Trends, Bends and Friends

Posted by: Alison Chisnell on: August 23, 2011

• In: Flexible Working | HR | Trends
• 8 Comments

How many times does something have to happen in your workplace before it becomes a trend? Three?….four?…..ten?……twenty? I tweeted this question yesterday and got a fascinating array of answers, none of them definitive, but all of them insightful and interesting.

Graham Salisbury reckoned it to be three times on the basis that once was an occurrence, twice an occurrence and a copy, three makes a trend and four a tradition. Alison Ashford opted for the marketers version of 4 or 5 times, whilst David Goddin estimated 20% of the workforce and provided a technical looking link.

The original reason behind this mulling was because this year so far I have had an unprecedented number of similar happenings in my workplace, which certainly on the above basis, could reasonably qualify as a trend.  And I’d be interested to know whether other organisations are experiencing the same type of activity, or indeed other types of occurrences which could be classed as trends.

So my 2011 trend within the business is the sheer number of requests I have had (I estimate around 15 this year so far) of employees who are looking to leave the UK and work abroad and who are requesting to continue to do their roles from an entirely different geographical location. From Australia to the West Coast of America, from Bulgaria to Holland, the proposals are varied, although seem to consistently come from well-regarded employees who have compelling personal reasons why they need to or want to relocate. And this poses some interesting dilemmas for us as a business.

We are absolutely a global organisation and frequently (not always) have offices in these locations and in many cases the managers support the moves, often on the basis that they don’t want to lose the individual from the business. So far, so good. But these proposals are never simple and it s often my job to robustly challenge the  managers to critically consider them –

• where does the role need to be based in the long-term?
• is there actually a vacancy where Joe wants to relocate?
• will we need to back-fill Joe in the UK to help him fulfill his dream?
• do we have any HR set-up to actually pay and support Joe in this location?
• as a business do we strategically want people to be in this location?
• would we be even considering this if it wasn’t Joe asking for it?

This last question is often the killer question and the most important. Because if the superstar employee asks us to relocate his job to his desired global location, what do we do when the slightly-above-average employee asks the same thing? And if the very average employee asks? It soon becomes quite hard to maintain any degree of consistency or fairness, particularly if it has become completely divorced from business need.

 

So, in response to this trend, I have to admit that I spend quite a lot of time saying no. Not because I don’t value employees or trust them to work in different locations, but because I recognise that we have to have some degree of consistency with how we treat staff and the precedents we set. We are undoubtedly very good at being flexible…but there is a danger that we become so flexible that we actually forget to critically examine the business need for granting any of these moves. You may not agree with me on this; you may feel in this day and age employees should be able to work wherever in the world they want to provided they get their jobs done…the fact is that we, like many organisations, are simply not at that point yet.

 

As for the reasons behind this trend, and the sister trend of requesting sabbaticals, I suspect that it has much to do with the global economic environment, the attraction of relocating to another country and retaining a role within an organisation that you already know, whilst maintaining your length of service. I totally understand why people are asking for this and reducing their own personal risk of potentially facing a period of unemployment. These are most certainly interesting times.

 

I’d love to know what trends you’re experiencing in your workplace, what you’ve been noticing and how you’re dealing with it.

Tags: Business, Flexible working, HR Trends, Human resources