In this forward-thinking episode of the Big Careers, Small Children podcast, Verena Hefti MBE speaks with Dominic Holmes, Employment Law Partner at Kilgannon Law and Leaders Plus mentor.

Dominic shares his expert insights on the evolving landscape of employment law, the future of flexible working, and how the UK workplace needs to adapt if we’re serious about equality and productivity.

A working parent himself, Dominic reflects on going part-time early in his legal career and how that shift transformed his effectiveness both at work and at home.

Together, they explore:

✔️ Why flexible working should be the default, and what proposed legal reforms might mean for employees and employers alike.

✔️ How organisations can move beyond presenteeism and value output over hours worked.

✔️ The personal and organisational benefits of part-time leadership.

✔️ Why the current legal system still fails many working parents—especially women—and how to build a better one.

✔️ The real reason we need a cultural and mindset shift around productivity and long-hours culture.

✔️ How Dominic manages senior client relationships while working a four-day week.

✔️ What a fair, inclusive future of work might look like for the next generation.

What You’ll Learn in This Episode

🔹 Why reduced hours can make you a more focused and effective leader

🔹 How legal reforms could reshape employer obligations around flexibility

🔹 Why traditional “commitment” metrics fail working parents

🔹 The risks of defaulting to full-time roles without justification

🔹 Practical ways to challenge assumptions about career progression and presence

Show Notes:

• Connect with Dominic Holmes on LinkedIn
• Learn more about Kilgannon Law at kilgannonlaw.co.uk
• Learn more about the Leaders Plus: Big Careers, Small Children podcast and explore additional resources at leadersplus.org.
• Follow Leaders Plus on LinkedIn, Instagram, and Bluesky.
• Connect with our CEO, Verena Hefti MBE on LinkedIn.
• Find out more about the work of Leaders Plus by signing up to our Newsletter.

Our multi-award-winning Leaders Plus Fellowships support parents committed to career growth while enjoying family life. Expertly designed to keep parents on the leadership path, our programme tackles gender pay gap issues and empowers parents to thrive. Learn more here: Leaders Plus Fellowship.

More BCSC episodes you might love:

Episode 208: Nadia Bunyan MCIPD & Tatiana Pignon - How to Successfully Implement a 4-Day Week Without Sacrificing Impact

[Future of Work] Episode 185: Lucy Kemp - How AI Will Impact the Future of Work & How to Prevent Women From Leaving the Workforce

Welcome to the Big Careers Small Children Podcast. My name is Verena Hefti. I believe that no one should have to choose between becoming a CEO and enjoying their young children for much too long.

Amazing people like I'm sure you listening right now have found themselves stuck on the career ladder when they have children and that leads to gender inequality in senior leadership because because those people don't progress to senior leadership and the same stale, often male middle class people leading our organizations.

We must change this together and I hope that many of you listening right now will progress to the most senior leadership roles that you like where you can make the decisions that make our world a better place. Outside of the podcast, I am the CEO and founder of the social enterprise Leaders Plus.

We exist to help working parents progress their careers to senior leadership in a way that works for you and for your families.

We have free events and resources on leadersplus.org where you can download helpful toolkits such as on returning from maternity leave, share parental leave, securing a promotion, dealing with workload challenges, or managing as a dual career couple.

We also have an award winning fellowship community which is global for working parents who have big dreams for their careers but don't want to sacrifice their family. You'll join an absolutely wonderful group of people, a very tight knit, supportive group of parents who have your back. Together.

You'll explore what your career aspirations are and you'll get advice from senior leaders who are also working parents about how to achieve those aspirations.

You'll get new ideas to combine your hopes for your careers with your hope for your family and you are supported by people who are experiencing what you're experiencing yourself.

I'm really delighted that a larger majority of our fellows have made tangible changes following the program, be that becoming more senior in their roles, working shorter hours, having a better flexible working arrangement.

They always impress me so much with the courage that they instill in each other to do what is right for them without apologizing for having a family or apologizing for wanting that.

Top job Details are on leadersplus.org/Fellowship this week I am chatting to Dominic Holmes, employment law partner in a law firm and also Leaders plus Mentor about his view of the future of work, what he thinks is going to change with flexible working and his predictions for the future, as well as a bit of an analysis of the changes that have been put into motion with UK employment law. It sounds quite dry now I'm introducing it actually, but I really, really enjoyed the conversation.

Dom is just an absolutely fabulous person and I'M sure you will too. A very warm welcome back to the podcast. Thank you so much for letting me rope you in again.

For the listeners who don't remember the previous episodes we did together, could you introduce who you are, what you do for work and who is in your family?

Yes. Hello everyone. Nice to be back. So my name is Dom Holmes. I am an employment lawyer, so I'm a partner at a firm called Kilgannon Law.

So we're a niche employment immigration practice comprised mostly of experienced lawyers who work largely remotely and I live on the south coast. I live in sunny Bournemouth and with my wife and my two children.

I've got a daughter, Jemima, who's just turned six and my little son Tommy has just turned three. So that's our little family.

Lovely. I've got a three and six year old as well, so I can imagine your house being busy.

So we asked this of all podcast guests and I'm going to ask it of you again.

Can you recall anything that changed in your thinking about combining a big career with young children that you used to believe 10 years ago that you don't subscribe to anymore?

Yes, I mean, I've talked about this a lot.

I think it was a bit of a light bulb moment for me when we had our daughter, our eldest child, because I was fortunate enough to have a month's paternity leave.

And then as it came to the end of it, it suddenly dawned on me that I was going back to work and I thought, how on earth am I going to go back to the career and life I had before my daughter was born? And the biggest misconception I had was that actually it was a little bit of either or. You couldn't have both.

There would have to be a sacrifice on one side or the other. And frankly, the more I thought about it and looked into it, the less I realized that was true.

It is perfectly possible to be a full time parent in terms of giving all the intention and love to your children that you can and having a fulfilling and rewarding career. It requires some self discipline and time management and you may want to do things slightly differently.

So one of the things I did is I went part time fairly early on. I went down to four days a week, which I don't regret for a minute, but it is perfectly possible to do both.

What it did is it made me more efficient at work and more efficient at home.

Thank you for sharing.

You've spent the last few months digesting and understanding the recent changes proposed to flexible work and employment law generally, as a result of the UK elections, we should say, in the UK recently there have been elections and some massive changes have been proposed to the way that our employment is structured. I'm interested. What topic have you received the most questions on?

So it's a generational thing in the UK and there's been a lot of noise around things like zero hours contracts and banning them. The law is not going to do that, actually. And people having dismissal protection from day one rather than having to wait for two years.

So those have generated all the headlines.

But actually, I think the biggest change which has slightly gone under the radar a little bit is there are proposed changes to the way employers will have to treat flexible working requests. So at the moment, an employee has the right to request flexible working arrangements, whether that's location or hours or something else.

But the employer can say no as long as it has one or more of eight specified business reasons. And they are fairly broadly drafted.

So that's things like impact on the team, impact on ability to deliver services to customers, et cetera, et cetera. What the new proposals are, and they are only proposals, so they're subject to consultation, is effective to flip that around.

So in practice, an employer will have to say yes unless it has a good reason not to. So the way the government phrases it is flexible working will be the default unless it is not reasonably feasible.

So that makes it much harder, I suspect, if it goes through in its current form for employers just to say no, we can't allow you to go down to four days a week because we've got customer demands. We can't backfill it the other way. They're going to have to show a higher degree of reasonableness before they can justify that decision.

Interesting. I'm interested in your long term prediction. Obviously this is an important step and it will change hopefully some people's lives.

But at the moment, what's your gut feeling? Where is flexible working going?

What do you think flexible working will look like in the UK in 15 years time when your children start entering the job market?

That would be a big prediction. Look, I think the rule, the proposed changes to the.

The rules are important and I say this from someone who acts primarily for employers in my day job. So I mostly advise Employers, I think generally it is a good thing and should be welcomed.

The slight wrinkle in the current regime, aside from employees being able to say no quite easily, which I think is going to be retained, is this concept that flexible working a few years ago became what we call a day one. Right. So previously you had to have had six months employment with an employer before you could request flexible working.

Now you can request it on day one.

I mean, I don't have an issue with that in principle because it goes more broadly to my view that individuals should be able to work as flexibly as can be allowed in the circumstances. My concern is that it leads to a situation where employees and employers sign up to a particular set of arrangements.

So you an employer hires for a job, the individual turns up and a week later changes their mind and moves the goalposts, which again can be managed by an employer if it has a wide scope to say no.

If that flips around and it's very hard for the employer to say no under the new regime, I do wonder whether the rules should change so that and the law needs to adapt to this as well so that employers and job candidates can have open and honest discussions about flexible working arrangements during the recruitment process. They agree it as part of the job offer and then you lock it in for a period of time so it gives certainty to employer and employee.

I mean longer term I can only see a shift towards greater individual autonomy over working time.

I'm slightly concerned that some employers are making strident efforts in some cases to enforce working from office rules and making sure people are in the majority of the time, maybe four or five days a week in some cases in circumstances where actually it's probably not necessary, it's just that they'd like to go back to the old pre Covid way of doing things. So I think ultimately individual autonomy will win out on that.

And as part of a sort of open minded inclusive society, we should be encouraging flexible working as much as possible. Unless a job absolutely has to be done on site.

And some jobs do, obviously, you know, some, some types of work cannot be done from home or wherever you choose to do your work. But where they can, I think that should be the default.

Yeah, it's interesting.

I did a podcast a number of episodes ago on the topic of work style and this idea that we should, rather than having flexible and non flexible work, we should have just accept everyone has their work style where they are most likely to produce outcomes and so to allow for that differentiation. But I'm just thinking and this may be me looking at it too darkly. It's quite a dreary morning here in London where I'm recording this.

Isn't there a risk of a two class society to emerge?

So one group of people who readily come to the office who are willing to work not just full time but for full time plus, you know, 120% of their allocated hours versus people who are not able to do that and who are, who will take advantage of that right to request flexible working. Won't employers be incentivized to almost filter those people out at recruitment stage?

Potentially, But I think this, again, this is where the law can provide protection whereby obviously they will advertise a role. And there have been moves, I think, to sort of for employers to advertise where roles are flexible or not, etc.

I mean, that kind of rule hasn't come in, but the law is there to try and promote that kind of conversation not being taboo or not disadvantaging people because they are requesting flexible working. I think there are two points to make on that.

The first is I'm certainly not saying that people who want to work 120% of their allocated hours and who want to be in the office and have that kind of working culture, so they should be allowed to do that and employers will likely welcome that.

There will need to be safeguards in place to ensure that people who choose to work more flexibly are not disadvantaged in terms of promotion, remuneration, etcetera, etcetera. But working longer does not necessarily mean working better or working more efficiently.

And if we continue to encourage working practices which prioritise people's presence in the office over their efficiency and their actual value and output. So input versus output, effectively. So lawyers is a really good example. Traditionally judged on how many hours of time they put on their timesheet.

Now it could be eight hours of rubbish time that doesn't really generate any value for clients, or it could be three hours of really focused time that not only delivers a great output for the client, but actually costs them less. So there's a kind of mind shift there as well. I take the point about that.

But I think if we continue to be closed off to flexible working, you're just excluding people who are incredibly talented from even having the opportunity to go for those higher roles simply because of their circumstances.

They may have health conditions, they may have caring responsibilities, not just school age children, they may have caring responsibilities at home, but that doesn't mean they can't contribute and be as Valuable to an employer as someone who is at a stage of their life or has the circumstances where they can put loads of hours in and be in the office all the time.

I'm gonna ask another challenging prediction question again, thinking about 15 years time when your kids may start, or my kids as well may start getting into the employment market.

I hope so by then.

Or they may not live very possible. I just had an email this morning from someone who said my 30 year old son is still at home to save up a deposit, so who knows what will come?

But I'm interested.

So in 15 years time, if we picture a world where genuinely your progression chances aren't affected by whether or not you work part time or full time, what do you think you would need to have happened?

And I'm saying this just for our listeners, the context is in the UK today, if you work part time, you are paid less per hour than someone working full time. So if we picture that change, you know, it doesn't matter.

They might say, oh, I want to do a rock climbing course, so I'm just going to work three and a half days a week and train as a rock climbing instruction. I mean, is it even realistic or do you want to tell me, well, actually it's not going to happen.

And if it is realistic that you can still progress on three and a half days a week, what change would need to happen?

So I think it is very realistic.

I mean, I can't speak obviously for all employers in all circumstances and as I said before, certainly just some roles just cannot be performed as flexibly as others. You know, think about public sector roles.

Some of, you know, some people sort of first responders, you know, there are certain job characteristics which makes it more difficult. The thing that would make that happen.

I mean, I think ultimately for employers it is seeing the benefits of that and seeing the evidence that it really works.

And that can only happen by individuals who have flexible working arrangements demonstrating to their employer the value that they add, not just despite the fact that they might work three and a half days a week, but perhaps because they work three and a half days a week in terms of coming to it fresh, less time off sick because they're not burnt out, their ability to manage their time better and do things which derive most value. So I think one of the things I found when I moved to four days a week was I stopped doing a load of stuff that I just used to fill my day with.

So that I was working full time, I was really focused on the types of work I did at certain times of day when I was most effective, I got better at saying no.

And the proof that I was working was that in the time I was working four days per week, I generated more revenue for my firm, I had better client relationships and I built a practice and managed the team. All of which I was much better at on four days a week because I had my Fridays with my children. So I think it's an evidence based thing.

Employers need to see that it works rather than thinking that flexible working is for people who aren't as committed or, you know, just want to take their foot off the gas a bit. I mean, that is a complete misconception. All the people I speak to who have part time arrangements, that is not the case.

It is because they want to deliver as much contribution as possible and continue to progress their careers that they want to go part time because otherwise they feel they couldn't manage it.

Very well said. Thank you. I'm interested though. You talked about part time, that being a normal thing, that we can be part time in senior roles.

Aren't there skills that we need to make that work both as employees and managers? Because at the moment it is not the normal thing. You are clearly a talent in setting boundaries, in confidently going against the tide.

Those are unique talents. Not many people are brilliant at that. And you seem to.

I mean, I'm sure it's not always that easy, but it just seems that you are actually rather good at those things. What do you think we need to change in our capabilities to make that world of work work?

Well, I think obviously some of it's on the employer side in terms of embracing part time working and perhaps getting people in who do it already to teach others how it's done. I mean, I learned from others. I'm not a trailblazer.

I mean, there are loads of people who've been on your podcast, Verena, who done it fantastically well. And I learned lots of stuff of them.

I mean, in terms of individual skills, it is, you know, firstly an acceptance that it's not always going to be perfect.

Okay, so someone who's in a client facing role like I am, sometimes I have to accept that, you know, people will still want me on a day which I've designated as a non working day.

And then the question is, okay, well how, how do I put in place a filter system to ensure that doesn't impact on my child care or whatever it is I'm doing on that non working day?

So for me it's childcare and the Way I used to do it in my previous firm when I had a big team around me, is I would become much better at delegating. You know, I think that's one.

If you've got people in your team who are maybe also know those customers or job share or whatever it is, you have to be able to let go. Okay? And that's not always easy for ambitious people. They've got where they've got to by grabbing hold of things, doing it themselves.

But you have to embrace the talents around you. You have to value your own time and get others to value your own time. So when you are in the office or on your working days, big bugbear.

So people just put meetings in your diary for half an hour. Even though they only needed to talk to you for five or 10 minutes, they felt the need to fill that that whole half hour because it was there.

So it's being really efficient and being available to your colleagues or your team, but on the basis that they respect that you have limited time available and therefore, let's make the most of it. So, yeah, I think there are steps and skills that individuals can develop to help them do that.

And also messages and communications they can give to other people, which ensures that everyone is just working much more respectfully and effectively. Does that make sense?

It absolutely does.

And I would add there are skills that senior leaders need to develop to manage by outcomes much better, to manage workload better, especially when you have people in junior roles who perhaps have less freedom. And also to quantify activities that it's easier in a sales role or a role like yours.

But we need to be able to quantify thought leadership if that's part of your role or innovation and so on. I've heard some lawyers say that law can change the world. And I'm interested if you had a magic wand.

Do you have any laws that you would like changing to create the future of work that you would love for your children?

It's an interesting question, Varina. I mean, my observation is the law often lags behind where society wants to be. So the law is playing catch up.

And although law can contribute, effective legal regulation can contribute to better outcomes in terms of future of work. The fact just having a law in place does not stop unlawful activity. So we've had discrimination legislation in this country for nearly 50 years.

Unfortunately, you know, people from ethnic minorities, females in the workplace are still disadvantaged and are still discriminated against. And I mentioned just those two characteristics. Obviously they've been added to over the years and it still happens.

And the statistics show that, you know, particularly female workers still don't have the same opportunities, pay progression, whatever you want to call it that you know that it is not an equal workplace 50 years on. So I don't think the law is like the, the magic bullet that is going to solve it.

I think law creates a framework which then encourages societal change. And I'd like to get to a position where actually the law is keeping up.

It's never going to be ahead of the curve because that's just not the way it works.

And also I think we're slightly constrained by the fact that particularly in the uk we have two quite different political philosophies which dominate our political landscape. There is. So we currently have a Labor government.

So our current government professes itself to be pro business and pro worker, which I think is a refreshing approach. But traditionally those kinds of governments tend to put in place more regulation on employers, more red tape and then it flips over.

And then maybe, however many years in advance, we might go back to a different political philosophy which is free market, everyone, light touch, let's cut all the red tape. So you're never going to get that perfect balance. But I mean I think, I don't think law can change the world.

I think it can contribute to a better world.

But it should be doing it on the basis of encouraging people to exhibit behaviors that reflect society more generally or where we want to be, rather than trying to impose sanctions for non compliance. And that's a very hard thing for the law to do.

That's so not what I expected you to say. Don't. I thought as a lawyer. Yeah, no, it's good to, it's good to be surprised.

I, I mean I'm a bit biased because I have some lawyers in my family who will absolutely say that of course the law is, rules the world. So thank you for your refreshing perspective. I'm interested in the practicalities of some of the changes.

Do you think now someone is going to apply for a job in the uk? Will it physically look different or not? Do you think it's just a bit of hot air. And in reality there's not that much change.

As I said, there are only proposals. So they might be subject to some tweaking. I mean ultimately, I think given the size of our government's majority, those reforms will come in.

And the main point being that the default is flexible working. Will it change how people apply for jobs or how jobs are put on the market?

That's an interesting question because I think the assumption will be that when you apply for a role, there's a discussion to be had about flexible working. I think there will be a shift towards that.

So at the moment you often see roles saying this is three days per week role or it's a job share, or this is a full time role. I think we might see a little bit less of that.

What I think will be interesting is to see how defensive some employers might go in stating from the outset, this has to be a full time in the office or in the workplace role because. Because they have to justify why they wouldn't be able to offer flexible hours.

You might see a shift there where people are explaining why the job has to be done a certain way. I think that'd be interesting. I don't really know. I think it depends how the final laws pan out.

But I can certainly see that would be one way that employers might say, okay, we accept that in most cases flexible working is probably actually not a bad thing and we can embrace it more just in the way that we had to embrace it a few years ago during lockdown. Overnight, you flick a switch, everyone works from home if they can.

And for those who can't work from home and have to go into the workplace, all these obviously very important safeguards are in place so it can be done. I don't know how employers will adapt to that new world, but that might be one way that they do.

That was quite a rambling answer, Verena, so you might want to add it to that.

Not at all. Very interesting, very interesting. And I'm not making it easy for you by asking you all these predictions.

I should have given sent you a little crystal ball as part of this podcast interview. But I really find your thoughts interesting. So I'm going to continue asking you about your predictions.

So another one which is about the parental rights, maternity rights, what's your prediction there?

Well, again, there are some changes in the proposed government reforms, things like paternity leave and parental leave.

And also extending some existing protections we have in place for employees returning from maternity leave, extending it to other forms of family leave. So I'll just explain very briefly. We have various types of family leave or family related leave that people can take in the uk.

Maternity leave, we have paternity leave, we have adoption leave, they're all fairly self explanatory.

We also now have shared parental leave, which is where effectively the mother or main adopter of a child can curtail their maternity or adoption leave and share it with their partner. That is quite complex. In practice, but that's been I think an interesting development.

And you also have things like emergency time off for dependence leave where you have to drop everything and go, and parental leave, which is different to shared parental leave. Again quite confusing, but that is basically you can have blocks of time off during your child's first 18 years, but it's unpaid.

So the things that are changing are that paternity leave and that unpaid parental leave are going to become day one rights. So at the moment you need at least six months employment to have paternity leave. Right. And a year's employment to have parental leave. Right.

So they're going to become day one, Right.

And the existing protections that apply to employees returning from maternity leave, effectively they have certain levels of protection from redundancy.

So you can put them at risk of redundancy, but if there is a suitable alternative vacancy for them in the business, they basically get the right to jump the queue and have first right of refusal on that. The government's looking to extend that to other forms of leave and also to other reasons for dismissal potentially as well.

So I'm not quite sure how that will work in practice actually, but that's what they're proposing. So the way the law has developed on family leave is gradually has expanded to increase protection and it's become less focused on mothers.

So it's become much more inclusive in terms of father's rights, partners rights, all that kind of thing. I don't know how much more it will expand beyond that in terms of pay during periods of leave, dismissal, protection, that kind of thing.

Because actually I think we got to a position now where actually is relatively inclusive. So how much more it expands beyond that I don't know.

But I do know that we are going to have some reforms in our employment rights bill which make those types of leave and rights more available to a greater pool of individuals.

Let's watch this space and hope for the best in the best possible way.

I was on an advisory board for a university study into share parental leave and you might have seen press release but essentially it found that it just didn't work, it wasn't taken up, it was way too complicated, wasn't paid enough, and so on so forth. So having properly paid non birthing partner only leave, I think that would be on my wish list for future governments loss in the future.

I think that's an interesting point because I think it was very well intentioned shared parental leave and clearly it has benefited some people. But you're right, it's far too Complicated. I mean, every time I get asked a question about it by a client, I have to go back and read it again.

I have to go and read it again.

And that's you as an expert. Right, so how is a normal person going to deal with it?

Well, quite. Because all these conditions have to be satisfied depending on which partner in the relationship you're talking about.

And obviously complications arise because the pay. Lots of employers offer enhanced pay, some don't.

So then you're talking about statutory only pay and two employers having to talk to each other and work it all out.

It's very tricky, and actually really tricky from individual's perspective to understand what their rights are and what works best for them in terms of one partner in the relationship has a more generous employer than the other. How do you kind of work that system?

So you get both the best financial outcome, but probably more importantly the best outcome for the children that are being born into your family or being adopted.

Absolutely.

Obviously all these laws are in place partly because, like I said, there's a lot of discrimination out there and we notice that because we always have people applying to the fellowship who have experienced maternity discrimination.

So just to say, if you're listening and that applies to you, please apply, because we have highly, highly subsidized, essentially free spaces, I think something like £30 or so instead of £4,000 for a really brilliant program. So. And support some of the people going through this horrendous experience. I'm interested in your thinking about the global picture as well.

Sorry, this is also a question that hasn't been on the briefing, but I'm just.

It just crossed my mind because there are obviously countries that do things slightly differently, not to expect that, you know, all the laws globally, but I'm just interested, are there good practices that you would love to import from abroad or. Not even laws, but, you know, setups or stuff like the four day working week or job shares that we are now doing quite a lot in in the uk.

Is there anything you've come across globally?

I mean, not in terms of sort of family rights and flexible working? I mean, I.

I think actually the UK seems to be relatively progressive on that, although we'd like it to be improved in some ways, you know, compared to some jurisdictions. Reasonably forward thinking, I would say. Outside of that, an interesting discussion that has been had recently is around the right to switch off.

So some countries are implementing this already, whereby effectively there are periods of time, let's say for argument's sake, 7pm to 7am, where employees are not expected to respond to emails, deal with work related issues, etc. Etc. And I think that as a concept is quite interesting.

I mean, I've heard stories in the past about very senior executives in big corporations just suffering from burnout and basically having to come back and have these guardrails in place.

And I think in an environment where people are working from home more and there's a tendency for work to leak into personal time, so you just end up checking your emails because you are contactable a lot more than we were when I started being a lawyer. And we've all got email, we've all got personal devices.

And however, sometimes I do this, however much I can shut the door on my study here and leave my devices in here, I will occasionally pop in after the kids have gone to bed just to check that something's being progressed or no one needs me.

And so this kind of right to switch off sounds like it's not being going to come into force in the UK anytime soon perhaps because some of the other changes are quite significant and the government maybe feels that it's quite hard for employers to stomach that as well. But again, it's an interesting.

And I don't want to come across as sounding like I'm all for people doing as little work as possible and, you know, not putting the hours in or whatever. I mean, absolutely, they, they should and it's what I still do.

But I do think we need to treat individuals like grown ups and allow them to work at times that best suit them.

As long as you are delivering for your employer and the clients or whatever it is that whatever the outputs your job requires, you should be able to do that as far as possible on your own terms.

Agree.

But I think to achieve that and to measure whether outputs have been achieved, you need employers and directors who are able to measure those outputs. Even for roles that aren't client driven. I think there is a massive skills gap there.

Just what you're saying there, it made me think of the productivity crisis in the uk. So UK has one of the worst levels of productivity in the OECD and yet works actually really long hours.

And I think that's interesting because switching off, there's research that shows that that increases productivity, actually working shorter hours increases productivity. So I think we need to rethink some of that.

Again, like it's to me, obviously I come from training and development, so I would say this, but I see it through a skills lens. I see senior directors not understanding how to create productivity.

I think the long Hours culture which has developed. I mean, I've seen it in the legal profession since I joined. I was obviously caught up on that hamster wheel for many years myself.

I think it is entirely wrong to assume that the harder you work, the more effective you will be. And that is something we have simply got to get away from.

And maybe it will take a fundamental shift in how people do flexible working to make more people realize that.

I always used to find just, I mean, just anecdotally I see this and I used to think it was strange working in a law firm, sometimes working very late hours into night, thinking I am probably about 30% effective at the moment because I've been sat here for 15, 16 hours and I've got more work ahead of me. How are we justifying charging this time to a client where I am nowhere near as awake or aware as I probably was at 9:00 this morning?

It just seemed to be a complete. There's a complete mismatch again between input and output.

Absolutely.

And just to add to this, looking at it from a different sector, there's a research to show that nurses make a lot more mistakes towards the end of a 12, 13 hour shift, which is quite regular. And I'm assuming the same. I haven't seen the data, but I'm assuming the same is true for doctors. And I think that's, that's a real issue.

I mean, I don't want to be operated by someone who has been at work for 12 hours, possibly without a break.

It's a really good point. And it's those kind of little things, stuff you might not notice necessarily, but cumulative.

And you've got a whole bunch of people working together all over, not, not 100% on their game. That's when stuff slips through the net, whether it's in the medical profession or elsewhere.

I think, yeah, that's an interesting point of view. How we need to create organizations and work patterns that allows people to be on the 100% of their game as much as possible.

We're never all going to be all the time on 100%. But how do you create this? I think that's, that's the important question.

You talk to employers all the time secretly, as in not secretly, but as in not. You're not allowed to say what you're talking to them. But is there anything interesting that you can see bubbling up?

So I'm quite excited, as I said, about four day work week, job jest. Can you see models that have bubbled up that you think might Possibly be scaled up in the future.

I think four day week is a really interesting concept. I feel slightly biased about this because I've done this for a long time, albeit not at 100% pay.

I have to say my personal experience is it's worked really well for me and worked really well for the organisations that I've worked for and the clients that I've serviced. So it can work. Can it be applied across the board, across sectors and professions?

I think we need to start from an open minded position where it can until it is shown otherwise. And I'm really encouraged to see employers adopting a trial. You know, some it will work and some it won't.

And the four day week campaign I think is a really interesting thing. Obviously a lot of discussion about how our current, what we call traditional work pattern was forged, you know, way back in history.

Is it right for the modern world if we've got all benefits, all this fantastic technology, why are we still working? Like we work to daylight hours and seasons and all this kind of stuff? It doesn't make any sense, does it?

I think the thing that I found most disappointing this is early this year, I think there was one of the local councils in England trialed a four day working week that did not go down well with the central government.

And I recall there were some headlines about them basically being told to stop it, which I thought was really interesting because again, if you're thinking purely from a public policy perspective, what's going to deliver the most value for the taxpayer that funds that local council?

Why should we automatically assume that the people who collect the bins or work in the council offices or manage the parks can't do a brilliant job on four days a week? And if they can get round all the properties in four days and clear your recycling or whatever it is, then why shouldn't they?

Because then we can manage the resource a lot, a lot better. So I just thought that was an interesting. It's an interesting development. I think it is progressing quite slowly.

But I think again, the more employees, I think that's evidence base that we're talking about earlier, the more employers try it and find that it works and implement it either completely or to a certain degree, the more word will get out actually this might be the way forward and we don't have to go back to a world where we're 9 to 5, Monday to Friday and before that we only had, you know, Sunday afternoons off or whatever it was, and we all work stupid hours. These things work for a reason.

Yeah, I couldn't agree more. And we definitely have to recognize that it is our thinking about work is so ideology driven even that there is a separation between work and family.

When you had a farm, the myth in Switzerland is that when you had a farm you were always working, but you were also always. The rest was incorporating in it. Because they had so many religious holidays, they were always in the Catholic part especially.

I mean, my mother still seems to have a day off every month just because of some other saint. And I think that ideology just shapes how we see work and we need to try to break free from that and use evidence base.

So if anybody in the listeners is doing an interesting experiment around working patterns or their organization is doing interesting stuff, please let us know. Is there anything else that you really desperately wanted to discuss about future work that I haven't asked you about?

No, I don't think so, Rin. I think we've had a really interesting discussion and hopefully enough there that is sort of, I don't know, prompted some.

Prompting some of your listeners to sort of think about things a little bit differently. I appreciate. And again, I'm a big advocate for flexible working, whether that's part time or where you work or, or whatever.

I accept it can be challenging for organisations as well, you know. So I'm not just saying employers should always agree to all flexible working requests, however difficult they might be to accommodate.

There is always a scope for a constructive discussion. And I talk to people who are about to ask for flexible working.

I always say you should go in and explain to the employer how it will work for them, not just how it will work for you. And you're more likely to convince them at least a trial is worth going for. So it has to work on both sides.

I just think that these changes to the law are overall a positive thing.

Absolutely. And a big thank you to all the employers who are willingly, fully embracing this.

And I know some of our listeners are absolutely in HR trying to drive change. Thank you so much, Dom. It's been an absolute pleasure chatting to you again and I'll keep thinking of excuses to have conversation with you.

It's always very enjoyable.

Well, I appreciate it.

Yeah.

As I alluded to, we do have two previous podcasts with Dom in the series where he talks more about his own personal story of working flexibly in a senior role. Thank you very much.

Thank you very much.

I really appreciate you listening. Thank you so much. And I always love to hear from our listeners.

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