To stay and battle with old technologies and ways of working? Or spread your wings and soar to the cloud?
The times they are a’changing – and more rapidly than ever! A ‘job for life’ is no longer what those leaving education aspire to, nowadays the desire is for a job that allows ‘life’ to happen around it. Not such a bad thing really!
I learned keyboard skills in a typewriting class (manual, not electric), using 5 sheets of carbon paper amidst various coloured sheets of copy paper (no access to photocopiers), and a mistake means correcting each sheet of paper before trying wildly to line back up with the original text. Some of you reading may be rolling your eyes at this ‘old person’ with nostalgic tales of manual labour – and boy was it laborious! However, and this is the good bit, technology has advanced.
For those in the workplace this means that we now have options. Decisions to make around where we work, based on what is important to us.
It has been 3 years pretty much to the day of writing this, that a piece of research was published, quite startlingly stating that 43% of employees surveyed would change employers to be able to enjoy Flexible Work. 43% – and that was 3 years ago, and I would imagine that this number is climbing. Now the definition of flexible working was qualified with the respondents – 47% defined it as where they want to work, and 43% defined it as when they wanted to work. Either way you look at it, collaboration technology is the enabler.
When you consider that the true cost of replacing an employee can be as high as 150% of the leaver’s annual salary [Dun & Bradstreet], this ‘flight risk’ has a real impact not only through loss of a knowledge worker but also to an organisation’s bottom line.
I have been with my employer for 20 years. Started there in my twenties, and clearly have seen a lot of technological advances over the past two decades.
When people ask why I have stayed with one employer so long, it’s a pretty selfish answer; my employer has allowed me to work flexibly as my personal situation changed. I have been able to juggle bringing up 3 children, attending their school plays and sports days, caring for them whilst they are ill and, as they grew, attending university graduations, with maintaining and developing my own career.
Working for a company that not only evolves technologically, but also champions ‘change embracement’ has allowed me to ‘have it all’ – and isn’t ‘having it all’ what people are looking for?
Ask yourself, are your employees chained to a desktop PC in the office, with a fixed telephone on the desk and facing regular challenges as to whether they have enough holiday to be able to attend all nativity plays and sports days? Are they battling with communication antiquities that work, but not efficiently? Most importantly – do you catch them adding those Recruiters on LinkedIn?!
Maybe your HR team dreads employees coming to them asking for flexible working under the UK legislation that says all employees have the legal right to request flexible working – not just parents and carers.
If this resonates, then maybe it is time to stop battling with outdated technology and policies. Perhaps it is time to embrace change, reach for the cloud and start collaborating effectively & efficiently.
Your staff will thank you for it and you never know, the next big issue could be that your staff never want to leave.
Author Bio
Paula Neame – Mother, fiancee, sister, daughter, friend, employee, teacher, philosopher, marketer, artist, chief cook & bottlewasher… with a tiny *hint* of geek.
