We’ve all had to work more flexibly in the last year.
Our working lives have changed dramatically and we’re thinking carefully about what we want our ‘new normal’ to be as Covid-19 restrictions begin to lift.
hedgehog lab has been an advocate for flexible working for many years and we now want to share our practices to encourage other digital agencies to embrace a more flexible approach to delivery.
In this article, you’ll find out why flexible working is so important to us, as one of the leading app development companies in the UK, and how we do it. This has been edited down from a longer article which you can read on our blog via this link.
There is a clear demand for a new approach to our working lives.
Covid-19 forced the nation into flexible working and provided evidence of its benefits. A report by the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD) found that homeworking did not have a detrimental effect on productivity for 71% of respondents. Instead, it enhanced wellbeing, skills development and collaboration and helped improve relationships between colleagues as they got to know each other as individuals and learnt more about their non-work lives.
Flexibility is here to stay and we need to embrace everything it offers our businesses.
One of our values is ‘our team is our greatest asset’. We believe that if you create a great working environment for people and provide them with the right tools, then creating exceptional products and delivering a world-class service will follow.
That’s why we’ve offered flexible working for years.
To us, flexible working arrangements increase staff motivation, reduce employee stress, improve performance and productivity, and encourage staff retention. We offer unlimited holidays, enhanced maternity leave and the opportunity to tailor working hours around personal responsibilities.
Our People and Culture Lead, Aime Watson, believes this is the secret to our success:
“hedgehog lab’s culture is very open and trusting, acknowledging that we’re all grown-ups and each play an important role in the company. It makes everyone happier to feel they are part of something and are trusted to work in ways that enable them to produce their best work.”
Our people and culture initiatives are regularly updated to take employee feedback onboard.
We use Peakon as a staff engagement tool to check-in with our team and see if there is anything else we can do to make their work lives better.
When we asked what learning we could take from Covid-19, we were inundated with responses that supported the continuous adoption of flexible working. So, we’re reviewing our policies and procedures to find out how we can do more – and we’ll keep listening and adapting to suit the changing needs of our team.
We’re so passionate about sharing the benefits of flexible working for careers in tech that we sought to accredit our approach and pass on our learning to other companies offering digital agency jobs.
We joined Flexa, a platform that helps people find truly flexible jobs. It’s Flexification accreditation is the only standard for flexibility in the UK and demonstrates our commitment to flexible working to potential employees.
Flexa states that flexibility is the most in-demand employee benefit right now and it shares our belief that a flexible workplace is a happier and more productive place to be.
To become accredited, we took the Flexification quiz to assess our approach to flexible working. The industry benchmark for the quiz is a 60% pass rate and we’re thrilled to say that hedgehog lab achieved an 85% score.
We’re aiming to make that score even higher as we continue to strengthen our flexible working approach to offer our employees the best work-life balance possible.
If you would like further information about flexible working at hedgehog lab then please email kathryn.wharton@hedgehoglab.com