The Importance of Flexible Working for Women

The Importance of Flexible Working for Women | International Women’s Day 2020

It’s great to see more and more companies offering flexible working for their employees. This modern way of working helps ensure diversity in the work place and makes it possible for parents to spend more time with their children. This is especially important for working mothers.

Though many modern fathers are doing a lot of childcare these days too, women still do the bulk of childcare in most families and an employer who encourages flexible working will ensure that mothers can have a career and still be there for their children more.

It’s International Women’s Day 2020 this weekend, Sunday the 8th of March, and though flexible working also benefits men and fathers, we are focussing more on women, particularly mothers, in this post. We all know that many women have to choose between a career and taking care of their children and this shouldn’t be a case in 2020 — we should be able to do both.

Working for myself, I know the benefits of flexible working when it comes to being able to work around the children and childcare. I have three young children and by having a flexible job, I can also make sure I can get the kids to and from school and look after my younger ones at home around work tasks. My husband is also lucky to be able to do flexible working for his employer and can work from home one day and work more some days to have one afternoon off a week which he spends with the kids. We don’t have any family nearby to help with childcare so without flexible working we would struggle to fit in both kids and work for two parents.

Companies might be worried about how offering flexible working could affect their business, work efficiency and revenue but they shouldn’t worry. The result is likely to be happier employees and raised morale in general and you know people who are happy with their job and their employer and much more likely to do a good job with their tasks.

A great example is Font Bundles which was started by three friends (Alex France, Geoff Ballington and Andy Croft) on a shoestring budget with a range of skills and experience. The company is still owned by just the creators and still self-funded but now boasts 30 full time employees and over 4000 designers selling their products on the craft and design marketplace, Design Bundles and the font marketplace, Font Bundles.

Font Bundles is registered here in the UK but all 30 of the company’s employees work remotely and are impressively based in over 10 different countries around the world. The co-founders included — they meet up a few times a year to brainstorm and discuss business plans. They don’t have any office space at all and are a very successful multimillion dollar company.

“Font Bundles Ltd is a diverse and modern company who champion diversity and flexible working. The company started and scaled without any central office by making use of the team working application Slack.”

In the last financial year, the company grossed over $10,000,000 USD in revenue, showing no signs of slowing down with the launch of several other brands and products. Font Bundles make a great example of how modern companies can work and that flexible and remote working doesn’t impact a company negatively.

Making flexible working available for more people, especially working mothers, would be so beneficial to both employees and businesses:

• Employees will be happier, work better and enjoy the flexibility that comes with working for their employer. They will spend much less time and money commuting and feel positive about being able to choose their working environment and having more control of their schedule and working hours to fit around family needs, for example.
• Employers will benefit from the employees boosted morale and the company will gain a wonderful enhanced image of being a family-friendly company to work for. They’ll also have to worry much less about employees being late or taking time off for other appointments etc as flexible working removes these concerns.

Flexible working is a win-win and should be offered when possible — the result can be a very successful business with a very happy work force.

Have you got any experience with flexible working? How has it helped your family?

Collaborative Post.