As part of International Women’s Day we encouraged employers using Salesforce to support flexible working practices within in their workplace.
At our Company we have two passions:
- Empowering non-profits to embrace Salesforce to enable their team to work in the cloud and improve efficiency for their team and organisation.
- Supporting mums into work through our Salesforce Supermums Programme. We have a vision to support 200 mums into Salesforce roles by 2024.
International Women’s Day is all about supporting women to achieve their potential which is why we are talking about flexibility and how Salesforce is the perfect way to create this culture.
A flexible employer:
- offers job opportunities that combine options such as part-time hours, remote working, flexible working hours or ad-hoc contracts.
- creates a working culture and team that supports flexible working practices.
For many working parents, mandatory team meetings at 8.30am, being expected in meetings without virtual dial-in, non-urgent calls on your days off and comments about you leaving the office at 2.30 to pick up the kids are all common issues.
Of course, there are occasions where some of these things may be necessary for some employers, and parents need to be flexible too. It’s got to be two-way flexibility, but day-to-day, there ways to ensure a company culture and that creates a supportive environment around flexible working.
5 ideas to embrace flexibility using Salesforce
Salesforce empowers us to have a flexible workforce in so many ways, but it requires a team and culture to embrace and adopt it! If you have a team that works remotely and in the office, think about how you can apply these options..
- Anywhere Anytime – Salesforce CRM is in the cloud, so technically a Salesforce Administrator can work from anywhere and anytime if they have a laptop and IP access. Could you offer flexible work hours (day and/or evening) or remote working to enable mums to manage the school-run?
- Create a Tag Team – How you can create a tag team if people work part-time? Salesforce Service Cloud features and communication tools such as Livechat, chatter, Lightning for Outlook and Gmail makes sure all communication with customers is recorded in the system, so you can hand over a task effectively to your team. Could you get mums to job-share to cover your support desk?
- Bridge the Divide – It’s important to make sure remote workers feel part of the team and there isn’t a remote/office staff divide. Skype for Business is now integrated within Salesforce, so there is the opportunity to have team video conference right within the Salesforce instance. Decide on a time of day that is accommodating for all staff and bring a remote and office based team together to foster a team working environment.
- Chat in the Cloud – How do you keep everyone in the loop on conversations if they are working remotely and in the office? Chatter can creates a team working environment to share stories, learning, ideas and social matters. Create Chatter groups that get people talking and use chatter across the team to keep everyone connected and involved in the conversation. Share the office banter and everything else of interest.
- Collaborative Input – Gather input from all of the team on important documents – Salesforce Quip enables you to collaborate real-time working on documents with the ability to have group conversations.
If you are an employer and are looking to recruit a Salesforce Admin, please contact us here.
If you are interested in maximising the features of Salesforce at your non-profit, then contact us about our consultancy services or Supermums programme.
