Recruiters Need Mindset Shift on Work-From-Home Arrangements

Appeared in: Shortlist
Date: June 2012

Recruitment companies need to stop resisting the trend towards allowing staff to work from home, says recruitment advisor Nicole Underwood.

Underwood, who runs a consultancy for businesses and recruiters on staffing and retention, NicoleUnderwood.com, said allowing consultants flexibility around where they worked was a great attraction and retention tool, but would involve a shift in attitudes for the traditional recruitment industry.

“Initial reactions [from management] are always, ‘It’s a change, it’s something different. I can’t see [the consultant], how am I going to keep tabs on them?’”

“There’s still that mentality of, ‘If I can’t see you, you must be slacking off,’” she said.

However, Underwood said recruiting was “a highly measurable job” and there was no reason why managers couldn’t make the switch from measuring hours spent in the office, to focusing on results.

A successful work-from-home arrangement should track the consultant’s normal KPIs, as well as “measurables” in terms of activity and revenue, and review the arrangement every quarter to ensure it was still working.

“The only time I saw that it didn’t work was when a consultant [decided] themselves that it wasn’t working…. They found that they were being distracted or they preferred being around people,” she said.

Communication was important to the success of remote work arrangements, and both management and consultants needed to be clear with the rest of the team about how the arrangement was going to work, said Underwood.

“Do they need to ring in, in the morning? Or send an email at the end of the day with a summary of what they’ve completed?”

“You’ve got to be very clear in your expectations of how it’s going to work and talking to everyone who’s potentially going to be affected and setting those expectations rather than hiding it,” she said.

Underwood, who will discuss workplace flexibility at this year’s RCSA International Conference, also warned that work-from-home arrangements were only suitable for proven performers.

“For someone who’s a non-performer they need more support, they need more coaching and more face-to-face time with their leader than ever before.

“Sitting at home on their own trying to achieve what they’re already struggling with is going to be a recipe for disaster,” she said.

One in four Peoplebank staff work from home

Peoplebank manager of people and performance Michelle Cooper said one quarter of the company’s 220 employees currently worked from home either some or all of time.

Cooper, who herself works from home two days a week, said it helped consultants improve their work-life balance, which was often an issue among recruitment professionals.

“It’s the way of the future and we figured if we didn’t jump on board - from a great place to work and an employee engagement perspective - we would be left behind,” she said.

While the option to work from home was available for all employees, arrangements were determined on a case-by-case basis.

“It’s [decided based on] a discussion between the manager and the employee. We train our employees and managers around all of this and then they work together through what the arrangement will look like,” she said.

For some roles that couldn’t realistically be done remotely, employees could negotiate flexible arrangements, which might see them start and finish later.

“It’s really about [having] that discussion about what that person wants or needs - whether it’s lifestyle needs or whatever that might be - and then finding the best way that we can cater to that,” said Cooper.