence is stronger. ◎ Terminations: EPM can assist in deciding on redundancies in cases of skills surpluses. ◎ Promotions: Identifying employees who are ready for increased responsibilities. Workforce planning must enable improved organisational performance through better decisions on the future people needs of the organisation. v) Reward and Recognition Employee reward, when mismanaged, can create a culture of mistrust in an organisation. Reward decisions must be clearly understood and handled transparently. Employees need to know what is required of them if they desire to earn more. EPM provides a transparent framework to drive reward and recognition decisions. vi) Personal Growth and Development Progressive EPM incorporates individual growth objectives which are tracked during the performance cycle with feedback and coaching also provided. The key benefit is that employees are not only tracking how they are doing against key work objectives but they also have a view of how they are developing in line with their career goals. Our Thoughts EPM must be viewed from a wider perspective taking into account its impact across all elements of the employees employment journey with the organisation. Successful EPM at individual level is a key ingredient in achieving a collectively high performance culture in the whole organisation. What’s your take, what will make EPM for effective? Kindly share your comments below.
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