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Ben Black, Director

When Think Tanks Get It Wrong

Ben Black, Director

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Regular work+family updates for
HR and diversity professionals.

We've just completed our 2013 staff survey

It's a really well put together, short and transparent set of questions which we gratefully borrowed from my friends at Big Yellow. (Somewhat bizarrely I sit on the board of a business called AnyJunk and am an investor in LoveJunk with some of the Big Yellow directors - but that's a rubbish story for another day!)

We always send out our staff survey with a load of good intentions and small gulp. If you run your own business then how happy everyone is and what they think of you and the working environment becomes very personal.

Our results, overall, were very good - we have plenty of challenges but My Family Care is a good place to work and most of the tensions and frustrations expressed were typical of a business at our stage of its development.

There was only one area of the feedback that really worried me...

As a business we're growing up. A majority of the core team of 50 now have some form of childcare or eldercare commitment; and allowing people to work flexibly has become an essential part of the whole.

If we didn't allow some senior people a bit of flexibility then they wouldn't be here, and we might not be here either.

Flexible working is crucial

However, just because flexible working is an essential part of the mix doesn't prevent it causing some tension within the office team. Who's actually doing more work? Isn't flexible working easy working?

I know how Marissa Mayer feels...

We allow people to work flexibly because it's a business imperative and not for any other reason. The business case is easy and brings me on to the source of this week's real frustration.

Exploring the promises of gender equality

The IPPR is a large left-wing think tank with suitably shambolic academic offices. It's just released a comprehensive report Great Expectations: Exploring the Promises of Gender Equality.

The report claims that the feminist movement has failed working class women.

If you're talented ambitious mothers then you have a world of opportunity that didn't exist 20 years ago. But if you're at the lower end of the pay spectrum then the needle has hardly shifted. Great, that's useful to know and it's also so obvious that I'm not sure the point needed making.

Businesses will do what is right for the bottom line and for shareholders. Making sure talented mothers have enough flexibility to be retained and engaged is easy; producing research to suggest that less is done for people where the business case is harder to make seems pointless and a waste of someone's money.

Ben Black

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Regular work+family updates for
HR and diversity professionals.