Louisa's blog: In search of a better balance

"The future of work needs to change - we all know that. In spite of the huge advances made in the legislation and culture that embrace our workplaces, there is still a lot more to be done to ensure our experience of work is as flexible and inclusive as it can possibly be.

Research conducted last year by flexible working experts Timewise and the Joseph Rowntree Foundation found that over 14 million workers – nearly half of people in employment in the UK - want to work flexibly to fit with modern life. That’s an incredible statistic.

Through my work running WorkLife Central I’ve met so many talented people – particularly women, and mothers – who feel excluded from the workforce due to their need for a really deep level of flexibility.

It’s very frustrating when you come across people with significant skills and great professional potential, who aren’t able to use their experience in the workplace because the time they have available doesn’t fit with what’s typically on offer in the jobs market.

For many parents and carers, who want to integrate work with their home responsibilities, a traditional ‘part-time’ job is still too restrictive. But until now, there has been no mechanism for individuals to share their time and talent with the business community.

While approaching a recruitment consultant or searching for vacancies online are methods still used by many job-seekers to find conventional full-time work, it’s much harder in the part-time world.

In spite of the rise in dedicated flexible working job sites, searching for a role that is a direct match for your availability is a real challenge. And if the hours you can spare don’t fall evenly over the course of a day, week, or year (for example, if you want to work during school term-time only), that hurdle to finding the perfect job can simply be too high to jump.

So it is that many workers in the UK find themselves excluded from the traditional workforce because their availability and time doesn’t fit that required by advertised roles. Their professional skills and expertise aren’t utilised, their potential is unfulfilled, and the business community loses out on this incredible talent pool – because it doesn’t know how to reach it.

That’s why, this month, I launched a new initiative, www.usemyskills.com, that aims to transform the fixed schedules we’re used to working on, by providing a platform for individuals to share their professional skills and the time they have available to work.  

We believe strongly that work and family life shouldn't be an 'either/or' choice, and that people with professional backgrounds and skills, who want to integrate work into their home lives, should be able to do so.

Offering a platform on which these flexible job-seekers can advertise their professional skills and time available to work, provides this opportunity. And it also creates an opportunity for employers – to access an amazing resource and enjoy the benefits of an agile workforce.

Research from the Agile Future Forum (AFF), created in 2013 to champion flexible working in the business community, has shown that employers could generate more than 10 per cent in workforce cost savings if they use more flexible working practices

I hope Use My Skills (which is open to everyone and free to join) will change this for everyone."

Louisa Symington-Mills is the founder of WorkLife Central. Louisa works part-time in private equity, and has two children aged 2.5yrs and 4yrs. She runs WorkLife Central and UseMySkills in her spare time and is a weekly columnist at The Telegraph online covering women, networking, work and business topics.