Shaping Strategy: Flexible Working and Engagement

Understanding why you need to support your working parents (and increasingly carers) and then developing a co-ordinated strategy that delivers tangible benefits to the bottom line isn't easy. Different businesses and different business units have different needs.

Creating a genuinely supportive culture with the flexibility to keep everyone who combines work and family fully and continuously engaged is an ongoing challenge. We're not only experts at delivering solutions – we're also very good at helping define and develop the right strategy for both employer and employee.

No two employers are the same and whilst the broad aim of any "family friendly" policy will be similar the priorities will differ:

• Reduce employee absenteeism
• Maximise diversity value
• Improve return to work rates
• Increase relocation success
• Improve talent management
• Incentivise and motivate
• Increase engagement and productivity
• Reduce training and recruitment costs
• Improve staff wellbeing

Our Shaping Strategy service takes many different iterations from strategy inception to simply helping draft and analyse staff surveys. We know that sounds a bit broad!

For ease of reference it's safe to assume that the advice we deliver will fall under one or more of the following headings:

Demographics  |  Existing culture  |  Existing benefits  |  Business aims  |  Financial aims  |  What the workforce wants  |  The advice

Demographics

How much do organisations know about their workforce? What age and gender are they? Where do they live and what are their family commitments? Some companies know more than they should! But most know less. An effective family policy needs to be based on accurate demographic detail of the employees being assisted.

Existing culture

We cannot advise unless we have a good feel for the business culture. What does the company stand for? What are the values? What is the long term vision and how will it be achieved? Once we understand this we can help advise how those values can be applied to any 'care' benefits - either existing or envisaged.

Existing family benefits

What does the company do currently? Which Childcare Voucher scheme is in place? Is the voucher provider the most appropriate for the company? What is the take up of vouchers like compared to the company peer group and in the context of demographics? If lower or higher than average, why is that? Which other benefits are in place, and how well are they known and used?

A complete audit of existing benefits is often an excellent starting point. It's not unheard of for a large employer to unearth benefits they didn't know they had.

Business aims

The crux of any consultancy is to understand and agree the business aims. Employee benefit businesses' talk loosely about "engagement", "recruitment", "retention" and "absenteeism". There needs to be absolute clarity on what the business wants to achieve. There is never an unlimited budget.

Business aims need to be defined, agreed, and benchmarked every single step of the way. It is our belief that family friendly benefits should be measured just as closely as other key performance indicators.

Financial aims

We need to understand both what the financial restrictions are on the solutions being implemented and understand how benefits are measured in terms of financial advantage to the company. For example, if you are a retailer and your issue is absenteeism it is very simple to subsidise an emergency childcare plan and measure the cost directly against the benefit. Other benefits are more difficult to put a monetary figure against. We always think it is sensible to try.

What the workforce wants

A vital element is making sure business aims are tied into what parents/employees/carers actually want. The goal is ultimately to make the workforce better, whether that is by making them happier, more productive or more loyal.

The wants and needs of employees will also change over time. Compared to 10 years ago there are now 2 million more employees with care commitments. Less people have a family network for backup childcare. If the landscape is changing like this, the needs of the workforce will also be evolving at a similar rate. It can sometimes take an outside agency to identify how much and how far the needs have changed.

The advice

Our job is to distil everything above and help companies put the right package in place for their staff. We deliver the advice however it's want: formally, informally, or by presentation to the board.