Building a sustainable business means embracing flexibility
Many of our crew don’t work full-time, and we encourage and embrace working flexibly. We don’t go in much for metrics at Kin but one thing I do keep an eye on is utilisation i.e. the number of hours each team member is actually working vs how many hours they want to work.
If somebody commits to working 24 hours a week, and they’re consistently doing 30, something is going to give. As a leader, my resolution every year is to make sure each of my team feel as good in December as they did in January. Recruitment can be a tough gig; it can be as rewarding as it is frustrating, after all, we’re dealing with human beings!
We start conversations about workload and utilisation early, encouraging team collaboration and sharing of work. With this approach being the norm across the team, my hope is that we will avoid anyone flirting with burn-out.
With some in the Kin team coming from a background in traditional recruitment agency environments (where there are hefty commission-based placement fees), sharing of clients, candidates and work is not common. Those in our team who have left these environments, have left feeling used up and exhausted. One major benefit of walking away from commission-based recruitment is that there are no territorial barriers to overcome and our team freely and routinely support one another when it’s needed.
Based on the energy at our Christmas function, I’d say that together, we have the balance about right!