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When Work Works – Additional Resources

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ATTRIBUTES
  • Workplace Flexibility

SOURCE
  • When Work Works

TYPE OF RESOURCE
  • GGuide

TARGET AREA
  • Development

TARGET UNIT
  • All Management, Human Resources

LINK TO RESOURCE

When Work Works – Additional Resources

When Work Works
When Work Works has created workplace flexibility guides tailored to specific industries:

Pursuing Gender Equality in the Workplace During COVID-19

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ATTRIBUTES
  • Leadership
  • Organizational Culture

SOURCE
  • Global Compact Network Canada

TYPE OF RESOURCE
  • GGuide

TARGET AREA
  • Employee Support, Implementation

TARGET UNIT
  • All Management, All Units, CEO, Senior Leadership

LINK TO RESOURCE

Pursuing Gender Equality in the Workplace During COVID-19

Global Compact Network Canada
This resource provides recommendations and resources specific to the Canadian Private sector on forwarding the pursuit of gender equality in the workplace during COVID-19. Diversity and inclusion and gender equality from the organizational perspective can be leveraged as a strength during the pandemic, allowing companies to recover faster while increasing their representation and inclusion. Some of the recommendations expanded on in the resource include:

  • Assess your organization’s response to COVID-19 using the Target Gender Equality Quiz.
  • Show empathy and compassion towards your employees during this time.
  • Ensure all genders are represented and included in all planning and decision making.
  • Adapt new measures to improve organizational culture.
  • Build capacity and raise awareness.
  • Be aware of unintentional harmful gender stereotypes in internal and external communications.
  • Maintain a diversity lens in talent management to ensure that diversity isn’t lost.
  • Support working parents, bearing in mind that the majority of unpaid care work falls on women.
  • Help address the unintended consequences and challenges of stay-at-home measures, especially for vulnerable groups such as victims of domestic violence.
  • Support women-owned businesses.
  • Partner with government and other organizations to tackle COVID-19.

To learn more, click here.

Want to Improve Gender Equality at Work? Help Men Take Parental Leave

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ATTRIBUTES
  • Organizational Culture
  • Workplace Flexibility

SOURCE
  • MERCER

TYPE OF RESOURCE
  • AArticle

TARGET AREA
  • Employee Support, Family-friendly

TARGET UNIT
  • All Management, Human Resources

LINK TO RESOURCE

Want to Improve Gender Equality at Work? Help Men Take Parental Leave

MERCER
This article is based on MERCER’s 2018 “Global Parental Leave Report” and provides an overview of some of its most relevant findings. Additionally, it provides five key areas for employers to consider with regards to men, parental leave, and gender equality.

  1. Review parental leave policies to either match paternity and maternity leave policy or implement a “non-gender-biased” parental leave policy.
  2. Gain leadership support by increasing awareness of paternal leave and its benefits through data.
  3. Build a corporate culture that supports paternal leave in all levels of the organization. This may require education, establishing resource groups, reviewing other HR and departmental policies.
  4. Educate and support managers on how to manage leave as their direct relationship with employees is essential.
  5. Improve social support for leave to reduce stigma that may impact men by communicating the organization’s efforts and actively confronting gender and social stigma.

To learn more, click here.

Making it Work! How to Effectively Manage Maternity Leave Career Transitions: An Employer’s Guide

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ATTRIBUTES
  • Career Development
  • Recruitment, Retention and Promotion
  • Workplace Flexibility

SOURCE
  • Canadian Education and Research Institute for Counselling

TYPE OF RESOURCE
  • GGuide

TARGET AREA
  • Family-friendly, Strategy

TARGET UNIT
  • All Management, Human Resources

LINK TO RESOURCE

Making it Work! How to Effectively Manage Maternity Leave Career Transitions: An Employer's Guide

Canadian Education and Research Institute for Counselling
This guide is a comprehensive manual to help employers tailor specific strategies to the needs of their organization and employees as a result of pregnancy, birth, or adoption.

Some recommendations found are:

  • Before maternity leave:
    • Conduct exit interviews with employees before they leave to discuss questions and possible concerns, as well as expectations from both sides
    • Establish a communication plan to determine how often communication will take place during maternity leave
  • During maternity leave:
    • Provide women with optional opportunities to participate in team events, meetings, training seminars, etc.
    • Organize “Comeback Coaching” to support the transition before returning to work and reinforce organization’s support on women
  • After maternity leave:
    • Conduct return to work interviews to assess possible challenges, re-engage in the career dialogue, and determine further support required
    • Encourage mentorship and sponsorship opportunities (different from “buddy system) to support women’s career development and progression opportunities

To learn more, click here.

Workflex and Small Business Guide – Big Ideas for Any Size

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ATTRIBUTES
  • Workplace Flexibility

SOURCE
  • When Work Works

TYPE OF RESOURCE
  • GGuide

TARGET AREA
  • Development

TARGET UNIT
  • All Management, Human Resources

LINK TO RESOURCE

Workflex and Small Business Guide – Big Ideas for Any Size

When Work Works
This resource addresses workplace flexibility for small businesses and describes the benefits specific to small organizations in addition to commonly known benefits of work flexibility.

Some benefits for small businesses are:

  • Ability to grow without necessarily growing their real estate
  • Lower need for formal systems when implementing workflex arrangements
  • Flexible work arrangements can leverage staffing to compete against larger companies
  • Remote employees can expand organization’s reach into new locations and areas

Leveraging small teams for increased flexibility:

  • Cross-train employees on job tasks and expand skills sets
  • Emphasize regular and consistent updates on strategy, work progress and client relations
  • Position workflex to get ahead of crises and as a return on investment tool

To learn more, click here.

Workflex and Managers Guide – Setting You and Your Team up for Success

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ATTRIBUTES
  • Workplace Flexibility

SOURCE
  • When Work Works

TYPE OF RESOURCE
  • GGuide

TARGET AREA
  • Development

TARGET UNIT
  • All Management, Human Resources

LINK TO RESOURCE

Workflex and Managers Guide – Setting You and Your Team up for Success

When Work Works
This resource provides an in-depth review of workplace flexibility targeted specifically towards managers to help them look into flexible work as an opportunity to support employees’ success. Likewise, it provides information on the benefits of flexible work for managers, identifying the workflex that works for them, implementing workflex plans, integrating workflex with team’s plans, managing workflex performance, as well as maintaining fairness when adopting workflex.

Recommendations for managing performance with workflex:

  • Metrics of work success: Establish clear measures of employee success using job descriptions as a guide and avoiding using physical presence as a form of performance.
  • Metrics of flex success: In addition to overall work metrics, create employee’s workflex expected outcomes to prevent burnout and ensure deliverables achievement.
  • No cannibalizing the success: Make sure that every position has consistent expectations regardless of workflex arrangements to avoid increasing someone’s workload because of it.
  • Communicate expectations: Make sure all employees know what is expected of them regardless of their work arrangements and communicate how updates and check-ins will be handled.
  • Accountability: Keep everyone accountable and reinforce people’s understanding of the responsibilities to be fulfilled to make workflex work.
  • Removing workflex is a poor punishment: This can add unnecessary stress and reduce employee performance. If needed, make adjustments to resolve poor performance.

To learn more, click here.

Leveraging Workplace Flexibility for Engagement and Productivity

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ATTRIBUTES
  • Recruitment, Retention and Promotion
  • Workplace Flexibility

SOURCE
  • SHRM Foundation

TYPE OF RESOURCE
  • RReport

TARGET AREA
  • Strategy

TARGET UNIT
  • All Management, Human Resources

LINK TO RESOURCE

Leveraging Workplace Flexibility for Engagement and Productivity

SHRM Foundation
This resource contains an extensive review of workplace flexibility, including the business case, description of a wide variety of workplace flexibility types, and steps for implementing workplace flexibility, among others. The resource also describes the various benefits of workplace flexibility for the organization and its employees, as well as the potential challenges with recommendations to address them. Throughout this resource, examples of implemented initiatives complement the information provided in the different sections.

Recommendations to successfully implement workplace flexibility:

  1. Assess the effects of flexibility: Consider the impact of new arrangements on employees, teams, clients, managers, and all relevant stakeholders.
  2. Understand compatibility: Evaluate job requirements to determine which jobs are better suited for what types of flexibility.
  3. Set clear performance goals: Manager and employee collaboration is needed to establish concrete and measurable objectives.
  4. Communicate: Constant communication between managers, employees, and co-workers helps navigate changes and keep others in the loop.
  5. Obtain feedback: Input from employees, clients, managers, and other relevant stakeholders ensures flexible work meets all parties’ needs and objectives.

Some challenges of workplace flexibility included in this resource are:

  • Challenge: Manager’s uncertainty about workplace flexibility results in their unit denying requests or in negative perceptions of employees on flexible work arrangements.

Recommendations: Provide managers with training, allow them to express concerns and collaborate on solutions, pilot workplace flexibility measuring results and sharing.

  • Challenge: Manager’s assumption that someone on flexible work arrangement would not be interested in a different job opportunity or promotion that did not have flexibility, leaving them out for future considerations of new opportunities.
  • Recommendations: Reinforce the importance of managing performance based on results, not face time, mandate considering flexible work arrangements for promotions as part of manager training.

To learn more, click here.

A Manifesto for Change: A Modern Workplace for a Flexible Workforce

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ATTRIBUTES
  • Organizational Culture
  • Workplace Flexibility

SOURCE
  • Timewise & Deloitte

TYPE OF RESOURCE
  • GGuide

TARGET AREA
  • Strategy

TARGET UNIT
  • All Management, CEO, Senior Leadership

LINK TO RESOURCE

A Manifesto for Change: A Modern Workplace for a Flexible Workforce

Timewise & Deloitte
This resource summarizes the need for workplace flexibility and identifies the key demands of the manifesto that can help the workplace adapt a flexible workforce. The resource is based on a survey of flexible workers and in-depth interviews with pro-flex business leaders across the UK.

  1. Leaders must provoke cultural change: Challenge the status quo

Make flexibility a strategic issue and champion flexible working, question cultural norms, and men must challenge stereotypes.

  1. Flexible working to be gender neutral: Emphasize the value of male and female role models

Male and female leaders must walk the talk, men need to talk about flexibility and parental leave to normalize it, senior male role models are essential but so are people across every level.

  1. Design flexibility into jobs as standard: Ask “why not” rather than “why”

Make flexible working the norm for everyone not just parents and carers, systemize flexible working through guidelines for managers, one size does not fit all, and measure performance not hours.

  1. Influence attitudes and actions of managers: Permission and support

Give managers permission, training, and tools for flexible work; and call out managers and leaders who undermine flexible workers.

  1. Collect data: Measure success

Measure formal and informal flexible work, and share across teams, set targets, and track progress by including metrics as part of managers’ performance review.

To learn more, click here.

Developing a Flexible Working Arrangement Policy

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ATTRIBUTES
  • Workplace Flexibility
  • Workplace Wellbeing and Safety

SOURCE
  • Workplace Gender Equality Agency (Australia)

TYPE OF RESOURCE
  • TToolkit

TARGET AREA
  • Development, Institutional Policies

TARGET UNIT
  • All Management, All Units, CEO, Diversity & Inclusion, Human Resources

LINK TO RESOURCE

Developing a Flexible Working Arrangement Policy

Workplace Gender Equality Agency (Australia)
This briefing note provides guidance on the key features of a flexible working arrangements policy. Organizations leading the way in workplace gender equality have in place a policy that specifically supports flexible working arrangements for all employees.

The key features of a flexible working arrangements policy are:

  • Statement
  • Purpose
  • Guideline (i.e. definitions, eligibility and exclusions, process, and performance and review)
  • References and resources (i.e. existing legislation and internal policies)

To learn more, click here.

Flexibility Business Case – Building Your Business Case for Flexible Work Through Workforce Metrics

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ATTRIBUTES
  • Workplace Flexibility

SOURCE
  • Workplace Gender Equality Agency (Australia)

TYPE OF RESOURCE
  • TToolkit

TARGET AREA
  • Strategy

TARGET UNIT
  • All Management, All Units, CEO, Diversity & Inclusion, Human Resources

LINK TO RESOURCE

Flexibility Business Case – Building Your Business Case for Flexible Work Through Workforce Metrics

Workplace Gender Equality Agency (Australia)
This toolkit aims to help organizations identify the areas where flexibility could positively influence an organization’s productivity and employee engagement.It alsoprovides advice on how to measure the business benefit for flexible working through workforce metrics.

Specifically, this toolkit aims to:

  • Identify workforce metric categories and metrics to measure the benefits of flexible working
  • Provide steps on building your business case for flexibility through workforce metrics
  • Provide templates to collect and calculate workforce metrics

Metrics can be developed from the following categories:

  • Uptake and perceptions of flexible work
  • Attraction of employees
  • Employee retention
  • Training investment
  • Productivity and engagement
  • Absenteeism
  • Employee wellbeing
  • Office space accommodation costs
  • Workforce composition

To learn more about each category and their metrics, click here.