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Transforming the Workforce through Outcome-Based Work and Creativity · Work It Like A Mum

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Hey, i'm Elizabeth Willits and I'm obsessed with helping as many women as possible achieve their boldest dreams after kids and helping you to navigate this messy and magical season of life.
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: I'm a working mum with over 17 years of recruitment experience and I'm the founder of the Investing in Women Job Board and Community.
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: In this show, i'm honored to be chatting with remarkable women redefining our working world across all areas of business.
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: They'll share their secrets on how they've achieved extraordinary success after children, set boundaries and balance, the challenges they've faced and how they've overcome them to define their own versions of success.
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: Shy away from the real talk?
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: no way.
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: Money struggles, growth, loss, boundaries and balance We cover it all.
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: Think of this as coffee with your mates, the mixed with an inspiring TED Talk sprinkled with the career advice you wish you'd really had at school.
• 0:57
  Speaker 1: So grab a cup of coffee or a glass of wine and make sure you cozy and get ready to get inspired and chase your boldest dreams, or just survive Mondays.
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: This is the Work It Like a Mum podcast.
• 1:10
  Speaker 1: This episode is brought to you by Investing in Women.
• 1:15
  Speaker 1: Investing in Women is a job board and recruitment agency helping you find your dream part-time or flexible job with the UK's most family-friendly and forward-thinking employers.
• 1:27
  Speaker 1: Their site can help you find a professional and rewarding job that works for you.
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: They're proud to partner with the UK's most family-friendly employers across a range of professional industries, ready to find your perfect job.
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: Search their website at investinginwomencouk to find your next part-time or flexible job opportunity.
• 1:50
  Speaker 1: Now back to the show.
• 1:51
  Speaker 1: Hello and welcome to this week's Work It Like a Mum podcast episode.
• 1:57
  Speaker 1: Today I'm delighted to be chatting with Chaney Hamilton, who is the founder and CEO of the Find Your Flex group.
• 2:04
  Speaker 1: Chaney is a leading voice in the flexible working movement and, as well as running the Find Your Flex job site, she's passionately trying to change the world of work for all and campaigns for more outcome-based working rather than time-based working.
• 2:19
  Speaker 1: We'll be chatting about what outcome-based working means to Chaney, how employees and employers can adopt it, the full-day working week and what Chaney's view of that is and what she sees as the future of work.
• 2:32
  Speaker 1: Thank you so much, chaney, for joining me today.
• 2:34
  Speaker 1: It's an absolute pleasure to chat with you and learn more about outcome-based work and your role in that campaign as well.
• 2:42
  Speaker 2: Thank you for having me.
• 2:43
  Speaker 1: It's nice to be invited on, really nice and I guess, have you ever been passionate about flexible work, or is that something that started fairly recently?
• 2:53
  Speaker 2: I guess, to be honest, i didn't have any experience or need.
• 2:57
  Speaker 2: I guess, like a lot of us and, i guess, a lot in your community, i just conformed.
• 3:02
  Speaker 2: You know, i came out of college, out of uni, and I got a job and it was a nine to five and it was trips and into and out of London every day and I didn't need flexible working because that was just the culture, that was the lifestyle.
• 3:12
  Speaker 2: My husband worked different hours because he worked for a movie company, so he used to work till quite late at night and we just, you know, that was just the lifestyle, that was the culture.
• 3:20
  Speaker 2: It wasn't until I had my children and I studied with my first child, b, because the plan was I was going to go back to work full time as the primary breadwinner at the time and my husband was going to take a share of Pransley because it was around 2014 and that legislation had just come out and we did that.
• 3:34
  Speaker 2: But B was born with hip dysplasia, so she was in and out of hospital quite a lot and my husband started suffering a bit from the male version of post-natal depression and just the situation, like we were in our own personal lockdown, essentially because she was in a full body cast.
• 3:47
  Speaker 2: So it was an interesting time and I guess that was my first proper experience of flexible working, because I had to go to my employer and just sort of say, you know, like Liam needs to go back to work, even if it's just one day a week, he needs to be out of the house and free from the situation at home and, to be fair, my employer was brilliant about it all at that time.
• 4:04
  Speaker 2: But when we then had the second child, eliza when you know we're talking about 2016 now and I was in my maternity cover and he rang me and my boss had rang me up to find out like what my plans were he wasn't really cool with the whole flexible working thing anymore, and I think by that point it was because I had two healthy children and I was going to be setting a precedent that I didn't when I had a sick child and I just didn't yeah, i just didn't have that sort of excuse.
• 4:30
  Speaker 1: Not that we should need an excuse, but you'd yeah yeah to often it.
• 4:33
  Speaker 2: Well, the office was 95% female.
• 4:35
  Speaker 2: So if you set a precedent for me as the only senior female in the organization at that time, then that was obviously gonna have an impact for everybody else there and obviously there wasn't any form of legislation at that point around flexible working really.
• 4:46
  Speaker 2: So I think it was safer for him to just say well, no, we want your back like full-time or part-time, but there's not going to be any hybrid or work from home or anything like that.
• 4:55
  Speaker 2: And to punish.
• 4:56
  Speaker 2: You know, i mean I don't if you've ever done the rat race, but you literally you're lucky if you see your kids 20 minutes out of the day when you're going into Fleet Street every day and I was I was breastfeeding, so I was getting home with huge boobs and I was like, just somebody get a child my breasts, you know, and it just it wasn't comfortable and I just I didn't want to do it anymore.
• 5:11
  Speaker 2: Once hardalizer and I was just like I started looking around for other senior roles and you know they had that like working moms and platforms like that out there, but they were all really junior roles and they were part-time and I was like I was going from like a six-figure salary to basically nothing, and I was just like and what were you doing in your old corporate role?
• 5:28
  Speaker 2: so I was in advertising, so media advertising.
• 5:31
  Speaker 2: I worked in local, regional, national press, managed over, you know, 200 newspapers, 500 websites, very much around recruitment advertising.
• 5:40
  Speaker 2: So would go out and speak to advertising agency very hands-on role and I think you know, because I had that background in recruitment advertising, i was like, well, you know what?
• 5:48
  Speaker 2: I know employers out there offer flexible working, but they didn't seem to be very good at talking about it.
• 5:53
  Speaker 2: So I think that's why I launched platform and I think I said to you when you launched yours, like my one moment we launched Mummy Jobs in 2017 and it was black with gold lettering because I did not want it to be mumsy at all I was like mine was black at that point when we had that chat.
• 6:06
  Speaker 2: Yeah, i said to you, didn't know, it's like that.
• 6:07
  Speaker 2: There's got to be something in our minds that makes us go black and just think, no, we need change and black is the colour for this.
• 6:13
  Speaker 2: So, yeah, had Mummy and Daddy Jobs in quick succession and the idea was very much to build community to, to have the social media side of things for the community, for the candidates to talk to each other and get support, learn to read, skill and stuff like that.
• 6:27
  Speaker 2: And we had the courses and things like that on there.
• 6:29
  Speaker 2: And then on the from the employer bit because obviously that's what I like to do, i was always beat a bit.
• 6:34
  Speaker 2: I speak to employers about you know what roles are flexible?
• 6:38
  Speaker 2: are you talking about it?
• 6:39
  Speaker 2: who in your organization is talking about flexible working?
• 6:42
  Speaker 2: who's living it?
• 6:42
  Speaker 2: and like, get trying to get them to engage with people, and I guess it became more about the employer value proposition and stuff like that.
• 6:48
  Speaker 2: So, yes, i think that's kind of where, where it all started, it was that it was that need to show that there was another way of doing it, and I think we went viral quite early, talked about this quite a lot, like there's just a woman that reached out on Facebook and we'd had a job on there that was work from home and she was a single parent and obviously we all know it's been in the press a lot lately around the cost of childcare and she just needed this job.
• 7:12
  Speaker 2: But she asked me how much she needed to pay to apply and it just like it just hurt my heart because there's so many multi-level marketing companies out there like selling your candles and your aim on and all of that kind of stuff and where you've got a layout money and I was like these women are because of what they're experienced every day on social media and stuff like that, because employers are not being open about what where they can work from home, the flexibility they've got in their organizations.
• 7:35
  Speaker 2: Women are just actually genuinely prepared to pay to access work and that's just not right.
• 7:41
  Speaker 2: Feeling like the Nick were prepared to pay to access like properly flexible work and I did a post about it on LinkedIn and it went viral and had like 1.27 million people reach out over 10 days.
• 7:51
  Speaker 2: And the thing the biggest surprise to me is that a lot of it wasn't parents, it was about just people like not wanting to do the Monday to Friday, 9 to 5 and could they apply for the roles that we had on the platform and stuff.
• 8:03
  Speaker 2: So we went away and came back with the FindFlex platform.
• 8:07
  Speaker 2: So we still had mummy jobs and daddy jobs but we had.
• 8:09
  Speaker 2: We then incorporated FindFlex into it and that was a slightly different conversation.
• 8:12
  Speaker 2: That was more about actually, is there a societal shift happening now?
• 8:15
  Speaker 2: this is pre-COVID, a people wanting to not do the 9 to 5 and they're not wanting to do the grind, they want to get you know, because it was like the rise of the side hustle and all of that kind of stuff.
• 8:24
  Speaker 2: And I mean we never had those kind of things on the platform.
• 8:27
  Speaker 2: I only wanted, like, proper jobs on there.
• 8:29
  Speaker 2: I didn't want the MLMers and stuff like that.
• 8:33
  Speaker 2: So it was like for us, it was just trying to highlight actually there's a new generation of people coming through and and I thought I always thought that was quite important to share the audience that was looking when we were talking to employers.
• 8:44
  Speaker 2: So, for example, when we first launched the platform, yeah, only 3% of our audience was aged 18 to 25.
• 8:51
  Speaker 2: It's now at 20%.
• 8:53
  Speaker 2: That's a huge swear and if that doesn't show, cultural shift is on and what does?
• 8:57
  Speaker 2: we've got you know, people over the age of 45 take up and now 30% of our audience share the actual people who are parents on the platform and who I would say are active parents, like in terms of they've got childcare responsibility.
• 9:11
  Speaker 2: The kids aren't older.
• 9:12
  Speaker 2: 58% of our audience either have no children at all or their youngest child is 17 plus.
• 9:19
  Speaker 2: So child care is not the primary factor or reason as to why they're wanting flexibility, and I think when you start having those conversations with employers, it does make them just think actually this is a proper shift, especially in that younger age group.
• 9:31
  Speaker 2: Absolutely yeah.
• 9:31
  Speaker 2: So you know and I think about you know, it's just led me on a bit of a journey from on flexible working, from kind of where we started six years ago to where we are today, and I did a frustrated post on our birthday because we turned six on.
• 9:45
  Speaker 2: I think it's the 17th of February and I just had a little post just I said I don't want to wait another six years for businesses to catch up to where we are today.
• 9:52
  Speaker 2: We need to move this on quicker, and I think that's why I talk so much more about the future of work and outcomes, because actually we need to be making these changes now.
• 10:52
  Speaker 1: But you must be incredibly proud because a lot of businesses fail in what the first part I mean, first couple of years, but definitely the first five years.
• 10:58
  Speaker 1: And now you've broken that.
• 11:00
  Speaker 1: You know your six years now.
• 11:02
  Speaker 2: Brexit and COVID to deal with in that time as well.
• 11:05
  Speaker 2: Don't get me wrong.
• 11:06
  Speaker 2: It's been tough.
• 11:07
  Speaker 2: There's been times where it literally went down to like we grew and then we contracted back to literally just me and Helen.
• 11:12
  Speaker 2: Then we grew again.
• 11:13
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's been.
• 11:15
  Speaker 2: I mean as a nerve.
• 11:17
  Speaker 2: It's weird.
• 11:17
  Speaker 2: I think the only reason why we're still here the other tenacity to stay here is because I'm not money-driven.
• 11:23
  Speaker 2: I'm not financially driven, i'm a legacy driven.
• 11:25
  Speaker 2: I do not want my kids to have to grow up and deal with work the way that I did.
• 11:28
  Speaker 2: I need to make change and that is my driver.
• 11:31
  Speaker 2: It's not about the money.
• 11:33
  Speaker 2: So I think if it was about the money, you'll know it yourself.
• 11:35
  Speaker 2: But there's not that much money in what we do, because it's such a big conversation and it's not just about getting somebody a post, a job.
• 11:43
  Speaker 2: There's so much more work involved for a business to be.
• 11:45
  Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely.
• 11:46
  Speaker 1: I have with our clients.
• 11:47
  Speaker 1: You'll have this where they'll go.
• 11:50
  Speaker 1: It's the HR person really wants to support flexible working and they've got jobs, but then they go.
• 11:56
  Speaker 1: I've spoken to the business and they can't see how this role can be done flexibly.
• 12:00
  Speaker 1: So we can't post at the moment.
• 12:02
  Speaker 1: So often you have maybe one ally in the business but you need basically everybody bought in.
• 12:08
  Speaker 2: Well, the bar needs to be bought in.
• 12:09
  Speaker 2: It's going top down as well as bottom up.
• 12:11
  Speaker 2: But, like I said, i mean we've had chats before.
• 12:14
  Speaker 2: I write a lot about outcome based working and the reason that I do that is because we can't get truly flexible working unless there's an operating model change.
• 12:23
  Speaker 2: We can't continue to do the last 400 years of working in the 21st century like 19th and 20th century, where modalities are dead, they're broken, they're on the way out, but because it's not broke broke, all these businesses just still limping along.
• 12:37
  Speaker 2: But there's going to be another COVID-19.
• 12:39
  Speaker 2: There's going to be another war that causes massive instability And the first thing businesses will do is look at their operating model and see that they're just carrying too much fixed cost.
• 12:48
  Speaker 2: And the biggest fixed cost in every business is its people, which is why we're seeing the whole swaths of redundancies right now, because the operating models within that organisation is not built to be flexible And that's why, like I said, started off talking about part-time, full-time, condensed hours, four-day weeks, but actually the conversations moved on and businesses need to catch up quicker than where they're currently at.
• 13:12
  Speaker 1: Okay, so someone's listened to this and they're hearing you talk about outcome-based working And they've probably well, they've not heard about it before.
• 13:18
  Speaker 1: They might be thinking what is outcome-based working And how does that apply to me And how can I do that?
• 13:23
  Speaker 1: So do you want to give us a bit of an overview about what is outcome-based working?
• 13:29
  Speaker 2: Yeah, i mean a bit like flexible working is to different people.
• 13:32
  Speaker 2: For me, i guess the outcomes are driven by the business.
• 13:35
  Speaker 2: So when we're talking to businesses about how do we recreate their teams to be more ROI focused and delivering a return on investment, it's the same goes for candidates.
• 13:45
  Speaker 2: So what we said to business is okay, what's the business need for this role?
• 13:50
  Speaker 2: So next time a job comes across your desk, you're not looking for flexible working.
• 13:54
  Speaker 2: I'm saying what is the business need for this role that is currently on your desk?
• 13:59
  Speaker 2: And once they've addressed that and they understand what the need is, they can then tell me the outcome that is required for that role And that outcome then becomes the deliverable.
• 14:07
  Speaker 2: And then that outcome, that deliverable, then becomes a return on investment to the business.
• 14:11
  Speaker 2: So you can personally see, as a candidate, the value you are driving back into that business And off the back of that, because we all know what outcome we need to deliver and how it needs to be delivered.
• 14:21
  Speaker 2: All of the other stuff, just the time-based constraints the journey of how you've got there doesn't matter, because you're delivering a business need.
• 14:32
  Speaker 1: Okay, so I could see how outcome-based working could work really easily for a sales-based role, when they have those sales targets And you can see if someone's delivered or not.
• 14:42
  Speaker 1: But how would it work for something, say, in back office, where they don't always have easily definable targets?
• 14:47
  Speaker 1: Give me an example of how it could work for an admin-based role.
• 14:53
  Speaker 2: I'm not going to give you an example, i'm going to push back with kind of what's happening in the world at the minute.
• 14:57
  Speaker 2: So, at the moment, i'd say at least 50% of most of our roles are process-based Admin's, probably even higher.
• 15:05
  Speaker 2: And we're living in a world at the minute where and COVID-19 has absolutely made this happen even faster as businesses are automating And anything that is processed can be automated and will be By AI you mean By AI?
• 15:21
  Speaker 1: People's jobs are potentially going to go.
• 15:25
  Speaker 2: So the government report that is out now, when anybody's free to read it, suggests that 10 million jobs will be at risk over the next 10 years due to automation.
• 15:32
  Speaker 2: So anything that's process-based will be automated.
• 15:35
  Speaker 2: We already saw it happening quite a lot in shops and things like that where we get the virtual machines in now to do your own shopping check-out at the end.
• 15:43
  Speaker 2: It's all of that kind of stuff And it was a lot in those retail sectors.
• 15:47
  Speaker 2: It was all of the admin staff that went because the majority of their roles could be automated.
• 15:51
  Speaker 2: The other sad side of this is it's going to be the majority of people that impact-pacted are going to be women because they are in the most process-based roles.
• 15:59
  Speaker 2: So the government know it's a problem.
• 16:01
  Speaker 2: They're having loads of future work, conversation with businesses around AI and how do we develop and re-adapt our businesses so that it's about forward planning for me with businesses.
• 16:10
  Speaker 2: So, for example, at the minute I've already said we ask businesses three questions whenever a role comes across the desk, they should also be looking five, ten years down the line and be looking at their team, thinking, okay, so which of my teams are going to be at risk of automation And what can we put into place now that is, outcome focused, or what have you to help them redevelop their skills so that we can either re-skill them into an area that isn't going to be automated, or we can give them some kind of skill where we can either return them in business and move them into a different team as their job becomes redundant, or we can give them a skill that if we can't keep them on, they can go and take that skill into somewhere else.
• 16:50
  Speaker 2: So, for example, we did somewhat with Cavea because the insurance sector massively automating the amount of insurance we now buy online there just isn't the need for that many people.
• 16:59
  Speaker 2: So they knew, for example, that a few of their teams in the next two to three years that plan was for those teams to be made redundant at some point because there would be obsolete, there wouldn't be required anymore.
• 17:09
  Speaker 2: So what they're doing now is they're now doing digital skills courses on an evening that all of their people anybody in that organisation whose job is unsustainable, moving forward can go and get all of the coding skills, things like that, that they need.
• 17:21
  Speaker 2: So, as their job does become obsolete, they can either apply for other jobs within Cavea or they can go somewhere else and they've got all of this coding knowledge now to allow them to re-skill and to move into the world.
• 17:31
  Speaker 2: So when we're talking there's so much talk about ERG within companies and things like that It's not just about the sustainability of the planet.
• 17:37
  Speaker 2: It should be the sustainability of our teams and jobs and things like that.
• 17:39
  Speaker 2: So when people start banging on saying you know, well, we need to mark a job, to say that it's flexible working, i think we also need to be marking our jobs to say that this is how sustainable we are.
• 17:48
  Speaker 2: And if they're not sustainable longer than two years, be upfront about it and just say look, we think this job is going to be in our business for the next two years.
• 17:55
  Speaker 2: So whilst you're in here, we're also.
• 17:57
  Speaker 2: You know, how much funding could you get from government if you've got a planning place to help these people re-skill whilst they're doing their day job?
• 18:02
  Speaker 2: So I think admin's a tricky one to say, like it's not tricky to put it out, because any job could be made out.
• 18:08
  Speaker 1: Yes, how?
• 18:08
  Speaker 1: I'm just guessing.
• 18:09
  Speaker 1: You know there'll be some jobs, so a business might not be able to afford the automate.
• 18:14
  Speaker 1: You know that at the moment they might not, or they might not be willing to invest in all this automation.
• 18:18
  Speaker 1: And I get, the automation is the future, but you know.
• 18:21
  Speaker 1: So how?
• 18:22
  Speaker 1: then you know any any companies thinking what?
• 18:25
  Speaker 1: listen to this thinking.
• 18:26
  Speaker 1: You know I really do like the sound of this outcome based working, but how do I do it?
• 18:30
  Speaker 1: But that's it.
• 18:32
  Speaker 2: You just ask.
• 18:33
  Speaker 2: You ask these questions for every role that comes into it in front of your desk.
• 18:36
  Speaker 2: What is the business need?
• 18:37
  Speaker 2: What is the output that's required from this role?
• 18:39
  Speaker 2: You can, if you can answer those two questions, you can create the ROI for your business.
• 18:43
  Speaker 2: So it's not and you can do that for every role in your organization And, like I said, you know there's going to be some organization, some roles, whether you're going to need face to face time and things like that, And it's you know.
• 18:55
  Speaker 2: It's about how do you then work with a candidate to create the, the delivery that that's needed.
• 19:00
  Speaker 2: But it's about also creating the flexibility within the organization to do it financially and support that employee as well.
• 19:07
  Speaker 2: So it's, there's not a one answer for every question, because actually, what one answer for for creating an outcome based team more broadly, is that actually?
• 19:18
  Speaker 2: well, to get the flexibility in that team that they need and to create the variable cost in the business for that team and to create outcomes for them is to actually turn that into team, into a shared workforce.
• 19:27
  Speaker 2: So then that team supplies that business need for that organization, but it might also supply that business need for another organization as well, And that's how it creates more revenue into that team, because it's a shared workforce to get.
• 19:40
  Speaker 1: Are you not just sort of speaking about like a group of freelancers, though?
• 19:42
  Speaker 1: No, then all businesses are sharing this.
• 19:45
  Speaker 2: No, because people have a real need financially to be secure.
• 19:49
  Speaker 2: So it comes back to security and sustainability and stability, And I think you know we do it.
• 19:54
  Speaker 2: So we have teams that are outcome focused at a PAYE.
• 19:57
  Speaker 2: I have contractors and have people that are fully freelance.
• 20:01
  Speaker 2: So it's about having a mix.
• 20:03
  Speaker 2: It's having a flexible resource architecture that sits alongside everything else that you know.
• 20:08
  Speaker 2: They've all got a digital architecture within their organizations.
• 20:11
  Speaker 2: But it's about how do you build a flexible resource architecture And that's something that's IP to our group of companies, because it is the future of work.
• 20:18
  Speaker 2: It's how you build in variable costs So that if something happens, and rather than making that team redundant, we do something different with that team.
• 20:26
  Speaker 2: We think out of the box.
• 20:27
  Speaker 2: We don't just automatically think I have shit, I need to remove money from my business because we're not going to have this income coming in anymore.
• 20:33
  Speaker 2: So the easiest thing to do is to, you know, make 20 people redundant.
• 20:36
  Speaker 2: It's about thinking about those people as a value, you know, as a return on investment for your organization, and how do you redesign that differently?
• 20:46
  Speaker 1: So, I used to work in consulting and I went through a big four and there would be consultants and some would, if they didn't have any project, would be on the bench and be waiting until a project.
• 20:55
  Speaker 1: And I guess if all those big four consultancies worked together they could share that bench and have a smaller bench.
• 21:03
  Speaker 1: And I guess how then because you've sort of talked about shared workforce potentially some of these people are PAYE How do you get competing businesses sharing that workforce and making sure that you know one company's secrets isn't going to know that, and who then bears the overall responsibility?
• 21:22
  Speaker 2: How do you deal with that with contractors?
• 21:24
  Speaker 2: Because you'll have contractors that come into your organization that work for you and work for your competitor.
• 21:27
  Speaker 2: How do you deal with that then?
• 21:29
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 21:29
  Speaker 2: Sign an NDA?
• 21:30
  Speaker 2: Yeah, do you design your contract slightly different for those people?
• 21:33
  Speaker 2: What is intellectual property these days?
• 21:36
  Speaker 2: anyway, we had the same pushback for insurance and I was like you know you're all so under resource with underwriters.
• 21:40
  Speaker 2: Why not just actually just create a shared workforce team?
• 21:43
  Speaker 2: Because your business might need staff up here in this month but down here in that month and they might be up in that month, and so if they've got a flexible resource architecture where they're pooling a lot of people together in a shared workforce environment, these people have got so much more stability now in their work because their eggs.
• 21:59
  Speaker 2: It's that.
• 21:59
  Speaker 2: It's like the whole sales mentality of you don't want one big client and that's your only egg.
• 22:04
  Speaker 2: You want lots of eggs in your basket.
• 22:06
  Speaker 2: So if you've got multiple employers paying into your basket and one of those employers go bust, you're not screwed, and that's what's happening to people right now.
• 22:14
  Speaker 1: So you've got I say you've got four companies.
• 22:17
  Speaker 2: So we, for example, we're managed service providers.
• 22:20
  Speaker 2: We do this in the recruitment, talent acquisition space.
• 22:23
  Speaker 2: So their pay comes through you, and then you invoice the clients And I invoice because, yeah, we're providing the business needs so that each company is said right, this is my business need, this is the outcome I need to.
• 22:32
  Speaker 2: Right, we'll sell these, we'll sell this as a business service.
• 22:36
  Speaker 2: So then I've got loads of people, loads of mums, who need to work flexibly, and we manage all of their flexibility so they can work as and when they want, anytime they want.
• 22:44
  Speaker 2: I don't care when, as long as the business needs are met.
• 22:46
  Speaker 2: We manage the whole.
• 22:48
  Speaker 2: That bits, for all of these companies don't need to have a flexible working policy because I'm handling the flexibility for them.
• 22:52
  Speaker 2: All they want from me is that their needs are met.
• 22:55
  Speaker 2: They need their outcomes and need their outputs, and that's what we deliver for them.
• 22:59
  Speaker 2: So we're a managed service provider of that shared workforce team.
• 23:01
  Speaker 2: Some companies will to pee their staff into it.
• 23:04
  Speaker 2: Some people will just come to us and want to be employed by us, and then we deliver their outputs back into these clients.
• 23:11
  Speaker 2: So they've got four or five different clients all paying into their pot, essentially, and that removes that glass ceiling, because if they can deliver more, then when it goes up, and if they have to deliver less, then they've got that flexibility and what they need to.
• 23:23
  Speaker 2: They need to deal with in terms of their data and the flexibility they want.
• 23:29
  Speaker 2: When I think of businesses in the future, we talk about mutable as being the operating model change that we think businesses need to.
• 23:35
  Speaker 2: What's mutable, then?
• 23:36
  Speaker 2: So this is in my head, mutable to me is how a business is designed in the future.
• 23:41
  Speaker 2: So everybody's got their core.
• 23:43
  Speaker 2: I visualise it as like a space station.
• 23:45
  Speaker 2: So your core is what you do.
• 23:46
  Speaker 2: So for, like you, for example, you would be a consultant, or you've got an HR business, or you've got a finance business.
• 23:53
  Speaker 2: Whatever your business is, you've got your core.
• 23:54
  Speaker 2: You've got what you've been set up to do.
• 23:56
  Speaker 2: Something else that makes that business run is not your wheelhouse.
• 24:00
  Speaker 2: And you know, Elizabeth, you'll become a jack of all trades when you try and sell up your own company because you've got to try and figure out all yourself, because you think it's too expensive to bring somebody else in who's a specialist to do it.
• 24:10
  Speaker 2: But actually, if my finance business can provide financial services to this HR company and this HR company can also provide me the HR services I need for my team in terms of contracts and things like that, then it's not quid pro quo, You just collaborate with each other because you've become two separate entities but you've still got your own businesses and this person gives you HR outsourced and this company gives you financing outsourced and we become a whole group of businesses that can support each other.
• 24:41
  Speaker 2: So you know you don't need a financial business on my HR company all year round and maybe need it twice a year to do my tax returns or to do my VAT.
• 24:47
  Speaker 2: I might need them once a quarter, So I only fly them in when I need them to and the rest of the time they're off and they're developing their own business elsewhere and providing services for somebody else or doing it.
• 24:57
  Speaker 2: And you know, and then I might need a sales team three times out of the year because they're my three peak months and actually that gives me enough business for the rest of the year.
• 25:05
  Speaker 2: So you know you pull your sales resource and then it goes back out and you can do that with it.
• 25:09
  Speaker 2: So every single department that is in an organisation, you could essentially build a business that has fixed a variable or return investment cost by just bringing in the other parts of it when you need it.
• 25:21
  Speaker 2: You shouldn't be a jack of all trades.
• 25:22
  Speaker 2: You should do what you do and do it really, really well And that's your USP And all of the other stuff.
• 25:27
  Speaker 2: Allow those people who you know sales is their USP, finances are USP, HR is their USP bring them in as and when you need them.
• 25:34
  Speaker 2: So for me it's like that's what future business will look like And when we operate in that way, you can start thinking about added value and return, an investment and things like that.
• 25:45
  Speaker 2: So like, if that HR company is coming in and they've got another client over here that needs finance, you know they can.
• 25:50
  Speaker 2: You can do referral fees, You can.
• 25:51
  Speaker 2: They can be commissioned and things like that.
• 25:53
  Speaker 2: And it's some new holistic way of doing things And you get the flexibility within that to create these new and different entrepreneurial companies rather than just going into a business that have got all of these different departments and all you know.
• 26:07
  Speaker 2: The right arms know what the left arm is doing And it becomes very clunky and really hard to build any kind of flexibility into that kind of business model because it is also fixed.
• 26:17
  Speaker 1: It's funny because it started off for you.
• 26:18
  Speaker 1: It sounds like it started off for you about flexible working, Because you obviously had your family.
• 26:21
  Speaker 1: You wanted that, And now it's something that's completely.
• 26:24
  Speaker 1: It's actually more about productivity and making companies like Excel and Yeah.
• 26:30
  Speaker 2: Flexible working is a misnomer When you start talking about part time, four day a week, job share.
• 26:35
  Speaker 2: There's nothing flexible in that, it's just an unstandardized work in our contract.
• 26:38
  Speaker 2: And if you want any flexibility in that, you have to be outcome focused, because time shouldn't be the construct that we're monetized by, because I could go and sit on a seat for nine hours and not be productive at all And you've still got a pay me.
• 26:50
  Speaker 2: Yeah, how are we?
• 26:52
  Speaker 2: you know?
• 26:52
  Speaker 1: that's the good.
• 26:53
  Speaker 1: It sounds like you think it's better for the companies as well for the organization.
• 26:56
  Speaker 2: Absolutely.
• 26:56
  Speaker 2: It's a total have your cake and eat it moment because the people get what they need flexibility, sustainable business that has comes with actual, proper job security, upskilling and all of that kind of stuff.
• 27:07
  Speaker 2: There is no ceiling on how much you can earn because you're working for as many people as you want to work for as long as your productivity is there, and you can do it from early careers right the way through to, you know, being absolutely senior.
• 27:19
  Speaker 2: And for me it's about this operating model change and businesses have to operate like this And that's the only way people genuine people they're still people going to get any form of flexibility, because otherwise there's nothing flexible about working 10 to two every day, because you work in 10 to two every day.
• 27:36
  Speaker 1: So questions I've got about this because I think it sounds good And I can read, and you know somebody that I employ freelancers says that obviously a lot of people are doing business.
• 27:45
  Speaker 1: Yes, I can see that about pulling people in when you need them to deliver on projects that you need, and actually I've had a really positive experience, as you know, a deployer or as a business or whatever, pulling on different people's expertise at certain points.
• 27:59
  Speaker 1: So actually from a business perspective I can really see it.
• 28:02
  Speaker 1: I guess the question I have is are all roles?
• 28:05
  Speaker 1: because what if you've got a salesperson Do you want and they're your superstar salesperson and maybe you don't have enough to give them, but do you want that person then going to work for your competitor and they'll be calling the same people.
• 28:19
  Speaker 2: But they might do anyway.
• 28:20
  Speaker 2: Like for me, there's this whole question map of a talent.
• 28:23
  Speaker 2: Again, it takes us down a whole different rabbit hole, doesn't it?
• 28:25
  Speaker 2: in terms of what we're passionate about.
• 28:27
  Speaker 2: Like for me, talent shouldn't be owned, it should be shared, because that's how you get your creativity, that's how you get your diversity of thought, that's how we become more inclusive as a nation, as a culture.
• 28:37
  Speaker 2: We've seen Unilever do it.
• 28:39
  Speaker 2: They're built into their contracts now the ability for people within their organization to go and do second jobs, to have side hustles, and things like that.
• 28:46
  Speaker 2: I mean, pretty hell, our ampesee.
• 28:47
  Speaker 2: Rich people do this.
• 28:49
  Speaker 2: So rich people operate on an ROI, they work for multiple companies, they're on boards, they give away their time, essentially in their knowledge, and things like that, and that's how they get paid So many different ways.
• 29:01
  Speaker 2: I only learned recently It's only as an employer, now as a company, that I understand more about tax.
• 29:08
  Speaker 2: Like when I was earning a six-figure salary, i was paying PAYU.
• 29:11
  Speaker 2: It was like tax money was taking all of my money.
• 29:13
  Speaker 2: Now I know I've got, i've understand more.
• 29:17
  Speaker 2: I speak to my accountants and things like that.
• 29:19
  Speaker 2: If you earn more than 30K a year, it is absolutely so tax and efficient for you to be a PAYU member of staff.
• 29:27
  Speaker 1: But you've just said that you're basically advocating that there's PAYU pools.
• 29:31
  Speaker 1: People are still PAYU.
• 29:32
  Speaker 1: that are companies that you know, because some people want the security Because of the way.
• 29:35
  Speaker 2: So this is bigger than so some of the stuff.
• 29:38
  Speaker 2: I don't want to go too much off onto a tangent because it gets too big And I think it gets too scary for people because, realistically, what we're talking about is a societal change, of business shift, that is, that knocks on into society because all of us, if we start, if less of us, are working you know people want PAYU now because the financial institutions are set up that if you want a mortgage, it's easy for you to get a mortgage.
• 29:59
  Speaker 2: If you are PAYU, then it is for you to be self-employed, right?
• 30:02
  Speaker 2: We all know that.
• 30:03
  Speaker 2: So if all of a sudden, the society actually create these beautiful businesses and all of us realise that actually I'm paying too much tax, i don't want to pay tax, i get.
• 30:13
  Speaker 2: There's more loopholes in the tax system if I am self-employed than you know I am as a PAYU employee, then the banks and the financial institutions will have to rethink how they tax us.
• 30:25
  Speaker 2: They'll have, you know, all of these massive rich people that benefit from these tax loopholes will actually be taxed properly.
• 30:31
  Speaker 2: So in terms of inclusion as a society, we'll all end up having to pay what we actually owe and that because more of us are doing what the rich people do, and it's a total societal changemaker thing.
• 30:44
  Speaker 2: It's something I'm very, very passionate about, but it leads into outcomes.
• 30:49
  Speaker 2: And redesigning business knocks into politics.
• 30:53
  Speaker 2: Financial sector knocks into everything, because it is a societal shift that needs to happen.
• 30:57
  Speaker 2: So when I hear other people talking about flexible working, as in part-time job, share, four-day a week, it's so the wrong lens, because it's so much bigger than that.
• 31:06
  Speaker 2: Like brilliant, your heart's in the right place.
• 31:09
  Speaker 2: We do need change absolutely, but that is not the driver to get us there.
• 31:13
  Speaker 2: The driver to get there is to get rich people, to get businesses, to get organisations to think differently in terms of how they're modelled and how they operate, to actually be fair, to allow people to earn like their shareholders earn, like the directors of that business earn.
• 31:29
  Speaker 2: You know people need to demand to be engaged and you're only going to be engaged if you're working to outcomes and that can be an appear why you're setting.
• 31:35
  Speaker 2: It could be as a freelance, it could be as a contractor.
• 31:38
  Speaker 2: There are so many other ways to do it than sticking with the status quo and we need to demand this change from our employers.
• 31:43
  Speaker 2: So I'll get off my little bat.
• 31:44
  Speaker 2: I love it.
• 31:45
  Speaker 1: I guess the other thing I'm just talking quickly about the roles and then I'm going to talk about something else is, I suppose if I was looking for a new house and I had an estate agent ringing me and then the next day they'd be ringing me because they're working for another estate agent, do you think as a client it's confusing if you've got somebody that's then working for loads of different organisations?
• 32:04
  Speaker 2: Working for multi-partfolio?
• 32:05
  Speaker 2: No, because I think that will become the norm.
• 32:07
  Speaker 2: I think a lot of people do that.
• 32:09
  Speaker 2: Lots of people have their side hustles or have to with the cost of living quite at the minute people having two, three, four jobs.
• 32:15
  Speaker 1: But often these side hustles aren't related to their day job.
• 32:18
  Speaker 2: And there could be a crossover.
• 32:19
  Speaker 2: And I think you just have to look at outsourcing centres.
• 32:22
  Speaker 2: How many contact centres now take calls from multiple different customers but they're just specialising the insurance space.
• 32:28
  Speaker 2: So you're dealing with one underwriter, but you might be dealing them for your house insurance that's with ACSA and your car insurance that's with Direct Line.
• 32:35
  Speaker 2: You're still, ultimately, speaking the same language.
• 32:38
  Speaker 2: You are a specialist in your field, so why shouldn't you sell your skills to the highest bidder in a sales capacity?
• 32:44
  Speaker 2: Why should you one person own all my skillset?
• 32:47
  Speaker 2: If I can hit your sales target on a Monday, why can't I go and hit somebody else's sales target on a Tuesday?
• 32:52
  Speaker 2: I earn more.
• 32:53
  Speaker 2: I get double bull.
• 32:54
  Speaker 2: Everybody benefits Like to me.
• 32:57
  Speaker 2: It's a no brainer.
• 32:58
  Speaker 1: Well, i think certain people benefit because there'll be certain people that are actually quite entrepreneurial, that are really into this, are really driven, they might invest in themselves.
• 33:07
  Speaker 1: They might think you know, i'm going to upskill in this, i'm going to do this on my own time, i'm going to learn this new skill, i'm going to watch YouTube, read it, whatever.
• 33:12
  Speaker 1: But then there'll be other people that need a lot more hand-held, particularly those earlier on in their career.
• 33:17
  Speaker 1: And I know that when I started in recruitment afternoon, i had no idea what I was doing.
• 33:23
  Speaker 1: I had no idea about the jobs I was recruiting for the clients, how to be a recruiter, and I had a lot of investment, not just like the courses, but I mean time from my manager.
• 33:32
  Speaker 1: He spent a lot of time nurturing me, mentoring me and helping me succeed.
• 33:37
  Speaker 1: So who is taking that role?
• 33:40
  Speaker 1: Who's looking at that mentorship role?
• 33:43
  Speaker 2: So for early careers.
• 33:45
  Speaker 2: It's a really it's a really interesting one.
• 33:47
  Speaker 2: It's something I'm quite passionate about because when we come out of school, college, uni, we go from learning multiple things to learning one thing in an apprenticeship or a first role environment.
• 33:56
  Speaker 2: And, let's be honest, people are busy, the support isn't often there And I was kind of thinking that actually, when we talk about early careers, shouldn't we be?
• 34:05
  Speaker 2: shouldn't that person's first engagement with the world of work be varied to allow them to learn?
• 34:10
  Speaker 2: Especially when you look at Gen Z because I think I read read an article the other day the amount of information they're served on a daily basis through their devices is the same as reading 80 broadsheet newspapers every day.
• 34:23
  Speaker 2: That's how much information they're being served all the time.
• 34:26
  Speaker 2: So I was kind of thinking there needs to be, or it'd be really cool if there was, a shared workforce approach to apprenticeships and to grad schemes, where you do the same job but you do the same job for four or five different companies And how you're learning different styles.
• 34:41
  Speaker 2: You get to bring that diversity of thought, you get to maintain that diversity of thought and engagement from the inception of your career And you get to learn at the end of that program.
• 34:51
  Speaker 2: You might choose to just want to go and work for one of those companies.
• 34:54
  Speaker 2: But actually you've learned so much, you're going to progress in your career so much faster because you have so many different lens, views Adding to your education on this one subject and you become a specialist in this area.
• 35:05
  Speaker 2: And actually isn't that a better introduction to you working than just going, working and learning one way and doing that one thing for quite a sustained period of time?
• 35:13
  Speaker 2: Is that really engaging you?
• 35:15
  Speaker 2: Is that going to give you any diversity of thought around what you're doing?
• 35:18
  Speaker 2: Or are you just literally just learning something for better?
• 35:20
  Speaker 2: And you're not really being encouraged at any point to be creativity or to challenge why you do things.
• 35:25
  Speaker 2: And I think again it comes back to society and why we go from this school environment where we're meant to be empowering our children to be lifelong learners, but then we put them straight into an environment where we're just indoctrinate them into doing the same thing day in, day out And again, like for me it's a.
• 35:42
  Speaker 2: I know you opened up a kind of worms with me, so I apologize.
• 35:45
  Speaker 1: I know I just I'm just going to challenge you on another thing, sorry, i have a lot of thoughts and I think it sounds really good And I can see for certain people and certain organizations this would be brilliant.
• 35:57
  Speaker 1: But I guess there'll be some people and we've all had it.
• 36:00
  Speaker 1: You know, we've gone into certain jobs and we've maybe not been very good at a certain part of the role And therefore our managers maybe spend a lot.
• 36:08
  Speaker 1: You know the company will have spent as we know, as we're in recruitment, we know how much it is highest number of people in the world And they don't want to spend a lot of money and time getting that person.
• 36:21
  Speaker 1: So they're willing then to maybe upseat, identify the gaps, upskill that person, whereas with your model, if somebody comes in, does a couple of weeks work and they think God, that person's rubbish, there's a chance that person might never ever be picked again for work.
• 36:34
  Speaker 1: It's a little bit survival of the fittest.
• 36:37
  Speaker 2: Well, it is definitely Darwinian.
• 36:39
  Speaker 2: It's not about survival.
• 36:40
  Speaker 2: It's not about survival of it, because if they're working for four or five different companies, you know it's that our value proposition.
• 36:47
  Speaker 2: You know what we enjoy, what we're good at.
• 36:49
  Speaker 2: Should we really be doing stuff that we don't enjoy and that we're not good at?
• 36:53
  Speaker 2: So how do we create cultures and environments where actually set people up to succeed?
• 36:58
  Speaker 2: And if they're doing the same role for four or five different people, it might not be able to do it your way There's, but they might be able to do it my way and they can take some of that learning into your culture and which will then enable you to the next person that comes along like this person, who's not very good at this or can't do it the way you do it.
• 37:15
  Speaker 2: Actually, you understand how to bend and flex and become flexible yourself, to train somebody in a slightly different way or allow them to do something a slightly different way.
• 37:22
  Speaker 2: But for me it comes.
• 37:23
  Speaker 2: It comes back to the journey.
• 37:24
  Speaker 2: Like we're so fixated in this country on what schools people went to, what qualifications they've got, what boards are members of.
• 37:31
  Speaker 2: You know, i don't give a shit if my next head of marketing has got their degree from Oxford or if they've spent 10,000 hours on YouTube learning how to do it.
• 37:40
  Speaker 2: That way, as long as they can deliver to me what I need, like it doesn't matter about the journey, it matters about what they can deliver, what you're willing to deliver, what you're able to deliver, and that's how you know.
• 37:52
  Speaker 2: You talk about flexibility of the business and how this creates flexibility for a business.
• 37:56
  Speaker 2: So I could go to an apprentice and I could say, right, i need this, deliver.
• 38:00
  Speaker 2: But because you're an apprentice, it's going to take you 12 months to deliver my business need here.
• 38:04
  Speaker 2: But if this business need for me is actually something that's going to help my business grow, i might actually choose to go for somebody here, pay the same amount.
• 38:12
  Speaker 2: I pay them for 12 months, but pay senior person to deliver that me that in three months, because that actually for my business, is going to help me get to where I need to be quicker.
• 38:20
  Speaker 2: That opens up the whole spectrum of people at work because you've got, you're not stuck with.
• 38:25
  Speaker 2: A custom budget model is just stringent.
• 38:27
  Speaker 2: Like we talk about products, like with one of the worst countries in the world for productivity, we're paying people for 12 months And actually before they even start.
• 38:35
  Speaker 2: You're giving them 25 days holiday, so you're actually only getting them for 10 months of the year anyway.
• 38:39
  Speaker 2: So you're paying for 12, you're getting 10.
• 38:41
  Speaker 2: And then you talk about productivity and even the most like the nicest numbers that CIPD brought out so that we only actually productive 70% of the time.
• 38:50
  Speaker 2: So straight away you're paying for 12 months but you're only getting seven months of productivity out of a person like that is the P a y model.
• 38:56
  Speaker 2: Like who's that good for?
• 38:58
  Speaker 2: because it's not good for you.
• 38:59
  Speaker 2: Because you're setting a job that, like most of the time you're not being productive, being bored, you're not engaged.
• 39:06
  Speaker 1: But it's good for some place employees because they're obviously getting that 25 days holiday they're getting.
• 39:10
  Speaker 1: They can apply for them.
• 39:12
  Speaker 2: But there's other ways of doing it, so like, say, for example, if they, if they were in a different model or you know there was some kind of mixed model or they were doing a shared workforce, you can still have that security of P a, y, so you've still got your holidays paid for, but you're just working in a way that's engaging, like we should be demanding to be engaged, not just be bored in a bloody job every day.
• 39:28
  Speaker 2: We're not born to work, are we?
• 39:31
  Speaker 2: we?
• 39:31
  Speaker 2: you know we didn't work this way 400 years ago.
• 39:33
  Speaker 2: We we worked maybe 20 hours a week at the start of the week and that allowed us then to go out and be creative, to live the life we want to lead to.
• 39:40
  Speaker 2: You know, travel to places and things like this is such like.
• 39:43
  Speaker 2: To me it's like a prison construct that we've all just been forced into because it's easier for the politicians to marshal us that way.
• 39:50
  Speaker 2: It's easy.
• 39:50
  Speaker 2: You know I don't want to go into the tax revenue Exactly.
• 39:54
  Speaker 2: You know it's all very much built this way to control the masses.
• 39:57
  Speaker 2: You know it's like religion was back in the day.
• 39:59
  Speaker 2: You know it's all very much part of this construct and I've gone way too far off the deep end.
• 40:05
  Speaker 1: I mean join this conversation is messing with me.
• 40:09
  Speaker 1: We've had a really, really tough time.
• 40:10
  Speaker 1: We've definitely not talked too much about place, so I know we're going to wrap up in a bit so quickly.
• 40:15
  Speaker 1: What do you think of the four day week?
• 40:16
  Speaker 1: because that was announced, wasn't it last week, and we would the time this reporting?
• 40:20
  Speaker 1: it was the study finished last week.
• 40:23
  Speaker 2: So the four day week for me it's part of the solution.
• 40:26
  Speaker 2: It's not the solution And that's the nicest thing I can say about it.
• 40:30
  Speaker 2: I think it's not.
• 40:32
  Speaker 2: It doesn't.
• 40:32
  Speaker 2: It doesn't enhance productivity.
• 40:34
  Speaker 2: It costs more to a business to adopt that.
• 40:36
  Speaker 2: For you know, and if you're a parent or if you have any needs outside of four day week, you kind of buggered.
• 40:40
  Speaker 2: You know.
• 40:41
  Speaker 2: I think a lot of businesses try and condense five days into four days.
• 40:44
  Speaker 2: There's lots of ways it can be abused And for me the biggest thing why it won't work as much as you know, people would love to only work four days a week is that businesses will not financially be able to sustain it because they've still got.
• 40:56
  Speaker 2: You know, if you take it as it's meant to be so you work four days and you do four days of working that four days and not cramming five days into four, that still leaves a gap for the business then of that one extra day that's got to be filled.
• 41:07
  Speaker 2: So that means they're still paying you five days for four, but then they've got to find some more money from somewhere else to fill in that one day gap And essentially it's unsustainable for businesses to take it on long term.
• 41:18
  Speaker 2: So there might be some short term gains in terms of revenue.
• 41:20
  Speaker 2: And I found it really interesting how the research is worded, actually, because they talk about growth and revenue but that's not operating revenue, it's not profits for the business and not talking about growth or real productivity within that organization.
• 41:33
  Speaker 2: So I'm a bit by a bit aware on it.
• 41:36
  Speaker 2: Like I say, i think the point is to have a working model that allows people to work flexibly in whatever way flexibility means to them, because for not everybody wants flexibility.
• 41:45
  Speaker 2: That comes in four day week.
• 41:47
  Speaker 2: Everybody wants flexibility.
• 41:48
  Speaker 2: That's 10 to two, and I might need 10 to two this week, but next week I might be able to do 37 hours in the week.
• 41:53
  Speaker 2: After that might be able to work 16.
• 41:55
  Speaker 2: So I think if we start talking about flexible working in a different way and start thinking about the outcomes that we're trying to achieve and deliver, then that makes for a much healthier work environment and a much more flexible work environment, and we've talked about the benefits for the business as well as the benefits for the candidate.
• 42:11
  Speaker 2: I think that's kind of where businesses need to be.
• 42:14
  Speaker 2: I feel like the four day week a bit like the other people who talk about flexible working.
• 42:19
  Speaker 2: It's great, your heart's in the right place.
• 42:21
  Speaker 2: I totally understand the drive that sits behind it, but it's not the solution.
• 42:25
  Speaker 1: What about zero hours contracts?
• 42:26
  Speaker 1: because that's something No.
• 42:28
  Speaker 2: I think they're immoral.
• 42:29
  Speaker 2: Okay, i think they're immoral.
• 42:33
  Speaker 2: I think you either allow people to become outcome focused and it's a zero hour environment, and you're paying them for delivery.
• 42:40
  Speaker 1: And then that's what I think I meant.
• 42:41
  Speaker 1: You know, i'm sort of saying you know zero hours, but your outcome focus will pay you if you hit these.
• 42:46
  Speaker 2: But yeah, i mean zero hours generally speaking.
• 42:48
  Speaker 2: it's so that you can literally say to somebody, oh, i've got eight hours for you this week, and at the last minute say, actually I don't have eight hours for you and you don't have to cover any of their costs.
• 42:56
  Speaker 2: And it's just a similar role, like people are planning, especially when you're talking about childcare and things like that there should be if people require.
• 43:02
  Speaker 2: we almost all want to be on return, or essentially that would be nice.
• 43:08
  Speaker 1: Yeah, maybe that's the way, rather than things there are is OK, we can guarantee you X amount hours a week, and then it should not have me There needs to be.
• 43:16
  Speaker 2: We need to be able to know that that we can survive Like we're living in a really hostile working environment at the minute.
• 43:24
  Speaker 2: You know as much as businesses still talk about EDI and you know they're all very big into diverse inclusion But, like for me, there's only so far that that can go without us changing fundamentally who we are as businesses and how we engage with workers candidates.
• 43:39
  Speaker 2: I think you know a society has shifted.
• 43:41
  Speaker 2: Covid-19 has cost this massive shift.
• 43:43
  Speaker 2: People don't want to do this anymore.
• 43:45
  Speaker 2: You people take an early retirement and there's all of these things to try and get them out of retirement.
• 43:49
  Speaker 2: But actually when they've been like I had, like Barbara who worked for me, she had to retire in November and she wants to still work.
• 43:55
  Speaker 2: She's bored, she's at home, she's like every day she rings me.
• 43:58
  Speaker 2: You know I hate being retired, but financially she would be buggered if she tried to work because she'd lose her warm homes discount, she'd lose loads of her benefits and things like that And it just it's not financially viable for her to work.
• 44:10
  Speaker 2: I mean that's ridiculous.
• 44:11
  Speaker 2: How many people are we losing out of the workforce when we've got?
• 44:13
  Speaker 2: you know, a skill shortage is in this country Because of the way the financial modeling set up, like again, i could go off on a haul of the tangent and I really don't want to go to with that.
• 44:22
  Speaker 1: I know, do you know?
• 44:23
  Speaker 1: I've looked at.
• 44:24
  Speaker 1: The other thing I've had was what about because you're saying all these jobs are going to get automated?
• 44:27
  Speaker 1: What about because with the four day week they put that onus on the employees that they had to find the time saving?
• 44:34
  Speaker 1: What about if these people, if you were told as an employee, how do you think this work, your job, will be automated?
• 44:40
  Speaker 1: We want your help in deciding which parts of that job is can be automated and automated well, so, rather than it being something done to somebody, that person is involved in that and then is incentivized for getting that job automated.
• 44:54
  Speaker 2: Absolutely.
• 44:54
  Speaker 2: We should be incentivized for our creativity, like our boards are, our directors, our shareholders are, but we're not.
• 45:01
  Speaker 2: We are POIE.
• 45:02
  Speaker 2: You know, we are sat in this cost and budget model.
• 45:04
  Speaker 2: It does not please being paid to be creative, which is why we are a nation of entrepreneurs as well, because if we want to be creative in our organizations, the only way to do it is to leave and be set up your own thing.
• 45:13
  Speaker 2: It's what I did, it's what you did, it's what so many people have to do to get that creativity out of them.
• 45:19
  Speaker 2: And it's ridiculous because if we incentivize people to and again, I wrote about this last week incentivize people to get their mates to come and join us at work, and we get paid like a 500 pound bonus.
• 45:29
  Speaker 2: if you know, refer a friend.
• 45:30
  Speaker 1: Yeah, a couple of those.
• 45:33
  Speaker 2: But why can't we do you know, why can't we have get a referral fee for a really great idea that makes the business better?
• 45:38
  Speaker 2: Yeah, We don't incentivize people.
• 45:40
  Speaker 1: I think Reid started like that.
• 45:42
  Speaker 1: You know Reid, obviously you'll know Reid the job board, and that started like that.
• 45:46
  Speaker 1: They ran a competition internally and I speak to a director at the time and they said you know, we want some more business ideas on how the company committed money, because this was pre the job board, It was when it was just the recruitment agency and so it was a consultant that said why don't we have a job board?
• 46:00
  Speaker 1: And then they won quite a lot of money.
• 46:03
  Speaker 1: It was a big prize.
• 46:04
  Speaker 2: You're engaging people in the future of your business.
• 46:07
  Speaker 2: There is a clear return on investment for engaging with and being creative for that company.
• 46:12
  Speaker 2: And if we want to bring you know people amount of job descriptions, i say, oh, we want you to be entrepreneurial by nature.
• 46:18
  Speaker 2: Well, if they're entrepreneurial by nature and then you're going to give them 30 K a year to sit and just do something, without any career progression, without any you know enticement towards giving ideas to the board or any remuneration for them to be creativity, you're not going to get entrepreneurs.
• 46:32
  Speaker 2: So you're not going to get talent.
• 46:34
  Speaker 2: How are you engaging any talent in your organization if you're not incentivizing them to be their best, to be their most creative, authentic selves, cost and budget models and not set up to do that?
• 46:44
  Speaker 2: So again it comes back to societal shift, operating model change.
• 46:48
  Speaker 2: Like there is method in my madness.
• 46:49
  Speaker 2: I know I go on about it, but it just for me it seems so simple And like when you explain it out to people, when I have like one on one to just like shit, yeah, why don't we do this?
• 46:58
  Speaker 2: Like why is this not a big thing?
• 46:59
  Speaker 2: Like I feel like the best kept secret in town and I don't want to.
• 47:02
  Speaker 1: I think you're a pioneer.
• 47:03
  Speaker 1: If you're sort of like orchestrating this, administrating, administrating it for your clients, then you obviously a pioneer and you might be the first of many companies and you're creating a brand new industry.
• 47:13
  Speaker 2: But this is it.
• 47:13
  Speaker 2: It's not about even industry, It's about legacy, because if we can get this change, then when my children like be at the minute, she wants to be Prime Minister, she wants to be a stand up comedian and she wants to be a scientist, and like, yeah, do it.
• 47:25
  Speaker 2: I don't want you to be just stuck doing one thing.
• 47:28
  Speaker 2: I don't want you to have the bottom of the nine to five and to lose this excitement for learning.
• 47:32
  Speaker 2: Like that's not the environment.
• 47:33
  Speaker 2: I wanted to go into a working world.
• 47:35
  Speaker 2: You know she sees me as an entrepreneur.
• 47:37
  Speaker 2: She sees my husband, as you know, he's had to diversify.
• 47:40
  Speaker 2: He's gone from working in the movie industry into HR And it's just.
• 47:43
  Speaker 2: You know it's about that excitement for learning.
• 47:45
  Speaker 2: How do we keep that going?
• 47:46
  Speaker 2: How do we take that into our working environments?
• 47:48
  Speaker 2: How do we be excited about life?
• 47:50
  Speaker 2: Like this is all just tied in And I think you know we get all hung up on the small print and the policy and the contract And it just it doesn't need to be that difficult Like, yes, the financial modeling is not there to support it, but there's tools out there for those with curious minds that want to know how to do it.
• 48:07
  Speaker 2: The tools are there, The research is there.
• 48:09
  Speaker 2: Like it reduces fixed cost in your organization by 25 percent over the first year.
• 48:14
  Speaker 2: Attrition goes down, People are more invested, engaged in your organization.
• 48:18
  Speaker 2: It's like a no brainer and it is literally a win-win for both the business and the candidate.
• 48:24
  Speaker 2: And it's just like the answers are there.
• 48:26
  Speaker 2: I mean, I do.
• 48:27
  Speaker 2: The old party parliamentary group, and you know, sat down with it.
• 48:29
  Speaker 1: I'll just say what's that involved?
• 48:31
  Speaker 2: So, obviously, going and sharing research with parliamentarians across all parties, as well as like people in the room can question You, can talk about your research and all the stuff that you're doing, and like they would just say, can we pick this up offline?
• 48:43
  Speaker 2: Like this is really interesting.
• 48:44
  Speaker 2: This is not something that anybody else is talking about, because everybody else talking about flexible working still talking about part time all day, week and all of this.
• 48:50
  Speaker 2: There's no actual tools there for a business to be flexible.
• 48:54
  Speaker 2: And I think you know I've talked to so many flexible working consultants.
• 48:59
  Speaker 2: One who I've known really well for a long, long time I spoke to a couple of weeks ago and she was so disheartened She's like because I feel like I'm sent to think the wrong things to companies.
• 49:08
  Speaker 2: Like I've done all of this work consulting on flexible working for the last like five years after leaving an HRD career And I just feel like I may have helped one or two people but I've not changed anything.
• 49:18
  Speaker 2: Like I'm having we just know we're having the wrong conversations And obviously she's like, why are you doing what you're doing?
• 49:24
  Speaker 2: So I've explained what we're doing and talk about flexible resource architecture and operating model change And she just had that dawning moment and I could see the excitement coming back into her eyes And actually there is a way that benefits business, which means that actually there is a broad reason for them to do what we're talking about doing, and it's and it becomes less about an HR thing and more about this is fundamental to my business's survival.
• 49:48
  Speaker 2: Like we've just said, pwc 40 percent of CEOs are saying that their businesses are not viable in the next three to 10 years because they don't reinvent themselves.
• 49:56
  Speaker 2: This is the opportunity to reinvent the home wheel, like I feel like Daenerys Stormborn.
• 50:01
  Speaker 2: You know we need to break the wheel And that's kind of at this point right now, and people just need to start talking about the right things.
• 50:08
  Speaker 1: I've loved that.
• 50:09
  Speaker 1: I guess there's a lot of people involved in businesses.
• 50:10
  Speaker 1: Depending on how big it gets, the bigger it gets.
• 50:13
  Speaker 1: There's more.
• 50:13
  Speaker 1: People isn't there.
• 50:14
  Speaker 1: There's more.
• 50:15
  Speaker 2: Absolutely.
• 50:16
  Speaker 1: More people in the kitchen, more shareholders et cetera, to consult.
• 50:20
  Speaker 1: So it gets harder to try turning a matter.
• 50:23
  Speaker 1: you know, for a smaller or a mid-sized organization you can be quite agile, you can play, you can pivot.
• 50:29
  Speaker 2: And yet the companies that have been on board working with us on it have been massive organizations.
• 50:33
  Speaker 2: We've got one that's global and one that's UK and EMEA and they're already benefiting from the changes of it.
• 50:38
  Speaker 2: Because I think the difference is because it's a targeted operating model change.
• 50:42
  Speaker 2: You do it one department at a time, it's not the whole business at once.
• 50:45
  Speaker 2: So people in the business get to see what's happening and they get excited about it And it's a bit like you were saying earlier.
• 50:50
  Speaker 2: They've become part of the process, they come part of the learning and they can see the benefits of that team, like they're earning more, they have more time off, they have the flexibility that they want, they have more opportunities to grow and to bend and flex within that organization.
• 51:04
  Speaker 2: So by the time it gets to their department, they're like yes, let's get going, let's get started, and it becomes an organic transformation project rather than it being everything all at once.
• 51:14
  Speaker 2: And for me, transformation projects become change the people or change the people, so like if they won't get on board with it with the transformation project, then they're gone.
• 51:22
  Speaker 2: But I see a lot of change.
• 51:23
  Speaker 2: People change people.
• 51:24
  Speaker 2: They do get on board with it.
• 51:25
  Speaker 2: You've changed them in a different way.
• 51:26
  Speaker 2: So it's kind of like it's this whole psychology that kind of sits behind it in the mentality of how businesses are.
• 51:32
  Speaker 2: And I think I'm quite lucky that I've come from that business background where I've worked for big corporates.
• 51:37
  Speaker 2: I've worked for companies and I've seen the problem of working, how we work.
• 51:41
  Speaker 2: And it's just like I said, i don't want to be the biggest secret in town, i just want everybody to know what I know and let's start making the change because it's fundamental to our society.
• 51:50
  Speaker 1: Yeah Well, what a journey you've been on.
• 51:52
  Speaker 1: What would you know six years ago?
• 51:54
  Speaker 1: you probably never thought this is where you'd be.
• 51:56
  Speaker 1: No, not at all So where can people you know if there's a business wanting you know, listening to this thing, this sounds really interesting or a person that would like to join your shared workforce?
• 52:05
  Speaker 1: where can people find you, connect with you and learn more about what you offer?
• 52:09
  Speaker 2: Tricky at the minute because I'm in the middle of having the website read on.
• 52:12
  Speaker 2: So hopefully in two weeks time it'll be findyourflexai.
• 52:14
  Speaker 2: At the minute it's well findyourflexcouk.
• 52:17
  Speaker 2: My email's at the bottom.
• 52:18
  Speaker 2: You can stay with mommyjobsanddaddyjobscouk Email's at the bottom.
• 52:22
  Speaker 2: Just get in touch on LinkedIn, on all of the usual social media channels that are out there.
• 52:27
  Speaker 2: But yeah, just get in touch, have a chat.
• 52:29
  Speaker 2: I'll try not to blow your mind too much.
• 52:31
  Speaker 1: You blow my mind.
• 52:32
  Speaker 1: So thank you so so much for your time today.
• 52:34
  Speaker 1: It's been an absolute pleasure to chat with you.
• 52:36
  Speaker 1: You too, thank you.
• 52:37
  Speaker 1: Thank you for listening to another episode of the Work It Like a Mom podcast.
• 52:44
  Speaker 1: If you enjoyed this episode, please rate, review and subscribe, and don't forget to share the link with a friend.
• 52:51
  Speaker 1: If you're on LinkedIn, please send me a connection request at Elizabeth Willett And let me know your thoughts on this week's episode.
• 52:58
  Speaker 1: You can also follow my recruitment site Investing in Women on LinkedIn, facebook and Instagram.
• 53:03
  Speaker 1: Until next time, keep on chasing your biggest dreams.