Meet Flexibility Matters, the 500th Living Wage Employer in Brighton

The 500th employer to sign up to the Brighton & Hove Living Wage campaign is Emma Cleary, owner and founder of Flexibility Matters.

Hi Emma, congratulations on becoming our 500th Living Wage employer!

Tell us more about your business.
Flexibility Matters is the champion of all things about flexible working. From recruitment, to best practice in creating flexible working strategies, to implementation and training staff.

We believe that in work and life a balance creates a happier, more engaged work force who not only like their work environment but are better retained, more engaged and more productive. Everyone wins!

I have lived and breathed flexible working for the past 5 years running the Sussex Ten2Two franchise and I am now running Flexibility Matters independently with my team Donna, Hannah, Clare and Nicole. We are the embodiment of flexible working as we all work remotely coming together once a week to touch base and plan for the future. We’ve found that it’s really important to connect as a team weekly and daily by phone. Communication is the key to making flexible working work!

Our core business is flexible recruitment, but more recently we have launched two discussion groups on flexible working best practice with the aim of creating a best practice check list and implementation guide which will be recognised by the CIPD and the government task force on flexible working. As part of this initiative we will train teams on how to handle flexible working.

Why were you keen to join the Living Wage campaign?
Because it is the right way to employ great people and ensure they stay with you.

For all the reasons I set up FM: employee engagement, work and life balance and being aware that you get better results from happier staff. A business would be mad to ignore the benefits. The challenge is cultural change and implementation!

Is Brighton & Hove a good place to work? What can we do to make it better?
It is a very special business environment and companies are very open to trying new business practices, many smaller businesses populate the city and they can make fast and nimble decisions on new initiatives, such as flexibility or the Living Wage.

How can we find out more about Flexibility Matters? Do you have anything coming up that you’d like to plug?
Our 2nd discussion group on flexible working best practice is being held on 16 May in Crawley, hosted by BC&E. Visit our website to find out more.

Thanks Emma!