Flexible hiring means offering flexibility from day one of a new hire. If you can see that flexible working is beneficial to your business, and is working well for your people, then you’re missing a trick if you don’t hire flexibly. Without this final step, there’s a block in the jobs market for people who can’t work full-time; so your business is missing out on some of the best candidates, and not fully benefiting from its flexible working strategy. Starting to hire flexibly is a much simpler step than you might think. All you’re doing is waiving the 6 month qualifying period for requesting flexible working. What’s more, saying in a job advert that you’ll consider flexible working does not commit you to meeting a specific request. It simply means that, if a candidate requests flexibility, you will consider it and agree to the arrangement if it works for the role. You may have some roles which are completely unsuitable for flexible hiring. That’s fine – just continue to advertise these jobs as full-time, with no mention of flexible working possibilities or culture. But it’s our belief that, when you really look at them, there are very few roles that can’t be worked flexibly in some way.