Great conversations are a central tenet for the success of flexible working at RiseSmart. Businesses are made up of people and people like to connect. For RiseSmart, connecting, sharing and talking about flexible working is embedded in their DNA.
Peggy Vosloo, Creative Manager at RiseSmart said she was most proud of making flexible working both mainstream and normal.
“It is visible in how we don’t talk about it. And how we do talk about it”.
RiseSmart is committed to enabling and supporting people to do their best life’s work, through utilising flexible work arrangements. It is on the agenda at every leadership team meeting and their CEO speaks about it often.
Pioneers in the career transition and outplacement industry, they assist Australian businesses to retain the expertise and talent of the ageing population by teaching businesses how to implement a genuine culture of flexible working.
As such, they are quite vocal both internally and externally when it comes to having great conversations about flexible work arrangements. Internally, they live by the motto:
It’s not ‘why?’, it’s ‘why not?’
Last year Peggy used a mixture of compressed part time hours, flexible working and some leave entitlements to volunteer for 10 days during the Invictus Games in Sydney. It was a great way to walk the ‘flexible work’ walk, and role model ways of working with both their team and clients.
Flexible working is part of every recruitment conversation. People are asked for their work preference and availability, which generally becomes their normal work pattern. This is then reviewed from time to time to ensure that work and life are still in alignment.
“It is more important to have the right people to work with, rather than just the people that are right there in a certain location or available at a certain time” says Peggy.
When every person in a team is working flexibly, and people are wanting to give their very best at work, then it is imperative that strong boundaries be respected around work and life. To do so, ongoing communication is key.
One method that RiseSmart has developed and implemented is to make visible people’s working days and hours via the Office Phone list and employees’ email signature.
As a result, RiseSmart is agile, able to make adjustments as required and ready to deal with changes when life or work pivots.
Congratulations RiseSmart on becoming a Flex Able Certified Employer.
RiseSmart, a Randstad company, is the leading provider of outplacement and talent mobility services for organisations in more than 40 industries and 80 countries. As a strategic partner to businesses across the globe, RiseSmart delivers industry-leading results and lifetime support to HR teams and employees. Through innovative methodologies and a blended learning approach, RiseSmart’s contemporary approach empowers companies to transition talent into, within, and out of their businesses with ease.
