With both the graduate recruitment and holiday season in
full swing, SME directors who have chosen to invest in flexible
working technologies will be at the front of the queue to snap up
top quality employees, while affording themselves some
well-deserved time off.
This is all according to the findings of a survey BT
commissioned in April. YouGov surveyed 1,000 employers of between
two and 100 employees to measure employee attitudes to flexible
working. The aim of the survey was to establish the value of
flexible working to SMEs, for both employers and employees, in
terms of financial benefits, business benefits and work/life
benefits.
More than a third of SMEs have migrated to a converged voice and
data network, and improved productivity (52%) and increased
organisational flexibility (39%) are cited amongst the top three
benefits. However, attracting top employees and making some
attractive potential salary savings may also be on the horizon.
More than three-quarters of young people say it is important for
potential employers to offer flexible working options. The YouGov
research found that while flexible working is a valued employee
benefit across the age spectrum, almost two-thirds of 18 to
29-year-olds surveyed cited a better work/life balance as the main
benefit of working flexibly, followed by less stress and fewer
travel problems. The survey also found that 43% of 18 to
29-year-olds are willing to consider lower pay to work at home,
compared to 31% of the over 50s.
Beatriz Butsana-Sita, director, marketing propositions at BT
Business, believes that for these younger recruits “flexible
working technologies and practices are beginning to be seen as a
minimum requirement.
“They know they can have access to all this technology, and they
already know the technology well. They want to be able to enjoy
their leisure time but they are also prepared to work hard, and
have already had extensive technical experience gained at
university.
“Employers have to embrace this change and adopt the technology,
or feel the pain at some point.”
As well as attracting employees, Butsana-Sita believes flexible
working is key in retaining employees. At BT, where more than
75,000 employees are now flexible workers, with 11,000 of these
contractually based at home, there is an employee churn rate of
below 4% and the rate of return after maternity leave is 99%.
Perhaps not surprisingly, those working in London are most keen
to instil a better work/life balance, with 37% of respondents who
work in the capital prepared to forgo a pay rise in order to be
able to work flexible hours. Those in the North West and Yorkshire
and Humberside are least keen on the idea, with just 23% of workers
in each area prepared to consider it.
SME directors also recognise that flexible working policies can
positively impact their organisation, with 65% citing staff
motivation and 50% increased productivity as key reasons to adopt
them. The research also showed that 59% of SME directors believe
they are as able as large organisations to embrace a flexible
working culture.
The YouGov research also shows that the board directors of SMEs
feel far more comfortable and relaxed about taking a holiday if
they know that they can connect to the office. A third of the
directors of companies with between 10 and 49 employees say that
being able to keep in touch with their business either by e-mail or
the phone not only gives them peace of mind, but actually also
makes them feel more relaxed while on holiday.
Directors in Wales (55%), the South (38%) and the North East
(56%) said that staying connected gives them peace of mind and
therefore greater confidence to take a break. Almost a third of
company directors in the South and 29% of directors in Scotland
feel more able to take a holiday as a direct result of staying
connected while away.
A third of directors of UK companies with up to nine employees
feel more able to take a holiday because they can contact their
office while they are away. More than 25% of directors of larger UK
SMEs (classed as being those with between 10 and 100 staff) agree
that staying connected to the office gives them the greater
flexibility to take holiday.
Butsana-Sita says, “As government, industry and higher education
provide more support and opportunities for entrepreneurs to start
their own business, it’s important that those choosing this route
can take a break if they need to. Owner-managers are critical to a
firm’s success, but all too often they feel unable to get away
because their businesses are so reliant on them.”
She adds that smaller companies, with up to 10 employees, can
start to see a return on flexible working investment in just a few
months. “What’s important is for a company looking to adopt
flexible working and new technologies, to know in advance exactly
what they want to do,” she advises.
“For example, if you want a fully converged switch with private
services, that will be expensive. However, just because a company
isn’t large doesn’t mean they can’t work efficiently, and make use
of solutions that have been sized down accordingly.”
Flexible working is not a route to take lightly, however, and
Butsana-Sita advises that it’s worth sitting down with employees as
well as technical consultants.
“Think what you want to give employees access to and shop
around,” she advises. “Understand too exactly what you want to get
out of it, and then look to put a solution together.”
In a context where workers are all regular users of GSM phones,
Blackberries, SMS, PDAs, broadband is a minimum requirement.
“All of these are as standard for a sole trader as for a larger
company, and they are so easy to adopt. However, it’s not just
about the availability of the technology, it’s about the pricing
too, the whole wraparound proposal,” says Butsana-Sita.
With the price of the technology dropping all the time,
broadband and secure access are becoming commoditised, she
believes. “New companies are offering free broadband and the mobile
market is highly competitive; there is going to be more and more
choice in the market.”
Companies need to anticipate that flexible working means changes
in management structure and hierarchy. Line managers, therefore,
need to consider how to organise and manage staff meetings and
reports back from employees. There are also health and safety
considerations to take into account – the company is still
responsible for its employees.
“The perception that working from home means doing nothing
really has to be addressed,” says Butsana-Sita. “Often the
productivity of home workers is higher than those in an office.”
And productivity is the bottom line, she believes.
“SMEs want to be able to check their emails constantly, so they
don’t always have to return to the office. Employees have to be
able to achieve more and look as professional as the bigger
companies.”
But what about the many employees who are happy to travel to,
and work in, offices? Could they come under undue pressure to
accept wage cuts and enforced flexible working? “When it comes to
wages, the employer will always seek to get the best possible
employee without paying too much: it’s supply and demand,” says
Butsana-Sita.
“I don’t think there should be a wage disparity for those who
want to work from an office, but some people [as backed up by the
YouGov research] might be willing to take a lower wage in order to
have access to flexible working. Employers need to discuss this
with each worker.”
She also points to the current world political climate – after
attacks on New York, Madrid and London, some companies simply don’t
want their employees to be travelling to work, and flexible working
also offers a good fallback plan to keep a company functioning in
an emergency.
Getting the maximum possible services from their devices is
crucial to SMEs, and for Butsana-Sita it’s also key to
understanding the nature of convergence. “It’s a term that means
different things to different people,” she admits. “To me, it’s
about technology allowing customers to adopt flexible working with
access to voice and data. They can have internet and email over
broadband, but also data and voice too, which is a more recent
phenomenon. Even a sole trader can afford broadband with a
reasonable monthly cost, which can offer that,” she says.
“Larger companies will want switches for voice and data which
can also enable Lans. But convergence is about being able to
provide all sorts of services from one device; the solution will be
different according to the size of the company.”
What will be the next big development in converged technologies?
Butsana-Sita likes to refer to a recent conversation with a
technologist who said that “the dial tone was the single biggest
invention of the 20th century,” she says. “Now we want to know:
what’s going to be ‘the next dial tone?’ It’s hard to know what
more is to come, but we know we’ve only just scratched the
surface.
“There can be surprises - who thought SMS would be as popular as
it is? But I think we will start to move towards a way of working
that is almost virtual, where you can see, speak with and write to
someone via a screen or projection. It would all be hosted by
service providers so it would be wireless and wire-free.” What’s
for sure, she believes, is that “in two years, this conversation
will be totally different.”