Flexible finance: Is your labour budget ready for flexible work?
It can be easily overlooked, but the way we budget for employees can have a huge impact on flexible work uptake.
Inflexible labour budgets make for inflexible workforces.
The good news? One change to workforce planning can unlock greater flexibility — and a more cost-effective way to build teams.
Headcount vs total budget
When people budgets are allocated by headcount not overall cost, finance can unintentionally create biased decisions about flexible workers.
Watch what happens...
Rachel wants to hire the best candidate for her Head of Campaigns role. However, her top pick, Mira, can only work 3 days a week.
At her company, she gets a 5 FTE headcount for her team, which means Rachel has to decide whether to go with Mira and lose 2 days a week of capacity from her team — or hire a full-time person. No-one wins.
If Rachel could pay for the 3 days, she could allocate the remaining budget to a new junior or promote another team member. The best person is hired, the work gets allocated. Everyone wins.