Lloyds Banking Group, Winner 2017, Best for Flexible Recruitment Award
- Job advertisements are specific about the types of flexible working that are possible in the role.
- Role design and agile hiring toolkit for line managers launched
- Massive technology investment to support agility
Lloyds Banking Group has extended its agile approach into the hiring process. The bank has worked with candidates and managers to enhance advertising and recruitment practices, enabling flexible workers to progress.
Lloyds Banking Group is tapping into widespread demand for flexible working: 26 per cent of UK employees work part-time or in an agile way. Lloyds Banking Group now proactively considers agility at the point of hire, and has moved from printing a generic agility statement on recruitment advertisements to naming specific types of flexibility available.
A survey of 6,000 candidates showed that 90 per cent were in favour of seeing a list of specific types of flexibility on job advertisements. Managers are now asked to select from a broad range of agile working practices and/or say that they are open to other suggestions from candidates.
This reassures candidates that hiring managers have considered which agile working options are appropriate for the role, meaning their experience is more likely to match.
The business provides a role design and agile hiring toolkit for managers, explaining the business case for agility, the agile working practices available, guiding principles and case studies. Managers who advertise roles without agility are expected to provide justification.
Since launch, 90 per cent of all new vacancies have been agile. For example, in the first four months of the year, 140 vacancies were advertised as specifically open to job sharing.
The Group sponsors the Timewise Hire Me My Way campaign, which aims to treble the proportion of quality part-time and agile jobs to one million by 2020.
In addition, Lloyds Banking Group is investing £1bn over the next three years to develop its digital offering and ensure technology is sufficient for agile working to be embedded in the business. This is in addition to asking divisions to re-think traditional ways of working and how whole teams are configured.