WHY FLEXIBLE WORK WORKS

As someone who works from home, and has done so for many years, I relish the freedom that it gives me to organise my day and my work around my life and my other responsibilities (thank you Cathy, our publisher).

Personally, I believe that working at home makes for a very productive day. For a start there is no time-consuming commute; there are no distractions and you can just get on and do the job, knowing if you need help or advice colleagues are a mere email or phone call away.

I often wonder why more organisations aren't more open to this type of flexibility. In our hyperconnected world I would think that almost anyone working in an office could work from home, at least part of the time, and come into the office when, and as, needed. And with the so-called gig economy continuing to grow, I imagine more and more people will be looking for this flexibility.

So it was with real interest I read Denise Moller's article on the IMNZ pages discussing how businesses need to embrace flexible working if they want to retain the big pool of talent that new mothers can bring to an organisation. She provides some great ideas for both new mothers returning to the workforce and for employers who don't want to lose a valuable worker. She also makes the point that women should not be penalised for having a baby: “If women don't leave work to have babies our population wouldn't survive and we certainly shouldn't be penalised for that,” she writes. See page 24.

This issue we also delve into how senior management can work to put things to right if something is starting to go very wrong in your business. As the story points out, people can fail, systems can fail and markets can change so despite the very best of intentions, things can, and do, go wrong. And facing up to the fact that there actually is problem can often be the hardest thing to do. (See page 8).