"Flexible working". It's a buzz word that's been thrown around the world of employment and recruitment for some time now. Plenty of businesses express the desire to modernise the working environment, keep up with the millennials and appeal to the hearts and minds of the "best talent". They proudly flash the badge in employer branding and recruitment drives.
It's encouraging, particularly as I now find myself in the position of trying to manage a young family without waving goodbye to a hard earned career.
But how often does this well worn phrase actually translate into reality? How is it really working for both employers and the talented part time / flexible workforce themselves?
In my career as a recruiter in sales and marketing, I have rarely seen the promise translate into reality, or a suggestion of looking at flexible workers really wholeheartedly taken on board.
In the times of skill shortages in amongst ever increasingly specific job briefs, when it comes to the crunch, are employers really making the most of an eager and extremely capable pool of talent?
What are people's experiences of making flexible working really work?
Less than 9% of vacancies for decently paid jobs in the UK offer flexible working, according to research that claims the lack of such options is keeping millions of people in dead-end jobs or shut out from the labour market. Analysis of more than 5m job adverts found little progress in the past year on offering more flexible options to jobseekers, despite warnings to employers who face skills shortages that they are failing to tap into a large pool of potential workers. The findings have been published as part of a campaign to encourage employers to make more jobs available to people who need or want to work part-time or flexibly, such as doing some work from home.
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