Make the business case to your finance team
4 strong reasons to budget flexibly.
Higher ROI on labour costs
As we emerge from Covid-19, many organisations will need to allocate resources cleverly against the most important business priorities.
It is economically irrational that those skills and resources are best allocated in blocks of 38-hour weeks with the same hours and location every week.
There’s a smarter way to design our teams. The way we plan labour budgets influences how managers allocate their resources.
2. Decreasing fixed labour costs
Creativity is one of the most important skills for business leaders as we navigate ambiguity and volatile supply/demand.
We have seen companies use creative people measures to “get through” Covid, whether their business was peaking or plummeting in demand.
Flexible work solutions such as part-time, contingent and remote working have been huge enablers to concertina the workforce as needed.
2. Increasing talent supply
With a talent shortage of highly skilled workers in areas such as technology and digital, managers need to look for hidden talent. Our finance processes need to encourage managers to employ strategies such as:
Tapping into the hidden, high calibre part-time talent pool. 99.6% of professional roles are advertised as full-time. Full-time flexible does not attract this talent.
If the budget is not competitive, allow managers to apply that whole budget to a part-time role. Eg. The budget is $100k FTE. By applying this to a 3-day role, you access talent commanding $167k FTE.
4. Reducing real estate costs
Being flexible with people budgets will enable big shifts in office culture, with the potential for significant real estate cost savings in the future.
Leading organisations are already taking a sophisticated view of what work can be done remotely and what work is best done on location. They’re planning their office space for deep work collaboration, culture-building and onboarding.
The timing might be out, with lease agreements and recent fit-out expenditure for instance, however the important thing here is to make decisions based on what is optimal for the business outcomes and employees, not what real estate you have committed to.
Is increasing women in leadership on the agenda?
When you advertise mid and senior professional roles part-time, 87% of the time, the successful candidate is a woman.
Tip: Ask your finance team to start with a pilot. Which division needs more talent, more women in leadership or is leading the way on flexible work?