Work-life balance and flexible work options are high on the list of priorities for job seekers.

For many healthcare professionals, flexibility at work is of more value than a higher remuneration package.

But why do many practices struggle to incorporate flexible work into their existing culture?

There are many ways to incorporate it into your business and you may only need to introduce one option to significantly improve work-life balance options for your staff.

What is flexible work?

When considering what flexible work might look like for your practice, it is important to consider the size of your business and the expectations of your customers.

A mistake many businesses make is implementing a flexible work policy that does not add value to existing staff or negatively impacts customers.

Before creating your policy, chat to your staff.

• Find out what flexible work options they would like to consider
• Explore any impact these changes might have on customer service and patient outcomes
• Your staff might have some fantastic suggestions on how to make work life balance a reality in your practice

Just give it a go!

Once you have some ideas, give it a go. You don’t need to try everything at once. Nor do you need to commit entirely to your new options, you can simply run it as a trial to begin with.

Assess the impact on staff and customers. Encourage discussion about the benefits and challenges and work to overcome these challenges together until you find the best solution.

It is important to continue to collaborate with your team to ensure that the options you have available continue to add genuine work life balance to your colleagues.

• Next time you could recruit two part-time employees rather than one full-time employee
• Could you adjust the hours and days of work to offer more flexibility
• Have you considered a nine-day fortnight or a rostered schedule such as two weeks on and one week off
• Sometimes time in lieu for overtime, or the ability to take unpaid leave, is all it takes to make a big impact on work life balance

Ultimately a strong flexible work offering that provides genuine work life balance for your staff needs to become part of your recruitment and retention strategy – because a happy medical workforce means better health for us all.