Anyone who knows me professionally will be aware that I am a massive advocate of flexible working. And not in the ‘fill in a form, jump through hoops for 3 months to have one pre-determined day a week to work from home’ kind of way.
I believe in affording your employees the best environments to do their job in. By allowing them the flexibility to work in a way that’s best for them and giving them the ability to put their best foot forward every time, I wholeheartedly believe it enables my team to give our clients and candidates 110%.
Because of this freedom and trust, together we have created a work/life balance that breeds great team morale, strong loyalty to the agency and high bouts of dedication to their roles.
I have been offering flexible working since I started the agency in 2002, where we were the forerunners then. So, it is with great delight I can say, for the first time in the agency’s history, we will have our first entirely remote and international worker!
Our Marketing Manager Natasha, through a series of very fortunate events, has been given the opportunity to travel the world with her partner and of course she wanted to take it (who wouldn’t?).
We sat down and had an honest and frank conversation about whether her role would work from across the seas. She loves her role here with the agency and was loath to have to hand over her projects to someone new! Through transparent communication, clear goals and KPIs, and set boundaries, we decided that we would try to make the role work for both of us.
It is the first time we have tried it here at LR Legal and it is very much its infancy of implementation. At this point we have set out expected hours, role requirements and accessibility, for both her and us, and we will try and test in the first few months, with the agreement that it must work for everyone, and we will remain agile as needed.
Of course, flexible working from across the oceans comes with its own set of concerns - time differences for one! - but it is an incredibly exciting test, and one that if it works could change the way the agency operates!
As part of our voyage into the unknown, we will be sharing our experiences and thoughts with you, the clients and candidates, so perhaps you can learn, or be inspired by our ventures into being truly flexible. Every month we will do a blog post from both of our perspectives and look at what works well and where we’ve had to adapt, how we’ve found the experience so far and what we are looking forward to next.
Natasha sets sail on the 29th October and we’re very excited about this next adventure for the agency.