With prominent Australian organisations such as ANZ and the Australian Stock Exchange offering their employees options around work hours and locations, flexibility is fast becoming a cornerstone of Australian businesses focused on attracting and retaining high-calibre staff.

According to the Australian Government, flexible working arrangements can include changes to:

• hours of work (eg. changes to start and finish times)
• patterns of work (eg. split shifts or job sharing)
• locations of work (eg. working from home).

The Australian Human Rights Commission adds that: “Flexible work arrangements can also help employers meet their obligation to avoid discrimination against employees with disabilities, older employees and employees with family responsibilities.”

Paradigm shift

Cloud computing and web-based communication has altered the business landscape considerably in recent years, creating ever-expanding possibilities for working remotely and outside of traditional working hours. Many families have pressures relating to child care or elder care, so it makes sense for both businesses and employees to re-evaluate the nine-to-five paradigm.

At MEC, we know that flexible working arrangements are the way forward. Our organisational culture has always been underpinned by respect and openness, because strong relationships with our staff and clients are vital to our business. These values extend to the open dialogue we encourage with our staff members; we understand that people have differing needs, family obligations and preferences, and we endeavour to be adaptable.

For example:

• many of our team members spend at least one day per week working from home, which allows them to share parenting duties with their partners
• start and finish times vary across the team, allowing staff to choose working times that balance the needs of family
• some MEC team members spend part of their week working from locations outside of our Brisbane base.

Win-win

Responding to our people’s needs in terms of flexibility, while still delivering excellent results, is an aspect of MEC that makes us an employer of choice. Recruiting top professionals and creating a work environment where they thrive is a top priority of us. If our employees are balanced and happy, then we are rewarded with reduced staff turnover, absenteeism, improved morale and performance.