Is this Australia’s most flexible working arrangement?
At School Hours we love flexible working arrangements, especially when they’re for parents. When we hear about a worker, a company or both doing great things in this space, we immediately want to shout it from the rooftops in an effort to get the brilliance that is flexible working arrangements better understood.
This is one such moment and what makes it so great is that it’s very close to home, in fact as close to home as it gets because it’s my wife and partner at School Hours, Yasmin Grigaliunas. Yasmin or Yas as she prefers to be known, hasn’t worked in the School Hours business full-time for a few years now and fills her days with a flexible full-time Project Management role for a company called AVT Australia.
Based on the Gold Coast, AVT Australia (formerly AMX Australia) is an importer and distributor of audio visual technology and has already been the focus of our research into flexible working arrangements. Yas was initially hired in a flexible capacity, with the ability to complete her work from home in Brisbane, the office on the Gold Coast or anywhere inbetween. It was a great role and the flexibility it offered worked out well for everyone involved.
While this initial offering was pretty good by flexible working standards, it wouldn’t really qualify for the most flexible working arrangement in Australia given working from home isn’t all that uncommon these days. Where this story evolves to qualify was in December 2015 when Yas resigned. She did so to allow her, myself and our two daughters could travel around Australia in a caravan for the whole of 2016. We decided this epic trip was a “now or never” moment and while Yas loved working for AVT, we felt like our “family gap year” needed to be done now.
Instead of accepting Yas’ resignation, AVT surprised her by offering her the change to remain working for them whilst travelling, citing that it wasn’t much different from what she was doing now. Yas was only going to the office 1 – 2 times a week anyway and it wasn’t a requirement to getting her job done, so why not! As long as Yas had an internet signal, she had the ability to get her job done.
Needless to say Yas jumped at the offer and as this is being written, Yas is nearly 4 months into the ultimate flexible working arrangement journey. As expected Yas, myself and AVT Australia couldn’t be happier with the arrangement. Yas hasn’t missed a beat in terms of productivity and the arrangement is spoken about in the highest terms by all who are aware of it. The only negative that can be found in all this is the jealousy that occurs when Yas sends in her regular “remote office” photos.
Do you know of an excellent flexible working arrangement story? Whether it’s you, a friend, a company you know of, it doesn’t matter, if it’s account of truly flexible working arrangement, we’d love to know about it and would love to share it in this forum.
Leigh (& Yas)
Leigh Grigaliunas
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